I just handed back our first unit test for the year.  Leading up to this test we did many activities that helped the students master the learning targets for this unit and several quizzes to help them know what they needed to focus on.  Things were going well and I was very confident that the students would do a good job on the test.  I am very pleased to say that overall the students did a great job!  What bothers me isn’t their scores at all.  It is the way the atmosphere in the room changes when an assessment is handed back.  Everyone feels uncomfortable including me!  The students who didn’t do as well as they liked feel angry.  The students who did very well don’t want to make other students feel bad and so they also feel uncomfortable.  And I don’t like the feeling of trying to justify having had to grade the kids.  “I understand that you know what you did wrong but I can’t just change the grade on your paper.” 

My question is how can I get the students to focus more on learning and less on the grade.  In our school we use standards based grading which is supposed to help shift the focus to the learning.  We give students feedback and allow them multiple opportunities to show mastery of each learning target.  The feedback that matters most to the students, however, is not the kind that shows them where they are in the learning but the grade they received on the assessment.  Although we changed the terminology from “A through F” to “Advanced through Insufficient Progress,” students still look at the grade as a judgment for or against them.  I tell them to focus on the learning and the grades will follow.   Meanwhile I’ll keep going back to any target where they are not proficient and helping them learn the targets.  A grade of “not proficient” should really be “not proficient yet.”  

I don’t see the grade as a final judgement but a marker along the path towards their success.  Now I just need to help my students stick to the path and keep moving onward.