TOMMIE SAYLOR: How about a system that actually depicts learning over grades

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”

-- Socrates

By Tommie Saylor

Kennedy High School Principal

At times we make things more complicated than necessary.  Why?  Perhaps it is human nature to take something simple and make it complicated. Perhaps it’s in our efforts to address every problem in our pursuit for perfection.  With goodwill and honest intent, we create systems that harm those we wish to help, those we are sworn to serve.

I speak of the manner in which grades are assigned.  A grade is an indication of the level of mastery a student has acquired over the content material taught.  But, it today’s schools, an assigned grade is often speckled with so many impurities that its value is easily brought into question. 

If a student is a discipline issue in class, we shave off a few points. If the student turns in an assignment late, we shave off a few points. If the student brings in a box of Kleenex, we add a few points. If a student stays after and helps us clean up or set up, we add a few points. There’s extra credit, bonus questions … points, points and more points.

In high school and middle school it is all about points. 

It is not about what the student has learned; it’s all about the student jumping through enough hoops to earn enough points to receive a specific grade. The focus is not on learning. It is on earning points.

Because of this, our students have learned to “play the game.”  They have learned which assignments they do not need to worry about, which assignments they can just skip and not complete, which concepts don’t hold enough points to bother learning. 

Our students have learned how to manipulate the system.  Simply, our students are learning to focus on points earned not on concepts learned. Ask a student and they will instantly and expertly tell you how many points they have to earn a specific grade, and what “hoops they have to jump through.”

Yet if you ask them what they have learned, you will be confronted with an awkward silence and blank stare.

I think the elementary may have gotten it right. Look at an elementary report card and you will see a long list of concepts and a rubric detailing the student’s mastery of the listed concepts.  Ask a pupil what they have learned, and they are anxious to share with you all their newly acquired skills. 

In the elementary, the focus is on learning, not on the acquisition of points.  Elementary teachers don’t grade students based on behavior, attendance and/or compliance. Pupils are evaluated by the mastery over content.

If we wish to advance as an educational institution, we need to return to our roots.  We need to cast off the shackles of an antiquated grading system that does not serve the needs of our students, that is not focused on learning, and conveys false messages.  We need to return the purity back to our methodology of evaluating the level of proficiency our students have acquired in their explorations of content material.

What starts here, changes the world. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence by design.