If you want to see how far education has distanced itself from emphasizing true learning then look no further than online modules with parent access to grades. What better way to diminish the amount of conversation about school and what kids learn than to allow for grades to be checked on a constant basis with no narrative as to what the student did well or not to demonstrate their learning?
Student is getting an “A”? Must be learning a lot, right?
Student is getting an “F”? Student must not be learning, right?
No longer is there a need to understand what is, or is not, being understood. Instead, we can all run to the computer and make assumptions about how successful students are in class based on a number or letter.
Didn’t we make similar assumptions about Enron? Where did that get us?
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The BEST is when teachers use class grades as a means of getting the student “more support.” As in, well, now you can see that he doesn’t do well in class, therefore he needs to be pulled out to attend the Bluebirds group or he should be identified as a Red Bird. As if the appearance of an F on a report card doesn’t indicate that the TEACHER has FAILED the student. How, if a child has an F average at the end of the quarter, do we have any idea about what that child knows or doesn’t know? We have no idea. Sad. (Shaking head.)
Aaron, does your school use an online grading system? I will admit that it has been annoying for some parents to focus on that grade their child has at any given moment in the semester, but I have NO DOUBT that having online grade reports (and the accompanying class page for notes/assignments/news) has opened the dialogue with my parents this year about how their child is doing. I had more parent contact in the first semester than I had all of last year before we were using Edline.
You are right. Grades alone only help to tell me if my child has missed an assignment. If I see that my child has a “B” in Math all I can say is “study more.” As far as learning goes you need to take it further.
At the risk of this post looking like shameless self promotion, I built an application that allows teachers to set small achievable goals. As a parent, I can see what goals have been assigned and what my child is currently working on. It is specific. The goals can be custom or chosen from state standards. Instead of seeing a grade in a subject I see a long term goal for a subject and a handful of smaller objectives. So I can say “you can use some help with multiplying uncommon denominators. Let’s take a look at the text book.”
Chuck,
We do have online grading for parent access in my district. In the first couple years, I saw exactly what you are experiencing. Since then, it has dropped considerably. Another interesting point: put the grades into the online system and hold onto the kids papers for a bit. How many kids that earn A’s come up and ask for their paper back comparative to that of the students who earn other marks?
I would just like a narrative section where I can type in a small summary every other week or so or as updates are warranted. Still, I like meeting face-to-face. Glad you are having success with it though.
Thanks, as always, for the comment.
Sorry, Aaron, but as I wrote (and wrote and wrote) what started as a small post, I opted to turn it into a blog post of my own: http://blog.mathed.net/2010/03/do-online-gradebooks-compromise-our.html. In summary, I argued that online gradebooks compromise our teaching in three ways:
1. They discourage the use of formative assessments.
2. Class assignment averages may not reflect class performance.
3. By accepting only numbers as input and making grades available 24/7, we make feedback less useful and/or powerful.
I keep all of the kids’ assessments, and I don’t have exact numbers for this, but most of my kids who don’t get A’s still want to see their actual quizzes. @Aaron Eyler