Teachers Experiment With Alternatives to Letter Grades

did away with the traditional A to F grades. Some experiments included relaxing penalties for late or incomplete work and retaking exams once an understanding of the material had been established. Valerie Strauss, education reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for the hunt for a fairer grading system. Thanks for joinings, Valerie, glad to be here, Thanks for having me. I wanted to talk about this interesting thing that's going on in

schools with teachers across the country. Educators are starting to experiment with a more tolerant grading system. They're trying to maybe do away with the A to F letter grades. And what we saw during the pandemic was also pretty interesting too. You know, we saw the huge disruption that happened, and it was really tough just to do regular assignments get the grading done effectively. So a lot of teachers were kind of just doing like pass or fail grades,

you know, different things. They were experimenting with a lot of stuff. But it seems that this movement has continued really and they're just looking for different ways to grade students, making sure that at least the student is learning the material that's cheap among everything there. So Valry, how is

this working out? It's an experiment that started in a number of places well before the pandemic and then was really been spurred on by the pandemic because, as you said, kids weren't learning, and it was very difficult to give grades based on the traditional metrics because kids weren't going

through the regular learning process. It's not so much that they're getting rid of the A, B, c's and d's and f it's that they are just trying to experiment with what goes into those grades and trying to make them more equitable. For as far as I remember, I went to school a long time ago, and it's still true that most teachers give grades that in food behaviors and behaviors mean or include things like when do you

turn in an assignment? And offers the opportunity to do extra credit to show motivation and things that don't really show that you know what, that you know the material, that you master the material. And for many teachers, what they've realized is that it's inequitable for a lot of kids whose home lives are very difficult, who can't get homeworka in on time, or for kids who work slower, who kids need more time, kids who need more time

to process things and work them through. And what they realized is that putting these behaviors into the grade that's supposed to just show academic progress doesn't really make sense and is inequitable. So the move is to separate the behaviors from that letter grade. And it's also to try to make students own their learning a little bit more instead of always giving them assignments that they have to learn how to give assignments to themselves, give deadlines to

themselves so they get things done. It also these experiments, there's not just one, but there's a number of them, but they also include having students have the opportunity to redo material, to read tests, to read papers so that they actually learn what they're supposed to know. And in some places that have been experimenting with it, they're finding it's very very interesting and successful and other chief places

are very nervous about trying it. They think that they're going to short change kids by not you know, instilling in them behaviors that everybody thinks kids should have. So there's a lot of contention about it in districts around the country, right, yeah, I mean on that front, right, meeting deadlines, having things done properly, proper formatting, that stuff that's going to carry over into college where a lot of those rules are stricter even and in the workplace,

right there are deadlines that need to be met. So I guess some of some of the opposition to some of this, uh is that you're not instilling those in the kids with their school work. And so what does this look like in practice? You had an example from a pe teacher for a teacher those teaching a AP class, and instead of doing this one point scale, which you know, all the way up to sixty points, right is a

failing grade. Still, they do something more on a fifty point scale where each you get ten points for each of the letters A through F. You know, so you kind of there's less of a chance to be an outright fail grade. Well, absolutely, when you think about it, and you know, I went to school a lifetime ago and never thought about this, But it is kind of crazy for one letter, the F to have sixty points.

So if you are a student who you know has trouble with motivation and your first big test is a you get a fifty on it, that's really hard to come back from. So a kid who doesn't have a lot of motivation might decide they're not even going to try. But a kid who knows that they can go back and try again to learn the material and do better is advantaged by a system that doesn't place so much, that doesn't have that one point system, and a system allows you to redo things to show that you know

what you know. The bottom line for teachers is is that they want kids to learn, and so what is the best system to show that they have that they have mastered the material? So um, you know they don't. They do an interesting thing though, too, with some of this. Right, Let's say you need to retake an exam or redo an assignment. A lot of this has to do with the teacher kind of meeting with the student one on one. Tell me what you did wrong, tell me that you

learned from this. Now you get another crack at the assignment. So that's an important part of it. At least there's an understanding and you can kind of glean a little more if the student did, you know, master the subject, things like that. But that also points to teachers being overworked as well and having needing more time to do a lot of this one on one stuff. Absolutely, and that's why a lot of teachers are upset about it, nervous about it and pushing back against it. A lot

of teachers have a lot of students. Class sizes can be very large, and they see that they don't have the time to do so much one on one that they would like to do, and they don't have time to remake tests and come up with new assignments. Now. I asked some teachers who have been doing this about that, and they say that can be an issue, but it's also true that they have they're using the time they spent doing other things doing this now, so they've learned

to sort of change their their work flaw. It Also, those does speak to teachers who say that small class sizes are important. Right there, this's that more individualized at tension that they get. I mean, all of this is a very interesting concept. And you know, whatever we can do to make sure that children are learning the subjects, the mastery of the subjects is very important. There's obviously a lot of conversations going on about parents input and

teacher input and what the kids are learning. I mean, it's an ongoing thing and we'll see if any of these do gain traction. Valerie Strauss, Education Report at the Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget the difference today's big news stories. You can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast