Episode 30: School Grading Systems: Trying to Make Sense of Grades

Traditional grading, standards-based grading, grade floors, it’s all enough to make any teacher’s head spin.  What is a student’s grade meant to represent? What does everything that goes into the overall grade measure? As teachers, how do we find a balance between student mastery and effort when we’re assigning grades? Of course, we want to reward those students who work hard, but we also want our grades to be a reflection of how prepared students are to meet the demands of the next level of work. In this episode, we’re tackling this increasingly controversial conundrum and sharing some strategies we’ve used to reconcile our feelings about grades and account for both student effort and mastery.