A new study is out - it’s called Great Expectations: The Impact of Rigorous Grading Practices on Student Achievement. Authored by Dr. Seth Gershenson from American University, the study asks how much talent and potential is America squandering when its schools and teachers fail to uphold high standards for their students? When educators make exceptions for underperforming students, are they helping or hurting them? To help understand the study and its findings, Newell invited Dr. Gershenson onto the program Monday morning to discuss.
“I thoroughly enjoyed the report, and was very surprised reading this, right out of the box,” Newell said. “You say there has been very little research done on this subject matter?”“I think the reason is that it’s a hard question to answer,” Gershenson said. “It’s hard to identify which teachers do have high standards, and it's hard to estimate the effects of teacher quality on outcomes, more generally.”“How were you able to get your target group and get some meaningful outcomes?”“We defined grading standards by looking at teachers’ past students,” Gershenson continued. “We looked at two things - their past students end-of-course standardized exam scores as well as their course grades from their transcripts. We compare those to see how their course grades align with their test scores, and we see that alignment varies quite a bit across teachers. For example, let’s suppose we only look at students who received a B grade, and then look at their test scores. Some teachers’ students, they might have a B and a test score of 100. Other teachers’ students will have a test score of 90. What does that tell us? Some of those B students learned more than others. From there, we identify systematic patterns and identify the teachers whose students learned more than their peers.”“There were a number of findings in here, finding one says ‘students learn more from teachers who have higher grading standards. Higher grading standards are predominantly objective, but somewhat subjective as well, right?”“That’s exactly it,” Gershenson agreed. “The test scores are very objective, and there’s a little bit more subjectivity in the grades. We’re able to rank teachers in terms of their grading standards, and then we compare the students’ outcomes with teachers who are in the top 25% with the toughest standards with the kids with teachers who have lower standards.”“Is this an indication that we’ve become more standardized-test-outcome oriented? That everyone is judged by how we do on these tests?” Newell asked. “Obviously some do well, some not so well. Is there an alternative way to test students' proficiency? I know students with ADD or ADHD that when tested orally, their scores go up 20%.”“To be clear, when we say grades have more subjectivity, we don’t mean that grades are bad. Grades are very important and they should be different from exam scores because they’re measuring different things. Course grades factor in a lot of other aspects of a student's academic behavior, attention to detail, attendance… but those scores and grades should be different in similar ways across all classrooms, and what we’re finding is that they are not.”
