Today’s blog is written with Sarah Morris, a Graduate Researcher in OEP and former junior high teacher.
Here at OEP, we have been thinking about the question, “What grading practices are best for students?” and we are looking for ninth-grade teachers of ELA, math, or science to help us figure out the answer.
Today we have a new report and policy brief in our series about grading in Arkansas. We’ve been thinking about grading for high school freshman because we know the ninth-grade year is the most important for high school students. Over the past two years, we have found several interesting findings about grading and Arkansas’s high school freshman including:
- Freshman GPAs matter for high school graduation and college enrollment
- 1 in 5 Arkansas freshman fail at least one course
- Algebra I is the course most commonly failed course freshman year
- After controlling for each student’s prior academic achievement and district characteristics, economically disadvantaged students are nine percentage points more likely to fail a course freshman year compared to more economically advantaged students
- Freshmen in buildings that serve grades 7-9, 8-9, or 9 only have a lower likelihood of course failure than students in traditional high school building configurations, serving grades 9-12
Now, we would like to share our most recent findings and results from Arkansas. But before we do that, here are some fast facts about grading practices.
The traditional grading scale, 0-100-point scale with the A-F letter scheme, has been used for over a century and was designed with the belief that grades effectively motivated students through extrinsic reinforcement and punishment. Recently, however, researchers find that the traditional grading scale and grading practices (assigning zeros, taking off points for punctuality, including a behavior component in grades, groupwork compliance grades) can actually demotivate students. Despite this finding, there is great variation among how teachers assign grades. Some teachers prefer to include a grade for student behavior to give a more holistic view of a student, whereas some only align student grades to academic standards. The practice of assigning grades that are only linked to standards have been found to reduce grading bias among teachers, increase accuracy, and motivate students.
Since we know grades are important, we wanted to take a peek at grading practices in Arkansas. From an Arkansas Teachers’ Grading Perceptions survey we put out this fall (sample size=506), we find moderate support for grading practices researchers found to be fairer for students. These practices include but are not limited to: standards-based grading practices, final grades based majorly on summative assessments, excluding effort from the grade, or giving feedback remarks as grades as opposed to points or A-F letter grades.
Through the survey, we find teachers that favor these grading practices are more likely to have their Master’s Degree, teach elementary age students, or teach core content (ELA, math, science, or social studies) courses.
On the survey, we asked teachers to share how they developed their current grading practices and four themes emerged. Arkansas teachers have developed their grading practices:
- Through an equity-based lens
- Through professional development or personal research
- By adhering to what has always been done
- By focusing on students’ futures or behaviors.
These themes made us consider that maybe not all teachers across the state have received the same opportunities to reflect upon or think about their grading practices. To dig further into what is happening in schools right now for buildings serving ninth-grade students, we conducted 16 interviews with educators to describe how their building grades. Five major themes from these conversations transpired:
- Changing grading practices is a slow process
- Summative assessments are weighted more than formative assessments
- The intervention period is used to reteach
- The gradebook should only be tied to standards
- The final grade still needs to incorporate a behavior component.
Based on the information teachers shared with us on the survey and details described by educators through the interviews, we conclude that grading practices vary quite a bit across the state.
This leaves back to question—“What grading practices are best for students?”
As our prior research finds the ninth-grade year is important, that freshman GPAs matter, that economically disadvantaged students are more likely to fail compared to non-economically disadvantaged students even after accounting for their same prior academic ability, and that ninth-grade students likelihood of failure varies by building configurations, we aim to explore what grading practices truly are best for students.
We would love to partner with you and your district to answer this question about how to best use grades to support student success. Please contact us! We are specifically seeking ninth-grade teachers of ELA, math, or science to help us answer the question about which grading practices significantly improve students’ motivation, self-esteem, and relationship with their teachers. For more details, please reach out to as at oep@uark.edu.