By Matt Townsley & Chad Lang
A quick scan of news headlines about districts taking a step back from their grading changes suggests parents and/or community members often have reservations or an incomplete understanding of the changes happening inside the district (see examples from the media here and here).
We have firsthand experience with grading reform, supporting educators in implementing standards-based and standards-referenced grades, supporting administrators in navigating the steps to help their systems move forward, and facilitating parent meetings stemming from grading changes.
The purpose of this blog post is to share four things we have learned while talking with parents and schools about grading reform. We believe that school leaders and grading committees can use this information as they plan to communicate with parents and community members.
1) Parents want to know what is not changing as much as they want to know what is changing.
No teachers we have ever met woke up daily and intend to do literal or figurative harm to students, grading included. With this in mind, parents should find solace in systematic changes with the intent to be made more transparent than less. Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle principle might serve schools best looking to communicate in order of the why, then the how, before the what of grading change. Schools and parents can get sideways from the beginning when that order is inverted (the what and how before the why) and knock-down drag-out arguments stemming from minutia (such as how often teachers should update their grade books) may eviscerate the overall change the school was intending to make with their new grading practices and philosophies.
While it may seem helpful to prioritize communication with parents and other stakeholders in the area of educational research from Guskey, Brookhart, or Reeves about why grading practices are changing, it is equally (and perhaps even more) important to share traditions and practices that are not changing. For example, if grade point averages (GPAs) will still be determined, as many standards-based high schools continue to do, school leaders should communicate to parents that this practice will remain unchanged. Furthermore, high school administrators should be prepared to share with parents that the high school transcript will be staying the same; therefore, student scholarship eligibility will remain the same.
2) Parents want to know how this change will benefit their child.
Parents are right to be concerned that grades can affect a child’s future, but it might not be in a way they are thinking. While GPAs will most certainly play a role in future opportunities for graduating seniors, what might be more problematic is that their grades don’t accurately represent what their child knows, understands, and can do…today!
The United States is suffering from abysmal 6-year student completion rates for four-year degrees and increasing needs for remediation at the collegiate level. Once parents understand grading that is more transparent regarding what a child knows, understands, or can do, they will have a more accurate picture of what their child’s readiness is for future endeavors. Getting into college, the military, or a vocational or specialized school is not the goal. Completing programs, degrees, and certificates that exemplify competencies reign supreme.
We like to think of a standards-based grade book or report card as being like the “multi-point inspection” that a mechanic offers vehicle owners. Within this multi-point inspection, we can find out the status of brakes, windshield wipers, the battery, and other important components of the vehicle. Similarly, a standards-based grade book or report card provides detailed information about strengths and areas for improvement. Emphasizing this level of detail to parents can help them see how standards-based grading will benefit their child.
3) Parents may not be familiar with the language or format of the new electronic grade book or report card and will need to be given explicit information to understand the “new way.”
Because parents experienced their K-12 school grading with points and percentages, they have come to expect the same for their own children. Furthermore, with online access to electronic grade books that have traditionally communicated points and percentages (and report cards that have emphasized letter grades), parents’ childhood grading experiences in school have been further reinforced. School leaders should seek out ways to help parents navigate the “new way” of reporting student learning.
Some schools have chosen to create a unique website landing page (see Des Moines, IA and Wautoma, WI). Still other schools have created videos that walk parents through understanding the new look of the electronic grade book. The most successful schools we know create drafts of communication tools and share them with a small group of parents to pilot and give feedback, before pushing them out to all parents. By understanding questions that may arise from a smaller group of parents, school leaders can leverage the pilot parents’ feedback to anticipate the questions other parents may be thinking.
4) Parents will need guidance on the purpose of grades.
As schools transition to grading practices that are more equitable, fair, and transparent, the purpose of communicating proficiency becomes the primary purpose of grades. As grading experts (Brookhart, 2011; Brookhart et al., 2016) have long pointed out, this can be problematic when combined with other purposes of grades that seek to create distinctions between students. As challenging as it is for a universal symbol, letter, or grade to represent one purpose, trying to serve more than one is impossible.
The paradox of the 21st-century parent is that, like many other norms, customs, and traditions, they long for the normalcy of “what it was like when I went to school” while demanding today’s schools do what is right, fair, and equitable. Unfortunately, much research about traditional grading practices hinges on tradition and belief regarding extrinsic motivation than it does on research and enduring learning of knowledge and skills. School leaders should be able to articulate to parents an agreed-upon purpose of grades early and often during the transition to more effective grading practices.
Conclusion
Laura Link and Thomas Guskey (2022) found schools that transitioned to new grading practices failed primarily because grades that purported to communicate student proficiency simply did not do so. It wasn’t that the grades weren’t more valid and reliable than in traditional arrangements; it was more that students and parents were not contextualized enough to the “new” grading systems.
While teachers and school leaders can feel that at times they don’t get the professional respect they deserve, suffice it to say that parents can be intimidated while discussing grades with teachers, which can manifest itself as defensiveness and even brashness.
We have found that educators who treat grades, and their subsequent symbols, as other professionals do are highly effective in increasing the communicative function of grades. Students and parents should not be left to their own devices to interpret professional evidence of learning without context. Fancy apps and student-information systems can do more harm than good without quality communication and context to accompany them. Data delivered instantaneously and more readily available doesn’t make it any more accurate if parents and students don’t fully understand what they are looking at interpreting and what actions need to be taken from the data provided.
About the authors
To connect further with Dr. Matt Townsley, follow him on Twitter. To connect with Dr. Chad Lang, follow him on Twitter or check out his Learning with Interesting People podcast.