Speaker 1: It's Friday, March four. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Educators have been experimenting with new grading systems since before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, but when everything switched to remote learning and
Speaker 1: students were having a tough time keeping up, many teachers
Speaker 1: did away with the traditional A to F grades. Some
Speaker 1: experiments included relaxing penalties for late or incomplete work and
Speaker 1: retaking exams once an understanding of the material had been established.
Speaker 1: Valerie Strauss, education reporter at the Washington Post, joins us
Speaker 1: for the hunt for a fairer grading system. Thanks for joinings, Valerie,
Speaker 1: glad to be here, Thanks for having me. I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about this interesting thing that's going on in
Speaker 1: schools with teachers across the country. Educators are starting to
Speaker 1: experiment with a more tolerant grading system. They're trying to
Speaker 1: maybe do away with the A to F letter grades.
Speaker 1: And what we saw during the pandemic was also pretty
Speaker 1: interesting too. You know, we saw the huge disruption that happened,
Speaker 1: and it was really tough just to do regular assignments
Speaker 1: get the grading done effectively. So a lot of teachers
Speaker 1: were kind of just doing like pass or fail grades,
Speaker 1: you know, different things. They were experimenting with a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. But it seems that this movement has continued
Speaker 1: really and they're just looking for different ways to grade students,
Speaker 1: making sure that at least the student is learning the
Speaker 1: material that's cheap among everything there. So Valry, how is
Speaker 1: this working out? It's an experiment that started in a
Speaker 1: number of places well before the pandemic and then was
Speaker 1: really been spurred on by the pandemic because, as you said,
Speaker 1: kids weren't learning, and it was very difficult to give
Speaker 1: grades based on the traditional metrics because kids weren't going
Speaker 1: through the regular learning process. It's not so much that
Speaker 1: they're getting rid of the A, B, c's and d's
Speaker 1: and f it's that they are just trying to experiment
Speaker 1: with what goes into those grades and trying to make
Speaker 1: them more equitable. For as far as I remember, I
Speaker 1: went to school a long time ago, and it's still
Speaker 1: true that most teachers give grades that in food behaviors
Speaker 1: and behaviors mean or include things like when do you
Speaker 1: turn in an assignment? And offers the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: extra credit to show motivation and things that don't really
Speaker 1: show that you know what, that you know the material,
Speaker 1: that you master the material. And for many teachers, what
Speaker 1: they've realized is that it's inequitable for a lot of
Speaker 1: kids whose home lives are very difficult, who can't get
Speaker 1: homeworka in on time, or for kids who work slower,
Speaker 1: who kids need more time, kids who need more time
Speaker 1: to process things and work them through. And what they
Speaker 1: realized is that putting these behaviors into the grade that's
Speaker 1: supposed to just show academic progress doesn't really make sense
Speaker 1: and is inequitable. So the move is to separate the
Speaker 1: behaviors from that letter grade. And it's also to try
Speaker 1: to make students own their learning a little bit more
Speaker 1: instead of always giving them assignments that they have to
Speaker 1: learn how to give assignments to themselves, give deadlines to
Speaker 1: themselves so they get things done. It also these experiments,
Speaker 1: there's not just one, but there's a number of them,
Speaker 1: but they also include having students have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: redo material, to read tests, to read papers so that
Speaker 1: they actually learn what they're supposed to know. And in
Speaker 1: some places that have been experimenting with it, they're finding
Speaker 1: it's very very interesting and successful and other chief places
Speaker 1: are very nervous about trying it. They think that they're
Speaker 1: going to short change kids by not you know, instilling
Speaker 1: in them behaviors that everybody thinks kids should have. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of contention about it in districts around
Speaker 1: the country, right, yeah, I mean on that front, right,
Speaker 1: meeting deadlines, having things done properly, proper formatting, that stuff
Speaker 1: that's going to carry over into college where a lot
Speaker 1: of those rules are stricter even and in the workplace,
Speaker 1: right there are deadlines that need to be met. So
Speaker 1: I guess some of some of the opposition to some
Speaker 1: of this, uh is that you're not instilling those in
Speaker 1: the kids with their school work. And so what does
Speaker 1: this look like in practice? You had an example from
Speaker 1: a pe teacher for a teacher those teaching a AP class,
Speaker 1: and instead of doing this one point scale, which you know,
Speaker 1: all the way up to sixty points, right is a
Speaker 1: failing grade. Still, they do something more on a fifty
Speaker 1: point scale where each you get ten points for each
Speaker 1: of the letters A through F. You know, so you
Speaker 1: kind of there's less of a chance to be an
Speaker 1: outright fail grade. Well, absolutely, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: and you know, I went to school a lifetime ago
Speaker 1: and never thought about this, But it is kind of
Speaker 1: crazy for one letter, the F to have sixty points.
Speaker 1: So if you are a student who you know has
Speaker 1: trouble with motivation and your first big test is a
Speaker 1: you get a fifty on it, that's really hard to
Speaker 1: come back from. So a kid who doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of motivation might decide they're not even going to try.
Speaker 1: But a kid who knows that they can go back
Speaker 1: and try again to learn the material and do better
Speaker 1: is advantaged by a system that doesn't place so much,
Speaker 1: that doesn't have that one point system, and a system
Speaker 1: allows you to redo things to show that you know
Speaker 1: what you know. The bottom line for teachers is is
Speaker 1: that they want kids to learn, and so what is
Speaker 1: the best system to show that they have that they
Speaker 1: have mastered the material? So um, you know they don't.
Speaker 1: They do an interesting thing though, too, with some of this. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's say you need to retake an exam or redo
Speaker 1: an assignment. A lot of this has to do with
Speaker 1: the teacher kind of meeting with the student one on one.
Speaker 1: Tell me what you did wrong, tell me that you
Speaker 1: learned from this. Now you get another crack at the assignment.
Speaker 1: So that's an important part of it. At least there's
Speaker 1: an understanding and you can kind of glean a little
Speaker 1: more if the student did, you know, master the subject,
Speaker 1: things like that. But that also points to teachers being
Speaker 1: overworked as well and having needing more time to do
Speaker 1: a lot of this one on one stuff. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that's why a lot of teachers are upset about it,
Speaker 1: nervous about it and pushing back against it. A lot
Speaker 1: of teachers have a lot of students. Class sizes can
Speaker 1: be very large, and they see that they don't have
Speaker 1: the time to do so much one on one that
Speaker 1: they would like to do, and they don't have time
Speaker 1: to remake tests and come up with new assignments. Now.
Speaker 1: I asked some teachers who have been doing this about that,
Speaker 1: and they say that can be an issue, but it's
Speaker 1: also true that they have they're using the time they
Speaker 1: spent doing other things doing this now, so they've learned
Speaker 1: to sort of change their their work flaw. It Also,
Speaker 1: those does speak to teachers who say that small class
Speaker 1: sizes are important. Right there, this's that more individualized at
Speaker 1: tension that they get. I mean, all of this is
Speaker 1: a very interesting concept. And you know, whatever we can
Speaker 1: do to make sure that children are learning the subjects,
Speaker 1: the mastery of the subjects is very important. There's obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations going on about parents input and
Speaker 1: teacher input and what the kids are learning. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing thing and we'll see if any of
Speaker 1: these do gain traction. Valerie Strauss, Education Report at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been
Speaker 1: reopening America. Don't forget the difference today's big news stories.
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