Portland, Oregon is a city I have for which I’ve always held fond feelings. I grew up fairly close to it, and spent a good deal of time there throughout my youth. It’s also the location of my favorite book store, Powell’s City of Books, a giant new and used book store that where I have spent an amount of money over the years that would add up to a down payment on a house. Whenever I would travel back to visit family, a trip to Powell’s was just assumed to be part of the plan – and I’d always make sure when flying out there that my luggage would have plenty of empty space for all the extra books I’d be bringing back.
However, knowing what I’ve always known about the political zeitgeist in Portland, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn about some new policies that are being rolled out for the public school system there. Among these policies is a mandate that would “prohibit teachers from giving students a failing grade for missing work or even if they are caught cheating.” The news story reports some of the other new policies:
According to the school district, this new “equitable grading policy” is meant to reduce “racial disparities in our pass/fail rate in multiple subjects in both middle grades and high school.” Let’s just assume that this policy will achieve its stated goals, and the distribution of student grades is more “equitable” in the outcome rather than process sense. Would that mean the policy has achieved something good?
No. Grades are meant to serve a particular purpose – to convey information about a student’s level of mastery on a given topic, as well as how consistently a student carries out assigned tasks. Low grades are a sign that a student is falling short in one or both of these areas, and changing the grade doesn’t change the underlying reality. It’s similar to how prices reflect information about the relative supply and demand for a particular service. Changing the price by fiat doesn’t change the underlying facts that created it – it only masks them, hiding both a useful signal and removing the incentive to respond to that signal.
To a certain kind of reformer, prices simply appear as arbitrary obstacles, interfering with the achievement of some desirable goal. Lacking an appreciation of prices as conveyers of information about an underlying reality, they see changing the price as all that’s needed to “fix” some perceived social problem. When the perceived social problem is the high price of housing, these reformers don’t think about what underlying factors might be creating these high prices (aside from vaguely gesturing at “greed”), and because of that, they don’t see the solution as policy changes that might increase the housing supply. Instead, in their mind, all that’s needed to fix the problem is to implement price ceilings like rent control. There are no further factors to consider, or deeper lessons to be learned.
In the same way, these reformers see low grades as merely an arbitrary obstacle to achieving some other social goal they value. And rather than try to deal with the underlying issues that created the signal, they seek to manipulate the signal instead. But inflating the grades of students who don’t understand the material or who don’t perform the assigned work doesn’t do anything to fix the issues that actually need fixing.
It’s worth pointing out that hiding the accurate signal doesn’t help the students either, for at least two reasons. One was put rather cheekily by the Australian comedian Jim Jefferies in a bit where he was mocking Americans for insisting on affirming everyone’s abilities and always wanting to protect everyone’s self-esteem and self-image. As he put it, “There are two lots of people in life, winners and losers. You’re not going to be a winner at everything and you’re not going to be a loser at everything, but you’ll never figure out what you’re good at in life if they tell you you’re f****ing good at everything!” The other reason is similar to something recently pointed out by David Henderson – when you restrict (or mask) information, people will “look for what statisticians call ‘noisier’ data” instead. When good grades are no longer a reliable signal for a good work ethic and understanding of the material, other signals will be sought. And this is a game that heavily favors the wealthy over the poor. By weakening the signal, these reformers are removing a tool that helps bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds distinguish themselves. In the name of lifting people up, they will only hold more people down.
READER COMMENTS
AMW
Oct 16 2023 at 3:02pm
One of those “noisier signals” will undoubtedly be race, since the policies are being implemented specifically because of differences in average performance across races.
Btw, where in Oregon did you grow up? I spent most of my childhood in the Portland suburbs.
steve
Oct 16 2023 at 3:09pm
Have always disagreed with graded homework. When I was a kid long ago people who could afford to buy Cliff’s notes just regurgitated those and got good grades, they never read the books. I read the entire books but couldn’t afford those. Grades weren’t as consistently good. (OK, I hated writing.) In math and science students who clearly didnt understand the stuff were getting top grades in their homework but mediocre grades on tests. I would ace every test but occasionally miss handing in some homework because I was a guy and better stuff to do or had to work. Just balanced it out to make sure I got an A.
This seemed even worse when my son was in high school. He and two girls lead the school in math and science grades. He was third, but if there was a difficult question or concept he was the one who had to help the others. So graded homework, especially with the internet, doesnt show mastery of a subject, just good internet skills and willingness to work. It mostly favors girls. Base grades on test scores.
Query- Your kid is the best math student in school by far. He has a serious illness and misses a few weeks. School has a policy that you cannot make up homework and attendance counts for part of the grade. Does it make sense to give your kid a lower grade? Some of the other kids get better grades. Would it really mean they were better at math?
Steve
Jon Murphy
Oct 16 2023 at 6:23pm
You bring up an interesting and challenging point, and it is one that I struggle with as an educator. I don’t think the issue is graded assignments per se but rather the type of assignment. Multiple choice, for example, will never test deep knowledge. An A on a multiple choice exam will not convey much information. But an A on a writing assignment could convey a lot more (if there is a good rubric).
All that said, there is a lot of subjectivity in interpretation here as well, which I think goes to your point.
I think this goes to the subjectivity issue I just mentioned. If I were evaluating this student on their knowledge of math, I would look at all their grades, not just for one course. If I knew about the illness, I’d even just remove that one course from my analysis; ’tis clearly an anomoly.
However, all that information is not contained in the grade. Someone would need to tell me.
So, grades can be a noisy signal. Is there 1) a way to make them less noisy and 2) a better way to convey information? I’m not convinced ungrading is the way to go.
steve
Oct 16 2023 at 10:09pm
I am not saying do away with grades. I am just making the case that the emphasis should be on the mastery of the subject. If some kid didnt turn in some graded homework because he was out sick but aces his final I suspect he has proven mastery. Homework just proves that you are able to use the internet.
Steve
Dylan
Oct 17 2023 at 4:37am
Playing devil’s advocate a bit, but should the emphasis be on mastery of the subject? Or, should it be on things like putting in the effort and knowing how to use the internet to get to the right answer? I don’t feel like digging up the statistics, but my memory is that general recollection of school subjects fades remarkably quickly once the test is done, and that holds for good students and bad.
If we believe in Caplan’s hypothesis that education is primarily signalling, then what is the main value of that signal? I’d think that showing up on time, not causing trouble, and the ability to do mostly meaningless work to a competent degree is the kind of thing that is valuable to employers. Mastery of geometry less so (depending on job of course)
Jon Murphy
Oct 17 2023 at 8:43am
I see the two as one and the same. Mastery does not mean total or perfect knowledge. I see it as the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff, to be able to sort the good information from the poor, and to critically assess. I think “mastery of a subject” includes enough information to avoid being hoodwinked. If you’re using the Internet to get an answer, you need to be able to tell if the answer is actually good.
So, for example, there are lots of user-generated homework help sites out there like Chegg. People upload answers to questions or exams, but there is no oversight to make sure the information is correct. What some enterprising professors do to discourage cheating is deliberately upload their own materials (ie “leak” their exams) with incorrect answers on it. This can act as a sort of map-trap. If students have not mastered the material, they lack the ability to tell whether the info is good or bad.
steve
Oct 17 2023 at 11:55am
Then why not just have a separate effort/conscientiousness (is that a word?) grade? Especially for high school, there are varying levels of maturity. The good news is that they tend to catch up in college and alter years. My concern is that based upon high school grades we we prioritize placing kids who really arent that bright into our best schools. I think we should be striving for excellence. If a school wants to choose kids who arent that bright but are willing to work hard and follow the rules then they would be able to sort them out. Schools that want the brightest could do that also.
Steve
Jon Murphy
Oct 17 2023 at 8:34am
I’m sorry, I was unclear. I didn’t mean to imply that you were arguing to do away with grades. I was agreeing with you that the system is flawed and emphasis should be on mastery. I was musing about Ungrading, but I accidently implied Ungrading was your point. I just brought up Ungrading because it’s the latest fad in academia.
Aaron M.
Oct 17 2023 at 1:58pm
I agree with you that the ultimate objective of a class is a mastery of the material and that homework and attendance does not necessarily measure this. If measuring the mastery of the material was the only purpose of graded attendance or homework, then I would agree that the removal of it would be a good idea.
However, it seems to me that there is an alternative reason for grading homework and attendance. That alternative reason being that it provides an incentive for the student to attend class and to do the homework. Now, is a good thing? Well, I think it is pretty well established that it is easier to learn the material being taught by a teacher if you are actually attending the class. Not always, of course, but in most cases. In addition, I think there is good evidence that repetition and practice also helps students learn and remember the material (particularly in math). So, by grading attendance and homework, you are providing an incentive for the student to do both things. In the end, the intent is that this will result in the student having a better mastery of the material.
Of course, as you point out, this is an imperfect set of incentives. Some students will cheat on homework and not do the additional work. In other situations, students will be unable to attend class for reasons outside their control and this will negatively impact their grade even if they are just as capable of doing the work. In addition, it may also be the case that grading these things don’t actually change student behavior. All things to consider.
In the end, it seems like there are trade offs: provide the incentives that are intended to improve student outcomes (homework and attendance) knowing that grades may not do as good of a job signaling actual mastery of the material. Is this trade of worth it? I don’t know. Perhaps in some cases it is, and in others it is not. However, I would say this incentive reason for homework and grades should at least be considered when thinking about this issue.
robc
Oct 17 2023 at 5:23pm
And also, sometimes, students wont need to do all the homework problems to master the work, just a representative sample. This was me with math.
Anything beyond that is busy work.
robc
Oct 16 2023 at 3:22pm
Its a mixed bag, but the awful is pretty awful.
I am okay with that. Their claim might even be right, depending on your premises. It does make the impact of a very low score (or a zero) much less, which is probably a good thing. Four 100s and a 0 average out to 80. Four 4s and a 0 average out to 3.2. The latter seems more accurate to me. Even better, in either system, would be dropping the high and low score and averaging the other 3.
This is dumb, but weighting the in heavier makes sense. There is a reason in most college courses that the final counted more than just another test.
[insert eye roll here]
Call it personal preference, but I am totally okay with that. HW never once in my academic career pulled up my average.
Depending on the class, this could both me good or bad.
Dylan
Oct 17 2023 at 5:00am
As a new teacher, I’m thinking of some of the unanticipated consequences of this. Grading homework is probably the most time consuming part of being a teacher, particularly after you have taught a course a couple of times and don’t have to do lesson plans from scratch each time. But, it also forces me to go through the homework carefully and provide feedback, and the fact that homework is graded gives the students some incentive to actually read the feedback and try to learn from it for the next assignment. Without it, the incentives for the teacher to spend the full effort of reviewing the homework are a lot less, meaning they are also more likely to miss catching trouble areas early. An, of course, the students have much, much less incentive to even do the homework.
This seems like a win for making teacher jobs easier. But, if you give any weight at all to the human capital benefits of education, I think the likely outcome is negative.
robc
Oct 17 2023 at 9:28am
Re: Homework, I agree with steve above.
One of the best homework grading systems I have ever seen was what my Thermo professor did.
Each class had 3 hw problems due. They were graded on a 2 pt scale (1 pt for a real attempt, 1 additional pt for getting it right). However, the hw grade wasnt averaged into your score, only tests counted. On the other hand, if you had less than a 75% HW average over the quarter, your overall grade was lowered by 1 letter. If less than 60%, 2 letters.
I think I had a mid 80s hw average, and a mid 90s test average in that class. But the HW didnt pull me down because it was above the threshhold.
I think that is a perfect system. It gets the hw feedback you are talking about. A short term illness or just not feeling like doing it one night doesn’t hurt your grade. Win-win-win system.
robc
Oct 17 2023 at 9:55am
IIRC, I took this class in Fall of 1989, so my memory might be faulty. After posting, I think the threshholds were 70 and 50 percent.
Michael Edward Gibbs
Oct 17 2023 at 5:23pm
In my hometown the Board of Education took a radical step in the direction of DEI for learning by introducing the concept of “Equitable Grading,” or EG. EG tosses out the true and tested method of competency-based grading in favor of DEI like standards which could include a student’s conformity to certain behaviors, and give weight to a family’s background and income, and not the student’s mastery of the subject. In this small California district, kids will be judged on their ability to conform to DEI standards of behavior as judged by others. Parents don’t want it, and the kids don’t need it.
Recently the Dublin/San Ramon School (California) system suspended Equitable Grading (EG) and Clark County School District (Las Vegas) did the same after seeing negative effects of EG on students and teachers. A science teacher at Dublin High School, told the school board that equitable grading “Left students discouraged and confused and some to develop study skills that would later result in lower AP scores.”
The Los Angeles school system went to Equitable Grading in 2021. The result, 73% of 11th graders earned A’s, B’s, or C’s but only 19% met grade-level math standards, and chronic absenteeism rocketed to 46%.
My School Board should know a significant number of districts who implemented equitable grading (EG) are now scrambling to change back to the traditional system. Many districts across the country have concluded that:
EG demotivates high performing students.
EG Leads to “grade Inflation.”
EG results in student confusion leading to poor study skills.
EG results in lower AP performance.
Those who can teach, those who cannot, grade for equity.
john hare
Oct 17 2023 at 5:40pm
I am seeing a lot of “time served” rather than “stuff learned” in the comments. As an employer, I want people that actually learned stuff. One company expression is that “we get paid by the square foot and not the sweat gallon”. Means get the job done properly with the least effort.
Eric Swager
Oct 19 2023 at 5:56am
As a teacher myself, I identify a big problem with grouping everyone near the top. It eliminates the ability to distinguish performances of our best students, AND reduces the incentive for them to improve. At the school I currently teach, 70% of students have a 3.5 GPA or higher. Many classes have an “A” average.
Suppose contestants were entered in a 3 mile race, but anyone who crossed the line under 25 minutes was declared champion, maxing out the performance. No time was recorded under 25:00.
A. Who was truly fastest? We don’t know……a bunch of people tied for “perfect”
B. Once a runner was in shape enough to run 25 min, the incentive to improve would be mostly eliminated, stifling the will of the best athletes.
I recall a story about Milton Friedman assigning grades to his classes. He gave zero A’s, and only two B’s (one was to Thomas Sowell.) I don’t think that makes Milton a bad teacher.
Incentives matter.
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