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Once I realized how little help a grade was for students, I changed things—big time! Now they get the feedback they need to gauge their own progress. Sometimes my feedback is on the content of the curriculum and sometimes on foundational skills.

My formative feedback at each step of the way let students see how to improve their notes or summaries and whether they needed to look for more examples of the laws. From the first drafts I read, I could tell they had no idea how to write these kinds of descriptions. I had to create writing frames so that students could learn specific patterns of writing and how to use simple math calculations from their lab work to support their ideas.

In an ideal world, teachers would be empowering students regularly with feedback that isn't aligned with grades but rather with mastery standards, offering multiple opportunities for growth.

Here are things we can do differently today:

When we think about preparing students for the world we live in, accountability is important, but teaching students to be accountable in a way that works for them that also helps us know where we need to adjust practice to better suit their needs.

For all the effort, time, and best intentions teachers invest in those reams of grade reports, we are lying to ourselves and to our students’ parents, cheating our students out of clear and accurate feedback on their academic process, and contributing to the greater illusion that grades are an accurate reflection of skill mastery.

What should the mark really represent? Should the mark be based upon ability or performance, or even upon zeal and enthusiasm? What is the best set of symbols to represent ability or achievement?

This approach is known as standards-based grading. It is a system of evaluation that is formative, meaning it shapes instruction in order to fill in knowledge gaps, and measures mastery based on a set of course objectives, standards or skills.

Many notions I had at the beginning of my career about grading didn't stand up to real scrutiny. The thorny issue of homework is one example of how the status quo needed to change. I once thought it was essential to award points to students simply for completing homework. I didn't believe students would do homework unless it was graded. And yet, in my classroom, students who were clearly learning sometimes earned low grades because of missing work. Conversely, some students actually learned very little but were good at “playing school.” Despite dismal test scores, these students earned decent grades by turning in homework and doing extra credit. They would often go on to struggle in later courses, while their parents watched and worried.

Teaching and learning with an eye toward mastery of a defined list of competencies circumvents many of the pitfalls that points-based grading causes.

While a shift to standards-based grading from the traditional, points-based system sounds daunting, now is the perfect time to make the transition.

Early on with my classes I will arrange the learning in such a way that I assess their work first. This line of communication is pivotal early on as the expert needs to model what effective assessment looks like. I will then allot some time for them to reflect on this and to make amendments.

As my students trust themselves and each other more, I push the second and third communicative relationships to the front of the queue, more and more reserving my judgement for later. While I don’t like it, we are part of an exam driven system and I won’t be there at the end to help them.

Guskey said teachers are moving away from the traditional single grade and are giving multiple grades. Instead of giving a single grade for achievement in an English or language arts class, they are giving separate grades for reading, writing and speaking. That way, parents know more clearly what kinds of problems their children might be having.

Young said high schools switching to standards-based grading have more details to work out. That's in part because high school students are critiqued by colleges on the basis of a grade point average.