Why teachers should grade less often

When Denise Pope was an English teacher, she spent hours writing meticulous comments on student papers. Most of the time it was a fruitless endeavour.

“The first thing kids would do is go to the back of the paper, look at the grade and never read my comments,” says Pope, now an associate professor at Stanford and co-founder of Challenge success. A 2021 study confirms that the problem is common – when students see a grade before they see feedback the researchers report, they are more likely to ignore the teacher’s feedback entirely, leading to two-thirds of a letter grade drop on future assignments.

Proponents of AF or percentage grading rightly argue that grades provide students and their caregivers with a simple, bird’s-eye view of academic performance, and are also “one of the primary means of communication between institutions,” according to a 2014 study— Allow schools to make quick assessments of a student’s learning readiness. Compared to standardized tests, high school grades are actually a stronger measure of a student’s “ability to resist momentary temptations, regulate emotions, and sustain effort over days, months, and years in pursuit of important goals,” crucial skills that predict college and career success, a 2019 study found.

But there are plenty of reasons to also second-guess our collective investment in grades, and to consider ways to de-prioritize them. Over the past decade, studies have cast doubt on many of the touted benefits of grading, including how it affects student motivation and how accurately it reflects learning. Even for teachers, questions about grading obligations – and grading methods – have raised concerns about the sustainability and wisdom of common practices such as collecting, checking and providing feedback on each assignment.

A good way to look at grades, according to a holistic review of the researchis to consider the proper balance between summative grades assigned by teachers and other productive activities such as low-stakes practice and peer-to-peer feedback.

We went through the research and found 9 good reasons why – and in many cases how – teachers can streamline their grading methods.

The hours you spend grading and commenting on each assignment and quiz will likely be met with a shrug by your students. In one 2022 studyresearchers confirmed that only 16 percent of college students received feedback on their online assignments, with steep declines as the semester draws to a close.

Focus on giving less feedback that is more targeted. On a large scale 2020 meta-analysisresearchers found that too much feedback is often “ignored, misunderstood, and of little value” to students. The best feedback not only helps students “understand what mistakes they made, but also why they made those mistakes and what they can do to avoid them next time.”

Since students tend to skim feedback, it’s better to target a few high-impact areas for improvement. High-quality feedback is first and foremost useful—it not only corrects errors, but is timely, specific, actionable in scope, and challenges the student to hone “the learning of new skills and tasks,” the researchers point out.

The time required for grading is often uncompensated, which is a major driver of teacher stress, according to A 2023 RAND Report. Unlike many other professions with clear boundaries between work and personal life, teachers often “choose to spend time outside of their contracted hours on activities that can help them educate students more effectively.”

“After the first or second year, the workload becomes more manageable, but the hardest—and for me, most stressful and painful—part of the job remains: grading student work,” writes former educator John Tierney, in Atlantic. “It’s the part of the job that, in my opinion, creates the most uncertainty, discomfort and anxiety.”

The students’ well-being also benefits from fewer grades. In one 2014 studyresearchers pointed out that “grades appear to play on students’ fear of punishment or shame, or their desire to out-compete peers, as opposed to stimulating interest and enjoyment in learning tasks.” At the same time a comprehensive 2021 study led by Denise Pope found that “grades, tests, and other assessments” were leading sources of stress, heavy workloads, homework, sleep deprivation, and college plans by wide margins.

How can you create truly outstanding lessons, update old teaching materials, and look for ways to connect the week’s learning to students’ lives? Finding engaging ways to convey knowledge within a discipline is the bread and butter of good teaching and requires a lot of preparation.

But in one 2022 survey that included measurement of various teacher activities, lesson planning and grading consumed virtually equal parts of time, and strategies that can unlock a school’s best teaching practices—collaborative planning, for example—were lost among other competing tasks such as tutoring, faculty meetings, and preparation for required federal and state assessment. A EdWeek investigation found similar numbers: K-12 teachers spent about five hours a week grading and giving feedback, and about five hours planning and preparing.

It is a questionable allocation of teaching time, according to a 2014 review of US grading practices. In fact, “the time and energy spent on grading has often been identified as a key barrier to instructors becoming more innovative in their teaching,” depriving passionate teachers of the opportunity to reflect on the structure or content of their course, develop active learning activities, or prepare sharp, provocative questions for debate or discussion.

In a recent study of over 33,000 middle and high school report cards, nearly 60 percent of final course grades do not match the corresponding scores on standardized tests. Grading accuracy was all over the map: About two-thirds of the course grades were inflated—that is, they were higher than the standardized test score by at least one letter grade—while one-third were significantly lower, indicating that teachers had underestimated the students’ knowledge.

“In sum, grades often fail to provide reliable information about student learning,” according to a 2014 study. Although essays, reports, and other written documents open up “greater opportunities for subjectivity,” it is likely that “even multiple-choice tests, which can be graded with great consistency, have the potential to provide misleading information about students’ knowledge.”

Grades can feel like a stamp – or disapproval – and signal to students that the learning work is complete. To get students to think deeply about their progress, try to delay grading, at least until they’ve had a chance to review their work, process your feedback, and think about how they can improve.

In one 2021 studystudents who saw their grades first, followed by feedback a few days later, scored two-thirds of a letter grade lower than their peers who received feedback first. Students often develop an “excessive focus on grades,” the researchers explain, and withholding grades—even for just a few days—gives them room to make adjustments and do better work in the future.

To develop great basketball players—or great writers—you need to find the right balance between training and feedback.

In one 2014 studyGerman researcher Martin Lotze found that professional writers showed more signs of highly efficient, automated processes in an area of ​​the brain associated with artistic skill than amateur writers. Writing well, finished John Seabrook for The New Yorkeris “like playing the piano or dribbling a basketball.” In the end, “practice is the only way to mastery.” Longitudinal studies by Angela Duckworth also suggest that it is repeated cycles of practice and failure, and not natural talent, that ultimately lead to mastery.

Teachers can sometimes let the tail wag the dog: They assign less writing work in, say, social studies or English classes, because they consider feedback more important than practice. For students, however, the lack of time to try, fail, and try again makes progress much less likely, especially for complex tasks like writing. Try short draft techniques like ungraded 7-minute write-ups, and for larger projects, consider just checking in periodically to give simple verbal or written feedback before grading a final draft.

It’s possible that grades motivate high achievers, but for average and struggling students, summative grades don’t seem to light a fire.

“Despite the conventional wisdom in education, grades do not motivate students to do their best work, nor do they lead to better learning or performance,” motivation researcher Chris Hulleman and science teacher Ian Kelleher wrote provocatively in a 2020 article for Edutopia.

A 2018 analysis of university policies such as traditional AF grading, pass/fail grading, or narrative evaluations simultaneously concluded that “(traditional) grades increased anxiety and avoidance of challenging courses” but did not improve student motivation. By grading less frequently and using low-stakes feedback with specific, actionable next steps, you can “foster trust between instructors and students,” leading to greater academic ambition, the researchers write.

The grading itself is an opportunity to learn. Asking students to grade their own work, or even each other’s, isn’t lazy—in fact, it can lead to meaningful improvements in learning.

In one sweep 2022 meta-analysisstudents who took the lead in grading classroom assignments showed “significantly better academic performance” across all age groups. Students also developed stronger metacognitive skills, developing the ability to “make judgments about their own and others’ work, identify the gap between their current performance and the desired standard, and take action to close the gap.”

For best results, provide students with rubrics, mentor texts, and checklists to guide their feedback. By clearly stating the qualities of high-quality work — narrative coherence or a clear central claim supported by facts, for example — rubrics help students “compare their performance with salient features, generate feedback, self-reflect, make the right choices, and take action,” explains researcher in a 2023 study.

“A single assessment is just one part of a larger ecosystem of information that can be used to determine student progress,” writes instructional coach and ELA teacher Tyler Rablin. For a more accurate picture, Rablin uses a variety of strategies—one-on-one conferences and feedback portfolios, for example—to thoughtfully measure students’ progress and point them in the right direction.

More data about student learning can also improve classroom instruction. In one 2020 studyrobust assessment systems – ones that gave students multiple opportunities to show what they can do, such as research projects or oral presentations followed by a Q&A session – “helped teachers reflect on how they could better support students”, which in turn “led to a continuous improvement approach for his teaching.”