The document discusses principles of grading practices and issues with traditional grading. It summarizes O'Connor's perspectives on grading, including that grading is complicated and subjective. Grades can damage students and teachers if not done properly. While grades may extrinsically motivate some, poor grades typically do not motivate and can push students away. The document provides recommendations to improve grading practices, such as focusing on achievement over behaviors, allowing reassessment, providing feedback over scores, and involving students in assessment.

2. • What are the principles on which your grading
practices are based?
• What do you include in a student’s grade?
• Do grades motivate learners?

3. Calculate this student’s grade after ten
assignments:
• C
• C
• NTI (not turned in) A-/B+?
• D C?
• C
F?
• B
• NTI
• NTI
• B
• A

4. O’Connor’s 7 perspectives underlying
grading
• Grading is not essential for learning.
• Grading is complicated.
• Grading is subjective & emotional.
• Grading is inescapable.
• Grading has a limited research base.
• Grading has no single best practice.
• Grading that is faulty damages students and
teachers!

5. Do grades motivate learners?
If grades are extrinsic motivators, they can
destroy intrinsic motivation.
Good grades may motivate, but poor grades
have no motivational value.

6. “Low grades push students farther from our
cause, they don’t motivate students. Recording
a D on a student’s paper won’t light a fire under
that student to buckle down and study harder. It
actually distances the student further from us
and the curriculum, requiring us to build an
emotional bridge to bring him or her back to the
same level of investment prior to receiving the
grade.” -Guskey (documented by Guskey and Bailey)

7. O’Connor’s “15 Fixes” for our grading system (from
his book A Repair Kit for Grading).
1. Don’t include student behaviors
(effort, participation, polite manners, etc.) in grades;
include only achievement.
2. Don’t reduce marks on late work; provide support for
the learner.
3. Don’t give points for extra credit work or use bonus
points; seek only evidence that more work has resulted
in a higher level of achievement.
4. Don’t punish academic dishonesty with reduced grades;
apply other consequences and reassess to determine
actual level of achievement.

8. 5. Don’t consider attendance in grade determination;
report absences separately.
6. Don’t include group scores in grades; use only
individual achievement evidence.
7. Don’t organize information in grading records by
assessment methods or simply summarize into a
single grade; organize and report evidence by
standards/learning goals.
8. Don’t assign grades using inappropriate or unclear
performance standards; provide clear descriptions
of achievement expectations.

9. 9. Don’t assign grades based on student’s
achievement compared to other students; compare
each student’s performance to preset standards.
10. Don’t rely on evidence gathered using assessments
that fail to meet standards of quality; rely only on
quality assessments.
11. Don’t rely only on the mean; consider other
measures of central tendency and use professional
judgment.

10. 12. Don’t include zeros in grade determination when
evidence is missing or as punishment; use
alternatives, such as reassessing to determine real
achievement or use “I” for Incomplete or
Insufficient Evidence.
13. Don’t use information from formative assessments
and practice to determine grades; use only
summative evidence.
14. Don’t summarize evidence accumulated over time
when learning is developmental and will grow with
time and repeated opportunities; in those
instances, emphasize more recent achievement.

11. • Don’t leave students out of the grading
process. Involve students; they can- and
should- play key roles in assessment and
grading that promote achievement.

12. After reviewing 8000 studies, a researcher made the following comment:
“ The most powerful single modification that
enhances achievement is FEEDBACK. The
simplest prescription for improving education
must be ‘dollops of feedback’.”
-Classroom Assessment & Grading that Work - Robert J. Marzano (2006)

13. Homework is practice!
• Students should make mistakes as they are
learning and not be afraid to learn from their
mistakes.
• Homework is practice - where mistakes should
happen. Their mistakes should not be graded.
• FEEDBACK on homework is shown to be most
effective.
• Grade homework (if graded at all) on attempt
only, not mastery.

14. Homework Rubric:
(4) Homework is complete
Presentation is exceptionally neat, detailed, and organized
Few to no errors all of which the student has corrected (in a contrasting color).
(3) Homework is complete
Presentation is legible
More than a few errors all of which the student has corrected (in a
contrasting color).
(2) Homework is mostly complete but may be missing problems
Presentation may be careless and disorganized
Most errors have been corrected by the student (in a contrasting color).
Incomplete problems have been completed (in a contrasting color).
(1) Homework is not completed.
Missing work has been completed (in a contrasting color).
(0) No work turned in

15. Zeros kill averages!
90-100 = A (10 points)
80-89 = B (9 points)
70-79 = C (9 points)
60-69 = D (9 points)
0-59 = F (59 points!)
• It is almost impossible to overcome many zeros in
a grading period.
• If our lowest score was a 50, many would still fail,
but many more would believe they can overcome
their low averages.

16. Late Work
• If our job as teachers is to help students learn,
why do we care WHEN they learn it? Isn’t doing
the work LATE better than NEVER?
• Students should be given opportunities for “re-
dos” to learn from their mistakes.
• Take a few points off for every day an assignment
is late, but not a whole grade. A whole grade
lower is punitive, a few points off is instructive.
• Record two grades: one that represents evidence
of mastery and one that reflects the late
penalties.