The wretched task of grading

I spent the past year writing a book about grading, and, so far, the result is that I can barely bring myself to put a grade on a paper or test, let alone a report card. The more I have thought about putting grades on student work, the more meaningless it has become. I’m not talking about the act of grading, as in assessing or giving feedback to a student on his or her work, as these actions are undoubtedly valuable and important. The meaningless gesture I’m talking about is the attempt to put a number or letter on a student’s work after I’m done assessing it.

What do these numbers and letters even mean? Sometimes the numbers are percentages, which in certain cases might represent the percent of material correct, yet given our enlightened view of meaningful and authentic assessment in the 21st century, the best assessments can’t be graded on this standard. This makes numbers misleading, especially if they’re chosen from the range of 0-100.

No more grades, only feedback.