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Chapter 7 of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// explains, as many students in practicum already understand, that grading is not always the best way to gauge a student. It gave ideas of what each grade stands for and different views on the letter grade themselves from various teachers. The chapter raised the question as to whether [|feedback] ideals should be used instead of grades in general, because grades are the thing that isn’t talked about enough within teaching.

All in all, everyone seemed to have the same idea that grading is a necessity, but it isn’t always equal. There are more and better indicators to judge how a student has met certain[| standards]. Grades can emphasize certain parts of the class, for instance 20% tests, and a student just may not be good with tests. Or 20% participation and a student is very shy. Either way, as some classmates pointed out, students should have an explanation as to why they received the grade they did, whether it’s good or bad. Generally, we all agree that grades are not a completely accurate portrait of a student’s academic success. I like Emily’s idea, which is to make sure when giving feedback it’s more than a letter grade. A student deserves to know the reasoning behind the letter.

Synthesized - Colby Hill

Sam Leal
Chapter 7: The Relative Nature of Grades and Their Definitions

Grades have a unique meaning and measure to every teacher. Making it really hard to come up with what it really means to do C work or A work. The symbol of a letter grade means so much in schools that often how can you really know what it means. Student who completed Algebra II learned to factor, solve equations, graph equations, FOIL, find max and min points, and solve equations with logarithms and exponents, but how does an A on a report card show their mastery and understanding of all these topics. Chapter 7 in FIAE brings up this topic of grades that’s constantly thought about all the time, but never really discussed.

There are so many factors that teachers often think about in grading. Chapter 7 gives a great example how one essay when graded by many different teachers ranged in a grade from an A to a D. Also once given four different descriptions of who the student could be, that changed the grade four more times. The chapter also brings up how when teachers define grades it is always different. A check plus in one class may not be as difficult to receive as a check plus is in another class. An A often means a student met 100 percent of the criteria. Whereas, an A in another class could only received by students who exceeded and went above and beyond. This chapter brings up these questions and makes you think were you stand.

Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Chapter 7

This chapter speaks to that confusion we’ve all been feeling, and it knows it. It knows we’ve looked at our grades, seen how messed up the format on one essay, got a “B” for it, and then thought about how a formality seemed to keep us from that “A” that we wanted. It also knows that at some point we’ve all realized that suddenly it was about the format and not the ideas. What was supposed to be an intellectual discovery had become a tedious checking of the boxes.

This chapter is trying to make a case against that checking of the boxes, and counter the argument that teachers who take into account the background of their students are just going soft: letting kids not be held accountable. The authors make the case that simply brings up the question of what our goal was in the first place: what makes does it make to make the curriculum more important than the students? Wasn’t the betterment of the students the whole point? What if a teacher finds themself in a situation where not just one or two students are doing poorly but all of them because the curriculum is poorly adapted? Do they just go full steam ahead? Of course not. That would be foolish. The chapter argues for a clarity of what our goals really are, and for us to be clear with kids about what they must know. If a “C” is an 80, then what does that mean? That they understood only 80% of the big ideas? Key understandings can’t be broken down so simply into percentages. toc

Cidney
Grading is one of the things in education that is seldom questioned, even when its effectiveness is questionable. The meaning of a grade has a huge impact on students, and yet there are many flaws to our current system of grading. Grade inflation has made it so that a C is no longer average, and there is no universal definition for what letter grades mean. Grading has become objective instead of subjective, and there is no consistency between the grades of one teacher and another. However, the concept of grades as feedback is fine. We just need to expand on our feedback and make it clear, consistent, and meaningful to the student in order for it to be effective.

Personally, I plan on using a variety of feedback mechanisms and strategies in my classroom, and wish to move as far away from the letter grade scale as possible. What’s the point in having a student base their worth on a letter grade? Grades incite competition, make students question self-worth, and are definitely the least valuable form of feedback teachers can give. I do recognize that schools require a letter grade for systematic purposes, but in my class I plan on using rubrics and class journals in order to communicate feedback. By clearly communicating my grading processes and what I am looking for in terms of content mastery, I hope to give my students valuable feedback that is not going to cripple their self-esteem.

Elizabeth Sargent
Grading is often an aspect of teaching that is overlooked by teachers, yet it is the most dependable source of record for students and parents. Usually, teachers create their own grading systems defined by their own individualized expectations for their students and what they want them to achieve. This is a major flaw among teachers all over. We cannot work efficiently without input from trusted colleagues. One teacher only has one set of ideas, one mind to think of all the possibilities in which something may be done. Colleagues thinking together on the same grading process is not only helpful when creating grading systems, but it is helpful to the students as well.

Defining grades in this chapter is not something I have ever directly thought about, but it is good to know that teachers think differently on this subject. It makes me wonder why something has not been done to improve the system yet. Students should not feel embarrassed by any grade they receive, they simply need to know that they must improve their mastery of the content. Also, while I did know that the challenges that students have had to face has increased with the passing of time, it is interesting to find out that a B is now average instead of a C. Overall, I feel that students need to be explained why they earned the grade they did, and be given the chance to prove their mastery again. Without that chance, it seems dysfunctional that this system that we have created to teach students goes to almost no use unless a students does well the first time.

Colby Hill
FIAE Chapter 7

I like what this chapter had to say right away: “we don’t spend time with each other determining the meaning of a C, an A, or discussing what constitutes a 3.5 on a rubric” (89). This is interesting to me, because some people say C’s are fine, others say that if you don’t get an A it’s horrible. There is this idea that an A is good and whatnot, but there is still discussion to be had. There just seems to be a lot of variation to the beliefs. There is just so much placed on the symbol, that, as Wormeli says, it’s no longer useful.

I think I serve the students before the curriculum, or at least I imagine myself doing so. I want to figure out which way a student learns best and provide it. I imagine that, as Wormeli suggests, “the stresses associated with grading student products spur dreams of grade-free classrooms in all of us from time to time” (93). I imagine I will many times, and I guarantee grading will stress me out at some point too. The examples of the schools that do not use grades seem to work very well. Theresa’s stories interest me immensely. My only question is how colleges base student’s success—is there a GPA system? Is the college basing the student off of the reputation of the school?

A student who does do well, as explained on page 98, and gets a D or so isn’t ready for the next level. This is oh so true, it happened to me with math. I was never ready for the next step but was always pushed to it anyway.

Jordan Hale
Grading seems fair, but it is not always equal. Grades are not a good indicator of how a student has or has not met certain standards. For instance, if your lesson covers four-quadrant graphing, graphing inequalities, isolating the variable, accounting for two or more variables, multiplying binomials, logic problems, slope and y-intercept and the student gets a B, how does that tell us how that student has met each and every standard (90)? Surprise- it doesn’t. Student samples are presented to support the claim that an essay, when graded by a myriad of different teachers, received a grade range of an A to an F (91). This shows that grades can be biased because there is no breakdown of standards. Instead of meeting one standard but not another, a student could earn a B on a test and teachers could completely miss that the student doesn’t know how to do one part. In turn, that student ‘gets by’ the unit and looks like they did a great job. Grading a child performance by a single letter grade does not give the student much feedback. If a student completely missed one section of the unit while it was being taught, and then the student gets a B on the test without learning //all// of the material, than that student is being cheated by the teacher. In my eyes, grades are feedback and you cant give feedback with only a letter. I liked the description in the beginning of a teacher trying to set up their classroom evaluations into standard based and not grade based. This gives the teacher a better snap shot of where their students are and what needs to be covered more thoroughly. When in a school, it is important to use their grading system, but teachers need to start innovating their evaluation ways in order to benefit the students learning more effectively.

Emily Haskell
Chapter 7: The Relative Nature of Grades and Their Definitions

One of the points that I thought was extremely important here is that a single grade on a report card does not say much at all about what the student has learned or what the teacher has taught to that student. There is no way that you can gauge a student’s success with a single grade on a piece of paper. That student may be ahead of others, may be behind others, or simply may have had a rough time on one of the tests or quizzes they took.

Society is responsible for deciding what we need to learn and at what age we should be learning it. However, we all know that different people learn at different paces. So why then do we place these standards on people and expect them to fall right into place? At the same time we have to think about other things like adjusting grades. Does changing a grade based on the student weaken the system? If we change a grade based on the student well then it’s not really fair to the rest of the students. We also have to find a way to gauge which of the students need their grades altered due to problems.

However, I also think one of the most important things we need to remember about education is that it should center on the needs of the individual. In my classroom I think it is important to not only give letter grades but to be specific in my feedback so that students will really know how they are doing.

Karina Sprague
Chapter 7: The Relative Nature of Grades and Their Definitions

This chapter talked about the mixed messages that a single letter grade can send. By giving just one overall grade, it is unclear what the student has excelled in and what they are struggling in. Although I definitely agree that one single grade is not effective, I can’t think of a circumstance where I have ever seen just one grade. Typically, report cards show an overall letter grade for each class, but my school would also attach a copy of each student’s powerschool report to the report card. This way parents who do not look at power school, or parents who want to know why their student got a certain grade, can just look at the individual grades to see where the student was struggling.

Now that I am an elementary education major, I try to think of everything that I read from an elementary and a secondary point of view. This case in particular related a lot to elementary education. I was always an aware student in primary school, so I would always look over my report card with my parents. This, and the fact that my younger brother and sister were recently in the primary school, made it possible for me to remember the format of elementary report cards. Each report card had many different grades for many different content areas, each relating to an important standard. Students were not graded with a letter, but with a level of competency (satisfactory, needs improvement, working towards, etc.). Each section and standard was graded based on how well the student was performing. The teachers gave an overall grade to give the parents a good idea of where their student was, but the specific grades were more important. This format should be carried out throughout the middle and secondary levels.

Spencer Hodge
Chapter 7 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal is all about grades and grading while in the classroom. The chapter gave several examples of what the grades A through F stood for. Bowdring explained how she grades an A in her classroom, and I can’t say I agree with it. She says that an A is not earned by mastering the standards, but going beyond that. While that is a good idea and all, it doesn’t make sense for when it actually comes down to giving students a letter grade at the end of the year based on what they’ve shown. Based on her grading system then, a student who has just mastered all of the standards can only get, what I assume would be, a B at best. I understand that every teacher has a different way of grading in their classroom, but I think that every teacher in the school should at least agree on what justifies an A, B, C etc. This way, no student can say that one teacher’s grades compared to another are unfair. Also, when grading papers, it’s important to provide feedback on the assignment. I also never plan on lowering expectations for students with low SES. While it may seem like it never happens, it’s scary to say that it really does in high schools all across the country. Every student has the ability to turn in outstanding work, and I will live up to that expectation with every one of my students. The grade of an F is something that I have mixed feelings on. While it may be true that most of the time students don’t do the work and they don’t care, sometimes you’ll have the student that you notice is trying hard, yet something isn’t clicking right away. I also feel like I have failed as an educator when I give an F. Essentially I still have a lot of developing to do with my grading philosophy, but this chapter got me thinking!