Story Source: Harvard Ed. Magazine ~ Go to Original Article
Think about the sixth grade at the school where you teach or where your kid attends. There are three English teachers. Each has a different grading policy: One counts homework as 40 percent of the grade, the other two as 30. One accepts late work; the others don’t accept it at all. One deducts points for sloppy binders.Two include participation in the grade, one offers extra credit. Joe Feldman, Ed.M.’93, a former teacher, principal, and district administrator, talked to Ed. about his new book, Grading for Equity, and why inconsistent grading isn’t fair for students yet is so hard for educators to change.
Grading: What are we actually talking about? We mean the way teachers calculate, describe, and report student performance. Although we might assume that grading is only a software-driven, end-of-term calculation, a teacher’s grading system is implicated throughout her work every day……..