by Julian Roberts-Grmela
A school district outside Cleveland, Ohio, will have staff read Joe Feldman’s controversial book “Grading for Equity.”
According to a Lakewood City Schools presentation to the school board from earlier this month, the book will be required for teachers in all grade levels. Critics say the book promotes practices that lower students’ standards, while its proponents say it is more fair to students.
Steven Ast, director of teaching and learning at the school district in Lakewood, Ohio, told Chalkboard News in an email that the practices highlighted in the book “align with prominent experts in the field, including Thomas Guskey, Rick Wormeli, Cathy Vatterott, Ken O’Connor, Nancy Frey, Doug Fisher, and Douglas Reeves.”
A listing for the book on Amazon describes it as “a resource that delivers the research base, tools, and courage to tackle one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today’s schools: our inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate the achievement and opportunity gaps among our students.”
Feldman writes that grades need not be assigned value based on scarcity.
“Meeting an external standard, like writing a persuasive essay or passing the driver’s license test, or even exceeding it is not like taking a limited resource, like gold or oil, which fluctuates in value depending on how much there is,” Feldman says in the book.
Lakewood says it will prioritize skills and knowledge over what students turn in daily.
“The most dramatic shifts in grading practices are moving away from grading processes that over-value practice (homework and classwork) and putting more emphasis on measuring what students know or what skills they have developed,” Ast said.
The book has garnered criticism, including from researchers at the Ohio-based Fordham Institute, who worry that its grading practices may diminish academic standards.
In a February research brief, Adam Tyner from the Fordham Institute wrote that “some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities,” but making “grading more lenient” isn’t the answer.
Tyner also told Chalkboard in February that “equity grading” reforms – including “not grading homework, allowing unlimited test retakes or assignment revisions, and prohibiting penalties for late work and cheating – weaken accountability for students.”
“The push for more ‘equitable’ grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation and proffered little evidence of greater learning,” Tyner and his co-author wrote. “Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges.”
Ast disagrees that emphasizing equity in grading practices will mean lower standards for Lakewood City Schools.
“You could say a grade would then be less ‘fluff’ and more about whether students are meeting learning objectives,” Ast said. “In my mind, that would be raising the standard, where students earn grades based on what they learn versus ‘I turned in all my homework and brought in a Kleenex box for extra credit.’”
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Julian Roberts-Grmela is a contributor to the Chalkboard News, which is published by The Center Square‘s parent company, Franklin News Foundation.
