The authors document changes made to their grading and assessment practices while “going gradeless” in an effort to reduce grading. You should read this for all their “why?” reasons for doing so, along with the many rubrics and learning progressions to get you thinking. I wouldn’t recommend implementing everything as-is, but their journey could really help you think about what you should be thinking about.

Missing Work & Minimum Requirements
One thing that caught my attention was “our previous model did not distinguish between hard-working, striving students and students who did not complete and turn in their work” (p. 28). Their original scoring scale began as a single statement: “not enough information to evaluate,” then was split into two: “does not complete enough assignments to assess” and “I collect and/or present data.” (p. 31).

To me, this illustrates how teachers need to define expectations, even in a holistic system, and even one without grades. There is a misconception that going gradeless is a chaotic free-for-all with no accountability. Untrue, yet some teachers who have gone gradeless report that their practices do seem too fluffy, feeling that students aren’t doing much work. For example, teachers adopting minimum 50 policies (i.e., no grade lower than 50) tend to establish that a lack of evidence is a grade of 50, but do not establish what turning in work looks like for the other grades. Thus, students can end up doing some amount of work the teacher is disappointed in, but students might still meet content standards. The expression “you reap what you sow” comes to mind, so let’s maturely recognize that this problem is fully within the teacher’s control. It can be addressed by setting a minimum threshold.

Burns and Frangiosa did this, setting a considerable list of 51 minimum requirements for the year, including assignments such as labs, peer reviews, content, checkpoints, projects, etc. A student completing these assignments and who at least attempted every standard would have a D. Students who did not turn these in, and/or who did not attempt enough of the standards failed the course.

The benefit of setting minimum requirements is that teachers can point to these expectations in certain situations, like when students are habitually absent and don’t turn in much work while in class. Note that this doesn’t solve for why students are in this situation. This just allows teachers to confidently justify how they report a student’s achievement. Minimum requirements also address the phenomena of students meeting course standards through only taking a handful of assessments. That is, if the only stipulation is that a student meets the standards they could theoretically do this only once on a single assessment for each standard. Of course, this is due to a problem of setting static standards so that it doesn’t matter how or when students meet them rather than using learning progressions that encourage constant learning and growth over time (see Learning Progressions below).

Otherwise, I think the authors have the right idea about setting minimum requirements, I just wouldn’t add so many of them (51!), and I would recommend a different kind of system to arrive at a course grade (mine would be student self-grading) instead of one based on logic rules that end up creating cutoffs similar to traditional grading. For example, pages 62-63 have “grade translations” used to calculate a midyear course grade and end-of-year course grade from their system of no grades (though full of ratings) because students, parents, and admin expect…grades (see Reporting Achievement below). These logic rules look like this:

Midyear:

• B+
  Any 5 standards at Proficient level
  With no standards lowest than Developing
• B
  Any 2 standards at Proficient level
  With no standards lowest than Developing
• B-
  All standards at Developing level

End-of-year:

• B+
  Any 9 standards at Proficient level
  With no standards lowest than Developing
• B
  Any 6 standards at Proficient level
  With no standards lowest than Developing
• B-
  Any 3 standards at Proficient level
  With no standards lowest than Developing

In short, this is…a lot…of calculating to do, especially with keeping track of every student’s progression in five levels from Beginner to Expert (see Learning Progressions below) on nine standards! The spreadsheet used to track this on page 72 should give you a sense of what this involves.

Practice
With minimum requirements set, the rest of assignments are treated as practice, with attempts for students to show how they’ve improved. This perspective is also helpful for teaching consequences and holding students accountable. If they do merely the minimum, they miss out on feedback and opportunities to apply that feedback and improve their learning.

Checkpoints
Ungraded in-class quizzes that were immediately reviewed as a whole class while students annotated their work and made their own corrections are an excellent way to begin going gradeless.

Learning Progressions
There’s a lot of guidance on how to write learning progressions. I still feel that Jung (2024) has the best version of learning progressions as a series of rubrics with four skill stages, all progressing towards a higher level of that skill (i.e., no grades, just descriptions of each stage). Burns and Frangiosa’s are a bit more crunchy, identifying 5 levels labeled Beginner to Expert. I think these are good steps to take. Jung’s recommendation of 16 levels (i.e., 4 per quarter) might be too much for some teachers to wrap their heads around. Still, one drawback to Burns and Frangiosa’s 5-level learning progressions is that they cap learning, giving students a highest level/carrot to obsess over. Another drawback to only five levels is that the authors had to predict where students will be throughout the year in order to convey progress as being “on track.” For example, there’s an elaborate matrix with benchmarks for which of the five levels students are expected to be during each unit (p. 67). I find this dizzying. With Jung’s system, however, there are only “next steps” beyond each 4-stage rubric as students are given the next one in the progression, not “Advanced,” or “Expert” levels to strive for. There’s no evaluation. There’s just reporting where a student is along the continuum of the skill, and what the next steps are for their growth.

Skill/Process Standards vs. Content Standards
This is not the first source I’ve read about ditching content standards and focusing on skills that can be used with any content (i.e., problem solving, data analysis, arguing a claim, etc.). The authors treated foundational content on a pass/fail basis as part of the minimum requirements. Students had the entire year to work on these concepts, though as you might expect, any foundational content will be embedded within a standard, so I’m not sure if this needs to be documented separately, but it might be necessary for some teachers as they go gradeless. For example, if understanding of a particular Physics law is needed to complete an assignment assessing the Data Analysis standard, the student will only be able to demonstrate so much along the learning progression because a higher level (e.g., Advanced, or Expert) would require accurate application of the particular law. Since content is always embedded within assignments that assess skill/process standards, I would recommend avoiding any content standards to help streamline things.

Reporting Achievement
Reporting achievement is the primary function of grades. Grades are supposed to convey how a student is doing, and can signal that either a) things should be maintained or b) that something has to be done (though grades cannot convey any details about what needs to be done or how to improve). In a gradeless classroom, you can immediately see how this becomes an issue. With no grades, students and parents can feel lost, and while reading the book, it was clear that a lot of effort went into Burns and Frangiosa explaining their grading and assessment practices to parents.

In an article currently under review, I share my experience of eliminating this obstacle by using the traditional number/letter system familiar to everyone…only far less often. Burns and Frangiosa needed a far more elaborate system for constantly reporting ratings from “Beginner” to “Expert.” This is a lot of grades.

Lots of Grades
Consistent with my own research findings in a 2025 student showing that 97% of teacher assessments were graded, what is presented as “gradeless” might be better characterized as “gradeful.” Eliminating grades from individual assignments, doing whole class corrections of ungraded assessments, and moving away from averaging grades are three major leaps to take towards reducing grading, but this really needs to go further. Gradebooks can still have a grade updated 8x a year during the periods already identified (i.e., progress reports and report cards) while also conveying assignment status (i.e., missing, late, collected). This should be all the information people are looking for, and would represent more of a gradeless classroom.

Therefore, I recommend seeking out practices that support such a system, like having students gather learning evidence into a portfolio, and having them self-assess and self-grade during progress reports and report cards. The rest of teachers’ efforts should be on setting clear criteria, gathering their own evidence of students learning, providing feedback and follow-up opportunities to apply that feedback, adjusting instruction, and assessing again.

References

Burns, E., & Frangiosa, D. (2021). Going gradeless, grades 6-12: Shifting the focus to student learning. Corwin Press.

Jung, L. A. (2024). Assessing Students, Not Standards: Begin With What Matters Most (1st edition). Corwin.