Grading for Equity Blog

WHAT STUDENTS LOVE ABOUT THEIR TEACHERS’ GRADING

If you’ve read this blog before, it might seem like all we do is focus on the challenges in education–so many aspects that need transformation! So many different kinds of students and families to support! So much to do with finite time! Well, folks, this entry will be a little different.

Including Students in the Grading Conversation

Often, when adults discuss grading, they exclude students from the conversation, even though students are the people impacted most by grades. So, in our partnerships with schools and school districts, we prioritize hearing directly from students to gain a deeper and more authentic understanding of how grading lands for them. Gathering feedback from students can help us to change our grading–and other parts of our pedagogy–to be more accurate reflections of what students know and can do, more resistant to both implicit and institutional biases that affect our students, and more helpful in strengthening students’ intrinsic motivation and growth mindset.

Below, you will find some quotations from students about things that their teachers do in their grading and/or pedagogy that students actually love or that help them to learn the content and strengthen their skills. Teachers are doing some truly wonderful things!

As you read, think: What trends am I noticing in these quotations? Are there patterns that I see emerging? What might this mean for my own practice?

Two things to note:

All identifiers of students, teachers, and courses are anonymous.
We honor the exact voices of students and do not edit them unless it is to improve understanding of what they say; in that instance, you will notice brackets.
What Students Appreciate in Grading and Teaching

TRANSPARENT EXPECTATIONS

I feel a little bit of stress about my grades and that increases on tests, but it helps when teachers give study guides that look like what the test is going to look like, so I can feel like I’m prepared.

I actually like rubric grading because it helps you see the improvement that you’re making because it helps you figure out what pieces that you’re struggling in and what you could do to improve them. Because we can carry on that part to college.

FEEDBACK

My teacher always gives us practice questions during the lesson and also gives us the standards to study, which is good. And also if we do bad on a check, if we get a 2.5 or if we get a 2, the teacher writes down little notes that could help us on the test. They write down this was supposed to be this, this and that, this and that, which is helpful.

Not discouraging students in feedback, but telling them how they can build off what they already have is really helpful and I’m really appreciative for their grading style last year [and] their feedback.

When I get my grade back and it’s not a 100%, if there’s a comment on Canvas or in the Google Doc that I had my assignment turned in on, if there’s comments about where the points I missed came from, then I feel like that allows me to learn better because I get to reflect on my own mistakes and then try to fix it in future things. If it’s just, “You got a C on this,” and there’s no explanation, I often times don’t try to figure it out, I just accept it and move on. But if they provide an explanation, then I do try to learn from the mistakes I made in it.

I would go into the teacher, we would talk about the feedback and then, what’s been happening this year in my [subject] class that is very helpful is, the teacher would sit down with me and they would be like, “Okay, what are two goals that you can set for your next work that you’re going to write?[”] This is the first year that that’s ever happened. But that’s really nice.

RETAKES

Even if we do get a bad grade, if a majority of the class gets something wrong, which is usually what happens, the teacher will actually go over it the next day to show us all how to do it. And a lot of the standards show up again. And so if we did poorly on a test before, we are able to redo that standard and make that grade better.

One thing that my teacher does that makes learning a lot better, at least in my opinion, is when she grades something then gives it back to [me] with everything that I did wrong and gives us a chance to try it again. And that really helps, at least in my opinion.

Inviting Student Voices: How to Gather Meaningful Feedback

After reading this, you might be thinking, “I wonder whether my students would say something different,” or, “What exactly would my students say if I were to interview them?” Fantastic! And you’re right! We have no idea what our students would say about grading unless we ask them, unless we engage them in conversation, unless we offer inclusive pathways to hear their feedback. Here are some options for designing student feedback (and you might also know of more ways!) to get started:

1. Decide your goals

Identify what you want to discover from your students
Ask about specific grading and assessment practices––their opinions and feelings, their prior experiences, what has and hasn’t worked for them in previous classes and with other teachers, what they want (not just what they don’t want), what they would be open to trying, etc.

2. Design how you will get this information

An anonymous survey…
- Might be a good format if you know your students share their knowledge most readily in writing or generally have a hard time expressing themselves in discussion.
- Can include questions that are quantitative (for example, using Likert Scale models) as well as qualitative (leaving opportunity for students to explain their responses).
- Can take less time, and you can get everyone’s opinions simultaneously.
- May limit the responses (and what you learn) because of its more restrictive format.

A class discussion…
- Might be a good format if you know your students share their knowledge most readily through conversation.
- Can be open-ended questions, and you can adapt the questions based on their responses in the moment.
- May take more time and be difficult to keep focused on your goals.

A combination of the two…
- Might be a good option if you know that some students share their knowledge most readily through conversation, whereas other students may not feel comfortable sharing their opinion in class, particularly if it is different from their peers’ opinions.
- Allows students to choose which format they would like to complete. While the students who prefer the survey are completing it, the students who prefer discussion could be participating in that.
- May take more of your time to design and review both formats.

3. Implement your design

Prepare students. Share your goals and let them know that you are looking at their responses to improve your practices.
Devote enough time during class so that students can respond thoughtfully and completely.
Analyze the results. Look for trends, outliers, and any patterns in the responses (e.g., Did high-achieving students answer differently than students who struggle? Did boys answer differently than girls? Did shy students answer differently than outgoing students?)
Share the results with your students. Explain (visually and/or verbally) the data trends and your next steps.

Strengthening Student-Teacher Relationships Through Listening

Ultimately, this can be a wonderful way to show our students love: by listening to their voices and their experiences, and dignifying them with changes to our teaching. St. Valentine would be so proud.

Interested in learning more about us or working with us? Please take a moment to fill out our contact form here!

Why Leaders Will Love the Equitable Grading Study Tour

Support Specifically for Education Leaders

Leading improved grading work at the school or district level is uniquely challenging. As a former assistant principal, principal, and district administrator, I know firsthand that leaders have to manage competing priorities and demands, budget and resource allocations, relationships with teachers and families, a school board, students, and political pressures. And to improve grading—called “the third rail” of education because grading holds so much power and yet few dare to touch it—is an act of courage and commitment to the success of every student. And it’s lonely.

Our Study Tour will equip you with new ideas, perspectives, and strategies needed to help you lead improved grading initiatives in your context. Learn how to engage, educate, and enlist parents and caregivers in this work, how to incorporate student voice and ideas, how to work in partnership with teachers (even when they’re skeptical), how to head-off and navigate political pushback, and how to build an enduring vision of grading that is accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational.

The integration of research and the school and district environment

Grading reform isn’t simple–it’s one of the most complex system change initiatives, but also one of the most powerful levers for instructional improvements. The Study Tour blends the research on effective change management and leadership with the real challenges and constantly-shifting contexts of schools and districts. In San Leandro Unified’s 7-year journey to have full implementation of equitable grading, there have been elections of new board members, the global pandemic, budget fluctuations, and personnel changes. Learn their strategic moves and pivots, and hear from panels of teachers and students about their experience “on the ground”. How do leaders manage systemwide change amidst the district’s day-to-day context and unanticipated shifts?

Be Part of a Community of Like-Minded Leaders

This Study Tour is more than just a learning opportunity—it’s a chance to connect with fellow leaders from diverse districts, including Arlington Public Schools, San Francisco Unified, and Los Angeles. Strengthen your professional network, exchange ideas, and collaborate with peers committed to improving grading practices for every student. Leave as part of a professional community with whom you can lean on and reach out to for advice.

Exclusive Access to Expert Guidance

Dr. Shantha Smith and I have supported equitable grading reform in dozens of districts nationwide for over a decade. Bring your questions and wonderings. We’re here to answer your questions, offer insights, and support you both during the Study Tour and beyond—when the work continues!

Space to Reflect, Imagine, and Plan

What better place than lovely Northern California to take a mental and physical break? While much of our time together will be spent learning and listening, you’ll also have protected time to collaborate with your district team: to develop and refine your vision for improved grading and to craft a plan to make it happen (with our team ready to assist and provide feedback and perspectives). Leave the Study Tour energized, connected, and ready to accelerate improved grading throughout your district!

Three Surprise Benefits of Standards-Based Grading

New Year, New Possibilities

Ahh, the first month of a brand new year! Everything feels new and promising, a blank slate, or, in the words of the illustrious hip-hop group Outkast, “So fresh and so clean, clean.” It’s an opportunity to tackle those things that we didn’t quite get around to in 2024. Or maybe start something brand new that we didn’t even consider last year. For those of you educators out there who look at this new year and the second half of the current school year with such aspirations, I applaud you. As a K-12 educator, I was literally never this person. In my heart, I absolutely always wanted to improve my pedagogy, but in my daily practice, it didn’t happen.

Embracing Standards-Based Grading: A Reluctant Start

I already considered myself a decent equitable grading practitioner and was proud of all that I was doing: collecting late work without a grade penalty; allowing for structured retakes; and using 50% as my grading floor. I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was doing enough, especially after I had become an expert at running on little rest and lots of coffee and Main Office candy, navigating new systems that seemed to constantly be introduced by my school district, and handling parents and caregivers who wanted my time. And then one year, the summer before school started, my grade team made the shift to using standards-based gradebooks, which meant grading students by whether they met course standards and not just by how well they did on a collection of assignments. I openly dreaded this change, but forged ahead with a loving teaching team to help me; I am still grateful for their patience and for the impact their wisdom had.

The Pivotal Process and the Rewarding Results

First, we aligned our assessments and practice assignments with our standards. Second, we added those standards, unit by unit, to our gradebooks. Finally, we met regularly throughout the school year to calibrate how we would assess student work based on those standards and how we would show student progress in our standards-based gradebooks. In this way, we were all measuring the same thing at the same time in the same way and reporting grades in the same manner.

The result was magical. Students were clear about their strengths and weaknesses and could either maintain or improve their skill sets. Parents and caregivers could look in the gradebook and see where their children excelled and where they needed support. The school’s other support teams could use the gradebook to target help for my students. Our collective gradebooks were “lifting the opaque veil” of grading and increasing transparency for everyone.

Three Key Benefits of Standards-Based Grading

My only regret about doing this was that I wish I had done it sooner. Here are three benefits I wish I had known about standards-based grading:

Standards-based grading makes rubrics easier to create and use. It took me a long time to use rubrics mostly because I had no idea what exactly I was supposed to be putting in them or what I was supposed to be measuring. Once I began examining the standards for my course, I had a roadmap of how to give students practice and assessment on specific standards. This helped me build my rubrics not only more logically but also more efficiently; ergo, I got a lot of time added back to my life. Plus, students understood why their assignments were graded the way they were graded, which led to less tension in my classroom.

Standards-based grading can help students prepare for standardized tests. Let me be clear: Standardized tests are not the end-all and be-all in education. They tend to be rife with all kinds of bias and don’t fully demonstrate student creativity or learning capacity. At the same time, they exist and aren’t going anywhere; our students are the ones who will bear the rewards–or consequences–of their test scores. As most tests are aligned with state or local standards, incorporating those standards not only into our teaching but also into our grading can lead to a greater correlation between grades and test scores; this is particularly true for our Black students, Latino students, and students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. Using standards as part of grading helps to increase transparency and level the playing field.

Standards-based grading supports our curricular choices. When people disagree with something about our teaching choices, our first reactions might be defensiveness, fear, or even cynicism. With standards-based grading as a practice that then informs our practice work and our assessments, who can dispute that? Grading based on fixed learning targets helps to manage expectations for multiple constituents as well as helps to hold us accountable for the ways we are assessing student work.

Wonderings for Implementing Standards-Based Grading

Maybe you are considering wading into the waters of standards-based grading. If you are, here are a few questions for consideration before diving in:
How would you describe your gradebook structure? What would need to be changed to make it reflect grading standards?
Do you grade by learning targets, standards, skills, etc.?
Do you have learning targets attached to your graded assessments?
Do you grade the same skills multiple times, which allows you to continuously assess skill progress?

If you are a school leader, a place where you can come and learn how other districts are moving to align standards is at The Second Annual Equitable Grading Study Tour! This two-day experience in the Bay Area, California provides an opportunity for school and district leaders to talk to and with each other about the complex change process and sustainability of equitable grading. You’ll also get tailored support from Crescendo Education Group to address the specific challenges and resources of your context. The event is capped at 60 participants in order to ensure high-quality learning experiences and authentic engagement, but there are just a few spots left! If you are intrigued, please take a moment to fill out our contact form here.

Educators are amazing and are doing everything they can to do right by students. We would love to support all educators–including you–in such admirable endeavors!

GRADING FOR EQUITY: Start Getting Buy-In Today!

As facilitators and client managers here at Crescendo Education Group, we have met with a wide and diverse breadth of school leaders nationwide from a variety of institutions–rural, suburban, urban, small schools, large schools, public schools, independent schools, elementary, secondary, and college. And everyone we talk to has multiple factors they must constantly juggle and consider: What are our priorities, and how does equitable grading align with them? What impact will this sort of work have on students? How will equitable grading change teaching? How will we fund and support this?

But there is one singular question that rises to the top, no matter the community:

How do we get equitable grading buy-in from teachers?

After reflecting on the myriad conversations we have had with educators, here are five key tips for leaders, not only to gain teachers’ support for equitable grading practices as a central part of their work but also to develop a clearer ethos, lens, and understanding of equitable grading as leaders.

Tip #1: Successful leaders believe in this work AND grow in their own understanding of equitable grading.

When we say “believe,” we don’t mean, “This sounds like a good idea.” Leaders have to be certain of–and willing to confront–the harm that traditional grading has done. This means being ready for pushback from teachers, being present at events that support or move this work, and designing spaces and supports for teachers to gather and grapple with the work of equitable grading. A leader’s belief in this work is further demonstrated through self-checks: What do I as a leader not know or understand about best practices in grading? What’s my plan for empowering teachers in this work? How do I feel about pushback from the naysayers? Leaders are most responsible for the structures and systems in their schools and classrooms, and have to be willing to examine decades-old ways and engage in new learning.

Tip #2: Successful leaders listen to teachers.

This means continuous, ears-to-the-ground inclusion of teachers’ voices, not only to hear what is happening in their classrooms but also so that teachers can regularly inform decision-making. A part of Crescendo’s work when we engage in a yearlong System Change Partnership (SCP) with a school/district is having school leaders conduct listening tours, during which they engage with key stakeholders in their communities and gather data about grading policies–their efficacy and their pitfalls. An additional piece of listening to teachers: leaning on the early adopters of equitable grading work to be the core folks who move this work forward. Of course, we would love for everyone to be on board at the outset, but, perhaps to start, leaders can focus on those who are willing to take the initial step. The teachers who are willing to take the first risk might be the most successful at sharing the benefits of equitable grading practices with others.

Tip #3: Successful leaders have a clear and consistent vision for this work that is communicated to teachers.

A leader’s vision for their schools or district often has many elements. Inevitably, teachers will ask, “How is equitable grading part of a bigger plan?” Delving into equitable grading practices is more meaningful and sustainable when it’s part of a larger vision. Examining and improving grading are levers for wider instructional improvements in assessment, instruction, coherence, mental health, and family engagement. Whatever the vision, an equally important question to answer is, “How are leaders communicating that vision–at all points, from iteration to implementation–to teachers and other constituents?” Intentional transparency around a clear vision helps to build trust and engage educators to work together.

Tip #4: Successful leaders provide grading education to their teachers.

Most classroom teachers have never had exposure to grading research or methodology in their coursework to become teachers, so they are doing the best they can with what they’ve got. Teachers do not simply hate equitable grading for contrarians’ sake; they may fear, based on their own sense-making of traditional grading and their own experiences, that different ways of grading will harm students. Without the foundational education about the harmfulness of our traditional, inherited grading system, teachers won’t understand the need for a shift. The harms of traditional grading are unambiguous from the data, explained in Joe Feldman’s recent whitepaper “Can We Trust the Transcript.” Leaders have to understand where teachers’ grading misconceptions might be, then fill in those gaps by exposing teachers to new knowledge, which in turn gives teachers the power to make more informed decisions.

Tip #5: Successful leaders give teachers agency (and honor their time).

Teachers need the space to experiment with grading practices and be supported by school leaders as they try to figure out the equitable grading practices that most benefit their particular work. This is one of the reasons that Crescendo Education Group’s SCPs are structured the way that they are. Over the course of a school year, teachers are able to try out different grading practices with the individualized support of a Crescendo grading coach alongside a series of workshops to share the results of those practices with their colleagues. This allows teachers to deep dive into practices that speak to them and their content needs, look at their data, and alter their practices accordingly, all while building a body of evidence and experiences for their classroom, school, and district context.

Time is a finite resource, and this all takes an enormous amount of time: time for workshops or discussions, time to meet with a coach, time to evaluate gradebooks, time to prepare new grading implementation, time to grade, time to read and reflect and plan all on top of teachers’ regular duties as part of a school community. As a leader, ask yourself, “What are some ways that we can honor educators showing up and taking these risks? What are some ways to show appreciation for their time, energy, and transformation?” Successful leaders tangibly demonstrate appreciation in various ways to clearly convey respect both for teachers and for the work itself.

If you are a leader, you might be thinking, “But how? I need more guidance!” We have a solution for that: The Second Annual Equitable Grading Study Tour! A two-day experience in the Bay Area, California, the Study Tour provides an opportunity for school and district leaders to talk to each other about the complex change process and sustainability of equitable grading. You’ll engage with school leaders from around the country as well as get tailored support from Crescendo Education Group to address the specific challenges and resources of your context. The event is capped at 60 participants in order to ensure high-quality learning experiences and authentic engagement, but there’s still room! If you are intrigued, please take a moment to fill out our contact form here.

We know that leaders are one of the key foundational points in advancing equitable grading work. We would love to support you!

Discover the Transformative Power of Grading for Equity in Classrooms

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