Are we tapping?

Our principal recently asked us to reflect on the purpose of grades.  I have already done quite a bit of thinking about this topic.  I have some very strong opinions about grades.  I thought I already had an answer but then I realized that what he was really asking was about what the purpose of grades should be? What do we want grades to mean in our school? This really is a different question.  My quick answer to the initial question is that grades as they are now in most schools are for sorting and selecting students.  They have nothing whatsoever to do with learning and in my opinion, since they are unrelated to learning, have little purpose in the classroom or in school.

Consider another grading system.  In Vermont, we grade our maple syrup.  It used to be Fancy, Grade A, B, and C representing a kind of quality similar to traditional grades in schools.  It has now evolved because there was a recognition that some people like Grade B syrup qualities while others prefer Grade A.  This is an interesting idea.  Now, all the syrups are Grade A, but they have different qualities like color and taste.  Consider that for a minute.  What if there was no B or C or D? Just qualities of an A?

Grades, as they are in most traditional systems right now, sort students who can follow the rules and complete required tasks.  Grades are a combination of timeliness, skill, parental support, and any number of other factors that teachers include in a grade.  They are about getting work done. Then we further mess with things by averaging all those pieces of information together.  Right now grades mean nothing, although we place a lot of meaning on them.  Grades are about fear; fear that if we don’t sort, we won’t be able to select.  How would we decide who should succeed? This is an unfounded fear I think.  Colleges will get used to new systems. They will learn to look more deeply and qualitatively at students.  Students can be successful if they don’t attend Harvard.  Really, they can.  There are endless examples of people in this world who have defied the odds; amazing accomplishments despite horrendous obstacles.  I believe this has been proven over and over again.  So grades don’t really give us information about how successful a person is or how much they will achieve in their life.

21st century students need a system of feedback that helps them achieve the most that they can possibly achieve.  A system that allows them to explore all their creative ideas stretched as far as they can.  A system that allows for collaboration, ingenuity, creativity, and problem solving. These are the students who will be creating their own jobs when they graduate from high school.  These students will not be dependent on an elite educational institution to make them successful.  We need to begin providing students with opportunities that don’t require them to be at the mercy of an Ivy league college education.  The purpose of grades should be to help students attain their goals for life in a way that allows their failure and mistakes to help them become the best, most self-directed learners out there.  We need to make sure our feedback system doesn’t work against tapping all the potential learning out there.