Pranav Pabba
“We had a cheating scandal a few years ago,” computer science teacher Joshua Paley recalled, “where we caught 13 students submitting extra credit by copying something off the Internet. One of my students tried to cover his tracks by renaming variables. It was hilarious and horrifying because the parents defended him.”
He paused, then continued. “But Mr. Bautista had [one of the] students, and that was a fascinating case study because that student, as far as I recall, had not missed a point all year. This was probably one of the best students in terms of talent. And he decided to do that. He’s getting an A+, and then decided to cheat by submitting extra credit work that was not his own. How did we get to that point?”
Perhaps, quantitative grades started innocuously: a simple mechanism used to give and receive straightforward feedback. In return for scalability and convenience, a simplification of an individual’s achievements could be represented in numerical data. But the grading system has far metastasized beyond its original mechanism, becoming deeply malignant.
Yet, instinctively, any proposition along the lines of “remove quantitative grading” feels wrong. A quick gut check would ask, “If quantitative grading was removed , how would one be able to quickly and easily judge a student’s academic performance?”
By placing a student’s worth in a series of numbers, however, a priority shift occurs, and so a shift in strategies must also ensue. How do students get ahead in the war of quantitative grades? They do wrong to get ahead.
I asked Mr. Paley, “Do you think the grading system leads to more cheating?”
He looked at me, an eyebrow halfcocked. “You tell me,” he said. He went on.
HOW DO STUDENTS GET AHEAD IN THE WAR OF QUANTITATIVE GRADES? THEY DO WRONG TO GET AHEAD.
“You want to get into the University of California?”
“Right.”
“Okay, maybe you get a test, and you have an A/B borderline grade in the class. Maybe you were sick for a day. Maybe you were just spaced out during a lecture. Maybe you’re helping out at home to bring in money. There are lots of things that could be going on in your life that are beyond your control. Okay?”
“Right.”
“And now you get a test question and you just have no idea what to do. Do you go and copy someone else? Well, the University of California tells you that you need grades and recommendations. This won’t help with recommendations, but it can certainly help with the grades. And your parents have told you that a better future lies in going to college—and there’s more than a kernel of truth to that. So you tell me, do you cheat?”
It’s questionable whether we want to brute force our students through curricula using the extrinsic stimuli of grades. Extrinsic motivation is powerful, but relying solely upon it leads to burnout in all but the most extreme situations. In whatever profession, there has to be some sort of internal enjoyment if the job is to be long-term. After all, there isn’t a soul who enjoys laboring in a craft they don’t appreciate.
Any skeptic can point out that society is flooded with numerical metrics, and somehow lead us to the conclusion that “we might as well get our children used to grades early.” The motivation to produce functional adults is admirable, but it’s doubtful whether this approach would work.
I queried, “Some would argue that qualitative measurements are pretty abundant in society, right? You’ll see them everywhere in business, in classrooms—they’re used everywhere.”
“Right,” Mr. Paley replied.
“So why don’t we start early?”
“Let me put it this way. Name me a profession as an adult where you take a test every two weeks.”
Mr. Paley continued. “If we want to get to a place where we talk about training people to be functional adults, why are we using a system that they’re never going to see whatsoever when they’re adults, as a method of performance evaluation? There’s got to be a better way. I’m not offering all the solutions, but what we’re doing right now is horrible. Some teachers have talked about standards-based grading. It’s good to understand what you’re measuring. Why give a test if you’re not going to understand what you’re measuring? But at the end of the day, it’s still grading. You should be measuring the right stuff. You should be giving appropriate feedback. You should be doing it in a way that doesn’t punish people.”
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE, IN MY POINT OF VIEW, FOR HAVING A SMALLER CLASS WHERE I GET TO KNOW ALL THE STUDENTS TO FIND OUT WHAT THEIR PERSONAL NEEDS ARE. BUT SOCIETY DOESN’T WANT TO LISTEN TO ME AND OTHER TEACHERS ON THIS.
Ultimately, grades act as a crutch, a way to cope with the education system’s inability to handle complex information or adequately engage students. Admittedly, the inadequacy can in part be attributed to a lack of resources. In order to wipe numerical grades from the educational system, it would have to be able to deal with a far more complicated feedback mechanism and enrapture students in a variety of different subjects. Teachers and colleges have a limited amount of time and would find themselves mired in work if they had to navigate complex, essay-like feedback for every student they encountered.
“Do you think removing quantitative grading is feasible with the number of resources we have?”
Mr. Paley hesitated. “Well, we’ve got this large systemic problem, and unless society does better, we’re going to continue to have this large systemic problem. So how do I put this? I hear people who have way too much money and political biases say that the problem with education is not money, and that there’s plenty of money going in. Oh yeah, there are a lot of jobs that probably don’t need to be happening, and there are a lot of middlemen that are taking money out.”
He paused, then continued. “But there is no substitute, in my point of view, for having a smaller class where I get to know all the students to find out what their personal needs are. But society doesn’t want to listen to me and other teachers on this. I don’t know what to do about it, and it’s a systemic problem.”
“But the way we’re doing grading right now, it just feels like punishment.”
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