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Dear Embee Elsie:
Our teachers and students are using and loving our new 4-point grading scale in classes. It’s modeled on the example below, from MS 442 School for Innovation in NYC that asks students: Can you NAME your grade? As you can see from this MS 442 graphic, N = not yet or 1, A = approaching or 2, M = meeting or 3, E = exceeding or 4.
We are actively wondering about how to share information about student progress in the form of transcripts—so that families and the outside world generally can understand what our amazing students have learned and are able to do. How can we translate our 1-4 scale to traditional alphanumeric grades on a transcript? I think we need a conversion scale from NAME to either F-A, or 55-100 grades.
Thanks!—Scaling Up
Dear Scaling Up:
Thanks for this important question.
Let’s start by getting very clear on the two main purposes for grades—which are often in tension or even conflict with each other!
Grades have 2 big purposes: During the learning process, grades can function in a relatively benign and helpful way: as feedback to learners about where they are right now, in relation to where they are heading, aka grade-level proficiency or beyond.
On report cards and transcripts, grades function as credentials, which open and close opportunities such as what school and classes you can attend, what extracurriculars you're allowed to join, what scholarships you may be eligible for, etc. These two purposes are in a bunch of tension with each other.
There is a lot of stress around grading that comes from the unfortunate way we've set up learning as a competitive activity—sorting and ranking students constantly, and making grading a zero-sum game that is focused on grades as credentials more than on grades as a useful message about where you are in your learning journey today. This harms learning for students who tend to get lower grades, for obvious reasons (who wants to be told they don’t measure up, when they are attempting something difficult?). It’s also harmful to learning for students who tend to get high grades, who say they feel like they are on a high wire and cannot fall—so they better pay lots of attention to their grades, maybe and often more than the attention they pay to their learning itself.
Whenever you’re thinking about how to handle grades, it’s important to bear in mind that the original purpose of grades was to rank and sort students by demographics into different futures—directly counter to basic principles of equity, and counter to our intention to serve students well.
We want grades that support learning, rather than interfere with learning. There's nothing inherently competitive about learning, so while transparency is of primary importance (we want students feeling clear about how they are doing, feeling like they know why they earned a particular grade‚ and never needing to ask: Why did you give me this grade?), we lean away from letter and number grades on all assignments, saving grades for summative assessments, for the most part. We really don't need to grade everything. Feedback along the way (for formative assessments and tasks in progress) is often more helpful than a grade (and research shows that students take in feedback best when it is offered without a grade attached). Another thing to consider: Self-reflection/self-rating may be more useful than a grade from a teacher.
Okay on to a discussion of conversion scales for making credentials from those classroom-based grades:
Below are grade conversion scales from 3 excellent competency-based public schools for you to consider—all from Competency Collaborative Living Lab schools, and a bit of informed editorializing along with each one.
Example 1
We don't recommend using decimals, as this scale does, because we want broad grading categories that give enough information to be useful, but not enough for students to fall into competition for points—and it's widely agreed in the field. that a 1-4 scale fits that bill best. However, if you use a 1-4 scale with decimals, you effectively have a 40-point scale rather than a 4-point scale. I share this because many schools opt for decimals for the sake of precision—which I would respectfully argue is less important than freeing students from competition and grade obsession. I would also ask whether it is truly possible to meaningfully distinguish between an 82 and an 83 (for example) in a semester-long, trimester-long, or year-long course; I have my doubts. I have a lot of respect for this school and they do amazing work—but I would still choose a simple 1-4 scale to be in line with the best practice of avoiding decimals.
Example 2
This school uses a range of 55-100 grades for its 3-point scale of Not Yet, Meeting, Exceeding. Teachers choose a grade within the range that they feel accurately reflects a given student's performance. While this school is very thoughtful and has a highly developed competency-based learning system, the ability for a student to earn any of a range of grades has some of the disadvantages described in the comments on the grading scale above, and may be seen to insert some subjectivity into grading, when we are going for transparency and objectivity. It prioritizes an apparent (and perhaps arguable) precision in a particular student's grade over the best practice of having a true and simple 4-point scale.
Example 3
This is the clear winner for me. It honors the 1-4 scale, converting it simply to a 55-100 transcript grade. No decimals, no judgment calls, no room for subjectivity (where bias can creep into grading). This scale is the most widely emulated across the dozens of NYC public schools I have worked with, and comes from Urban Assembly Maker Academy:
Overall Grade Calculation While all of our scores are on a 1-4 scale, we do calculate a converted numeric grade (on a 1-100 scale) for student transcripts. We use the following grade conversions:
- 4 = 100
- 3 = 85
- 2 = 70
- 1 = 55
I hope all this converts to more clarity for you!
Very best—Embie
Reader, do you have a question for our advice columnist Embie Elsie (aka M-B-L-C)? Please reach her here!
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