Well, I heard a new one today. But first, the context. I had just handed back English 11 essays, for which I did not use a rubric. Instead, I used a traditional means of feedback. I circled, underlined, and pointed out obvious errors (fragments, run ons, point of view errors, etc.). I made comments about logical omissions or organizational flaws. I commented when writers needed to give evidence for their claims. But overall, the score, the grade, came from my experience in knowing what constitutes an A paper or something not quite. Not only that, but students had the opportunity to conference with me in the drafting stage (an option that only four of the 21 in the class took advantage of). They also were encouraged to review peers’ work, to help each other draft a quality essay. They had three days in a computer lab to craft a two page essay. All in all, a pretty basic writing experience for juniors. Then, I overheard one of my students (who’d earned a 45/50 by the way) that she had gotten only one wrong, but I had taken off five points. By one wrong, she meant that I had only left one comment on her paper. She obviously thought the exchange rate was off.
I’m still somewhat stunned. I had no idea that students equated a comment or an underline on an essay with an item marked wrong, as when you do 25 math problems and you get five wrong, so you get a 20/25. Maybe I should have been a math teacher (only I don’t really love math. I love words).
Holistic grading is truly dead it seems. Everything must be quantified. Rubrics have become itemized reciepts. Every complete sentence given a point value, whether it makes sense or reads fluently or fits the paragraph or moves the argument forward. Quality lies in the fact that you spelled everything correctly, not in the relationships of the words to one another? Or am I just taking this girls’ comment (complaint, actually) too far?
What do you think?
If you are reading this and have had a similar experience, please leave a comment. This topic seems worthy of discussion.
Cross posted at Ms Hogue’s Online English Resources
The danger of quantifying everything! // Apr 18, 2011 at 9:37 am
[...] Cross posted at The Polliwog Journal [...]
You are not taking the comment too far because I had a student like that last semester and others in the past. She couldn’t understand why her poster only received the grade of a B (and I was probably generous because I’d had other run-ins with her and her parent) and what did it matter that some of the information was on the back when everyone had information on only the front as specified in the directions. After all, according to her, she’d put on extra information and had to use the back of the poster. I’ve had at least one parent and student per year question me about a grade or grades for the eighteen years I’ve been teaching despite using rubrics.
I cringed when you said you didn’t give out a rubric, because I have found when I don’t give out a rubric (either prior to or after the assignment is graded), that is when a grade is most challenged, even if I make comments on the paper and structure the writing assignment in the manner you did. My rubrics have also become more detailed over the years, being very specific about what I’m looking for in each reading component or writing component down to the number of spelling errors or sentences in each paragraph.
English teachers are always under fire because our evaluations are more subjective than Math where a student either gets the problem correct or not. With parents and the public being more critical of our qualifications, being an expert in our field is not enough to justify marking a paper an A, B, C etc… Unfortunately, as English teachers (and other subject teachers) we have to quantify everything and I have found making a rubric, no matter how small (and I have rubrics with one element of criteria that will be scored), it pays off in the long run because parents and students complain less.
I think this generation of students has been deluded into thinking everything they do is great and worthy of an A, a trophy, a celebration, which is why your student would make that comment about her paper. In another class, that mistake may have been overlooked by another teacher and the student may have gotten a 50/50. I’ve had that happen – where the teacher in the previous grade just gave completion grades for every assignment, so when I give grades for the actual quality, I’m the bad guy.
I don’t see a solution as long as teachers continue to be villified in the media and by non-teachers.
Chris,
Thanks so much for your comment. You’ve passionately reiterated a problem we face as teachers. I’m not sure that the media has much to do with the movement to quantify things, but, I do think that the negative bias towards teachers in the media empowers students and parents to speak disrespectfully to us in ways I haven’t seen before.
Try to follow this example: Two six year olds are given a worksheet. The worksheet reads as follows: 3 + 5 = ? 3 + 5 =? 5 + 3 = ? 5 + 3 =? 3 + 5 =? 3 + 5 + 1 =? 1 + 3 + 5 = ? etc. Notice that all equations to solve have 5 + 3. One student sees this and understands that 5 + 3 will always = x; 5 + 3 = 3 + 5; and understands +1 to x will always be the next numeral on the number line. This student adds 5 + 3 in his head and carelessly computes 9; His answers are respectively: 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 -yes he proceeds to get every problem ‘wrong’ because of this careless mistake, NOT because he lacks understanding of how numbers work. The other student who does not understand 3 + 5 will always = x; who does not have an understanding of +1, and who does not understand 3 + 5 = 5 + 3 does EVERY problem using ‘strategies’ like counting on fingers, or drawing dots. He gets all the right answers. As a teacher I must LOOK at the PROCESS, and DETERMINE which student actually understands the concept of addition. I must get inside the child’s head. If I only look at the answers given on a worksheet I will not truly have an understanding of the child’s understanding. Quantification to measure understanding and the learning process is only part of assessment; it is NOT the magic bullet. Teaching, assessing, learning is NOT a science- it is an art that INCLUDES science: Teaching, assessing, learning is a dynamic process. There is too much complexity and fluidness in the learning process that we cannot quantify everything! Too shallow, too inaccurate, too dangerous, too complex.