zeros

That Fordham Institute Report on Equitable Grading…

/ magisterp / Leave a comment

First of all, go take a look. If you make it past the foreword, you’ll certainly find claims supported by research. You’ll also find assumptions that could contextualize interpretations as questionable, as well as misleading statements, such as “overall, about half of K–12 teachers in the United States say their school or district has adopted at least one ‘equitable’ grading policy” (p. 10). This is quite the claim when only 958 teachers responded to the survey. And I don’t think this is a typo. So, let’s look at some highlights, starting with a very important finding…

Most teachers (64%) said grades should be based on objective standards, as opposed to effort.
This finding is interesting because the Fordham Institute report is written from the perspective of teachers in the minority (36%) who grade effort, and whose main argument is that student motivation and effort are reduced by policies such as no zeros, no late penalties, not grading homework/participation, and having unlimited retakes. Yet, most teachers know that behavior and effort should not factor into grading, which is highly supported in research literature. It’s almost like the authors are acknowledging how traditional ideas have already fallen out of fashion while continuing to advocate for those very ideas.

Not off to a very good start…

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Current Reading: Zeros = -6.0!!!!

/ magisterp / Leave a comment

**Updated 4.6.24 w/ quantitative results on minimum 50 grading**

We know that the 100-point scale has a staggering 60 points that fall within the F range, then just 10 points for each letter grade above. This major imbalance means that averaging zeros into a student’s course grade often has disastrous results, and can become mission insurmountable for getting out of that rut.

Still, the argument against zeros is surprisingly still going on, with advocates in plenty of schools everywhere claiming the old “something for nothing myth” when alternatives are suggest, like setting the lowest grade possible as a 50 (i.e., “minimum 50). In other words, teachers are still unconvinced that they need to stop using zeros. Well, we’re heading back 20 years to when Doug Reeves (2004) used a 4.0 grading scale example to show exactly how utterly absurd and destructive zeros are in practice. This is perhaps the most compelling mathematical case against the zero I’ve come across yet….

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