Entrance Slip: Grades and Assessment

It seems to me that the clearest reason for tests and percentage or letter grades in assessment is for students and evaluators to have a benchmark for student ability. 

The students want to know how they're doing in relation to their peers and they want to know if they have what it takes to get into universities or other post-secondary programs. 

In a lot of ways, grades make school about efficiency. At least, that was my experience. A student with a lot of courses and assignments will streamline their workload to only include what is graded, and beyond that the focus is on what carries more weight. They have a fixed amount of time and energy and they must decide how they will distribute it over the week. In many ways, it is about finding the path of least resistance. 

In my experience as a student in high school, this was absolutely the case. I was exceptional at taking tests. I could consistently predict the sort of questions that were going to be asked based on the practice assignments and previous tests I had taken. And this allowed me to focus my efforts on studying the things that would influence my grade. And I pretty much ignored everything else. 

From a teacher's perspective, this is a difficult issue. You want a way of bench-marking and you want to set up students to be successful after high school, and that often means ensuring they can get the grade requirements for universities. But, as the article explores, grade centered assessment causes a lot of stress for students and directs a lot of focus away from content. 

I don't have a great idea of what a classroom should look like and what assessment is best for students. But I do have experience in my other teachable subject, theatre, in talking about assessment. It's an entirely different environment when grading something as subjective as performance art. And getting into programs after high school often doesn't rely so much on grades as on project experience and a portfolio. 

I believe this could be carried into a math and science classroom: offer more projects and encourage students to develop a portfolio of their work. 

A large project in a math class can get students focused on working in a group and sharing their learning. If they have a lot of class time to develop something that they're going to present for their peers, there's still a clear way for them to gauge how they compare to others, without the harshness of a percentage grade. And depending on the nature of the project, they would likely be self-directed, which should increase their motivation and interest in the topic. 

Of course, there's the other side, that presentations and large projects can also be a cause for stress for other students. 

On the topic of developing a portfolio: students could have a collection of work throughout their semester that gives them insight into what they've learned. It might be a collection of journal entries or blogposts. Or maybe photographs of displays or projects they've built. 

More often than not, a student will judge their success in a math class by looking at a list of assignments and tests and their associated grades. In the arts it is common for students to look at their best work and what they are most proud of as an indicator of success. I would love to see that sort of assessment happen in math/science classes.