Barry Fishman discusses the vulnerabilities and opportunities of grading practices on the TeachLab podcast

Fishman spoke about the key principles introduced in Wad-Ja-Get? and the research that has added to the conversation on grading over the past 50 years. Fishman said, “Grades remove information from the system. Rather than me knowing what a learner has learned, I know that they have an A or a B or a C. What does that mean? It doesn't mean really anything at all, especially if it's a B or a C... And maybe you throw a curve in. That's even worse. Curves really remove information from the system, and they ration success. This is one of the worst problems with grading, I think, is that they were really designed for ranking and sorting. They were never designed to encourage learning.”  

In addition to reducing motivation for learning and contributing to student stress and mental health challenges, grading can contribute to the inequities in education. “More recently, we have come to understand that when you have systems that are built around ranking and sorting, the places people start matter a lot and it’s very hard to recover when you start from behind. So, grades are one element of systemic racism and inequality in education,” Fishman said. 

Reich also asked Fishman about how grading systems have changed as a result of the educational interruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The good thing about these rapid changes is that they have opened to the door to the conversation because I’ve never had more of my colleagues willing to talk about the purpose behind grades,” Fishman said. 

Fishman also shared ideas for how students and instructors can co-construct expectations and how those are assessed. Fishman said, “Creating tools that help shape practice is really important.”