On Grading

Here are some things I believe about Grades

• Learning is more important than grades.

• Grades are a tool - like any other tool.  They only measure (in my class, anyway) what a student has done.

• Teachers should be allowed to create their own Grading Scale and criteria.  Actually, that's how it was when I first started.  If you trust a teacher to get in front of over a hundred students every day - you should trust them to grade in the way that will work best with everything else that they are doing in that classroom.  If the teacher's grades are way out of whack with reality or with the rest of the school - the problem is not with their grading scale - it is with the teacher.

• Grading needs to be fair and equitable.

• When I first started teaching, 3 students had straight A's in my Homeroom.  The year I left, 5 students in my homeroom did not have straight A's.

• I taught at a Selective Enrollment High School - if you are grading on what the students are capable of (rather than what they actually did); you might as well give them their diploma on the first day.

• My ideal arrangement for Late Work is that it should count as 65% (or whatever the highest F is) of what it would have earned had it been turned in on time.  This, of course, does not apply to students who could not complete the work on time because of self or family emergencies of any kind.  In that case, students should be given as much time as needed to get the work done (but they should eventually get the work done - or you are punishing them again)

• If you are a real teacher, and you teach long enough,  you will have to give F's to kids who are kind and thoughtful, and you will end up giving A's to those students who are not so nice.  I always asked my student teachers if they capable of doing that - if they weren't I advised them that maybe teaching was not the right job for them.

• I had a student who failed British Literature (they refused to do the Research Paper) and who became a professor of British Literature (and we still talk!)  Grades should not be personal - nor should they be indicative of what their future holds in store.

• It is much easier to give an A than an F.  Those who give F's must either believe that is the grade that is deserved OR there is something wrong with them as a teacher that goes far beyond grade giving.

• Work that is not turned in should be given a 0.  Period. (unless there is a reason - see Late work above)

• Grades should be confidential.  I never allowed students to share grades in my Homeroom - because I wanted to protect that student who didn't want to share.

• Grades do not define you - your behavior and actions do.