Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Feldman.
Hi Joe, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have worked in education for over 20 years as a teacher, principal, and district administrator. The grading complexities had always nagged at me, and in 2012, I started researching the history and impact of standard grading in classrooms. Our current classroom grading practices are nearly identical to how teachers graded almost a century ago during the Industrial Revolution. They often contradict everything we know from research about adolescent development, motivation, and effective teaching and learning. Fortunately, there are better ways to grade that can be more accurate, resistant to teacher bias, and motivating for students. In 2014, I started supporting teachers to improve how they grade their students.
Based on the successes teachers were seeing, I founded Crescendo Education Group (crescendoedgroup.org), which, in the last decade, has supported hundreds of K-12 schools, districts, and colleges/universities nationwide and thousands of teachers to improve grading and assessment practices. We’ve partnered with the National Education Association as well as the American Federation of Teachers, National Association of Independent Schools, and Stanford University’s Challenge Success, and I lead the Equitable Grading Project (gradingforequity.org), which researches the impact of improved grading on students and their teachers.
I have presented at numerous education conferences, including the California School Boards Association and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Many local and national media outlets interviewed me, including CNN and the Los Angeles Times. I have written pieces for Education Week, Kappan, Education Leadership, District Administrator, and Black Press USA, and my book, Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms (Corwin), first published in 2018, has just been published in its second edition.
Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
All of us have experienced grades as former (or current) students, and many of us have experienced grading through our children. Grades can evoke a range of emotions–pride, stress, frustration, self-doubt, affirmation–partly because grades can determine access or prohibition from advanced courses, scholarships, extra-curricular opportunities such as sports and performing arts, and college admission. Grading is also one of the most important responsibilities of teachers, but unfortunately, teachers get almost no training during their university coursework or in credential programs about how to grade. As a result, most teachers have no access to current research on grading and often replicate how they were graded, which has been done for generations.
There is always a healthy skepticism from teachers–wanting to understand the practices and the research behind them. Interestingly, and most people aren’t aware of this, there is no research supporting how we currently grade in schools–all the research on grading, teaching, and learning points in the opposite direction: that our common inherited ways of grading undermine effective teaching and learning. We’ve found that once teachers begin to learn about the history of grading and the research and how, by continuing to use traditional grading practices, they are undermining their own work and even harming students, they become open and interested in using improved grading in their classrooms. Teachers see the benefits of these practices very quickly: students are more focused on learning, failure rates decrease, classroom rigor increases, and, at the same time, classrooms feel less stressed.
Another challenge is that it can evoke anxiety from students and their families when we talk about improving grading. Mainly, if students have been successful in school, the possibility of changing how teachers grade is akin to changing the rules of a game they’ve learned to play. Students and caregivers must have opportunities to learn not just about the more equitable grading practices but also about why these practices are more accurate, fair, and motivational and how every student will benefit. Considering that most parents and students have only experienced traditional grading–an opaque system that requires amassing the maximum quantity of points and in which learning is secondary–opening up conversations about grading can build community engagement and investment in improving.
Finally, using the word “equity” in our work can evoke politicized misunderstandings of what we mean, making it hard for people to be open to these ideas. However, we see every interaction with administrators, educators, parents, and media outlets as an opportunity to define equitable grading and demystify misunderstandings. Equitable grading is common-sense grading, in which grades accurately describe what students have learned, are bias-resistant, so students aren’t graded based on circumstances outside their control, and build students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. Those ways of grading benefit every student because traditional grading is often inaccurate, biased, and focuses students on points instead of learning. Additionally, traditional grading has disproportionately made it harder for historically underserved students –those of color, from lower-income families, who have special needs, and whose first language isn’t English–so equitable grading “rights the ship” and ensures that all students have an equal opportunity to be successful. The good news is that when people start learning about the benefits of these practices, they see that they benefit every student regardless of their circumstances and often tell us that they wish they had been graded in this way when they were in school!
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As the CEO, I work closely with my organization’s leadership to ensure that we are focused on our mission–improve grading for every student throughout the country from kindergarten through college. As the author of the book that explains equitable grading, I am the spokesperson of our work, sharing the urgency to improve traditional grading and providing examples of equitable grading with educators and the general public through interviews, writing, and speaking events.
Any big plans?
We’re very excited that the 2nd edition of my book, Grading for Equity, has just been published. It incorporates new evidence and information since the 1st edition was published in 2018–particularly what we learned about grading during the pandemic. In my organization, we’ve gotten so much interest from schools, districts, and colleges/universities that we’re developing new ways to support them. We’re so grateful and inspired by many teachers and leaders who want to bring this work to their classrooms.
Contact Info:
- Website: Crescendoedgroup.org and gradingforequity.org
- Twitter: @JoeCFeldman and @CrescendoedGrp
Image Credits
Crescendo Education Group
