In this episode, Boz and Sharona dig into the instant reactions that educators often have when they first hear about alternative grading. Inspired by Dr. David Clark’s recent Grading for Growth blog post titled “Kneejerk Reactions,” Boz and Sharona unpack the most common reflexive objections to grading reform and explore practical, compassionate ways to respond.

From “Retakes aren’t real world!” to “It might work for your students, but not mine,” they share stories and examples while dissecting how these quick defenses often mask deeper fears or misunderstandings about teaching, learning, and assessment. Along the way, they connect these reactions to issues of equity, institutional inertia, and the psychology of survivorship bias that keeps the “traditional grading” game alive.

Links

Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!

• Episode 21 – Alt Grading in Large Chemistry Classes: An Interview with Dr. Eden Tanner
• Episode 70 – A Reassessments Deep Dive with Becky Peppler
• Episode 88 – Unearned Grades: Remaking the Conversation about Grade “Inflation”
• Episode 114 – Grading What Matters: Leveraging Extrinsic Motivation to Grow Students in Multiple Dimensions

Resources

The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.

The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.

Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:

• The Grading for Growth Blog
• The Grading Conference
• The Intentional Academia Blog

Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:

• Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
• Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
• Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel

Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.

If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.

All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Music

Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

117 - Knee jerk

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sharona: Yes. So Dave titles it, "it might work for your students, but not mine."

Boz: And we have, this is your favorite because we've heard this in so many different environment circumstances and the mine and yours in so many different fields. It's.

sharona: Well, and the one that drives me absolutely crazy. I get the discipline one, right? It's funny, but it doesn't drive me crazy. It works in math, but not English. It works in English, but not math. It works in like, okay, that's fine. Everyone thinks their discipline is unique.

Boz: Welcome to the Grading podcast, where we'll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students', learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We'll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our student success. I'm Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

sharona: And I'm Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week, you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello and welcome back to the Grading podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two co-host, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How are you doing today? Sharona?

sharona: That's an interesting question. I mean, it's early in the morning, so hopefully the day is gonna go well. Unfortunately, for me, it started with a headache, so luckily that has cleared up, but I'm just like, hmm, the jury is out on today so far. So I'm hoping for a good day. No reason it shouldn't be, but not a great start. How about you?

Boz: All right. I'm glad your headache's gone away. That would've made this a little bit less fun. But yeah, I'm dreading a little bit. I've got an unusually busy weekend between just, you know, work and grading and a particular honeydew that both my wife and both of my girls are on me about which we are recording this on the first weekend of October, which means they think it must be the weekend that we put up Halloween decorations.

sharona: Which I know is like one of your favorite things to do, right?

Boz: Oh, yes. I love doing decorations. It's funny, I've been trying to come up with excuses to get out of it or to at least postpone it. And they're not working like the last one I came up with. So a couple weeks ago we had a weird like power surge in my house that knocked out several of our outlets. We've had an electrician and some other people come by and they're having a hard time fixing it. So we've got some extension cords going through the house. 'cause we've got like whole rooms without any working electric outlets.

sharona: Oh boy.

Boz: So that was my excuse, is I, I can't do this. I, all the extension cords are in the house and without dropping a beat, my wife was like, well, okay, how many do you need? I'll go to Home Depot. I'm like, dammit. So my excuses aren't working.

sharona: Oh crimey River. At least your excuses are for something that is kind of fun once it's done. I have had a lot of excuses this week to not do the work that I need to do because I just don't want to for some of my jobs. So, okay, enough's getting started. What's our excuse? What are we talking about today? Then?

Boz: Well, it is funny that we're bringing this up because on the last Grading for Growth blog Dr. David Clark did an entry that exactly about this, about excuses that he's heard that many of us have heard over the years about why not to do alternative grading. And we've talked about every one of these excuses we've talked about at some point in time and often many times, but this was just a fun article to read and I thought it would be kind of fun to go through some of these, add some of the ones that we've heard, just these really, common excuses that people find. And oftentimes it's not just an excuse, it's they really do think this way like, well, and these are real barriers.

sharona: Right. And what's interesting about what Dave wrote is he's really talking about the instant excuse or reaction. Yes. Like somebody hears about alternative grading for the first time and they go into one of two buckets usually. Wow, I'm fascinated. Or that can't possibly work. Like it's just such a visceral.

Boz: And there's nothing in between.

sharona: Right. A lot of the time, sometimes people are like, what? And then that's a little bit different. But in particular, he was writing about these 0.1 seconds reactions. About why they couldn't possibly do this thing, what he put in the article. And what we really wanna talk about today is responses to that. Because although like we've heard it a million times, we still wanna give people tools that when they confront this in the wild, they're prepared. This reminds me of something that I helped my kid do when he was in the fifth grade is, you know when someone comes at you with something and you're not prepared to respond, sometimes you trip over your tongue or you don't know what to say, but if you've practiced a response, it can really help.

Boz: Yeah.

sharona: And so we actually, with my kid, we practiced responses to common things that were happening dimmed at school. Here I wanna practice responses. To some of these kneejerk reactions.

Boz: All right, so let's, let's jump into this Kneejerk reaction is the actual title of the blog post that Dave put in. So what is probably, I would say one of the two biggest ones that most commons that I've heard in the first one that he talks about in this article.

sharona: So before we jump to that, can I just mention one thing though? Often it's not a knee jerk reaction when I say I do alternative grading, it's a knee jerk reaction when I start to describe it. So this particular one is directly in response to that I give retakes. That like, so it's not, oh, I do alternative grading, it's the one step down when I start to say it includes the four pillars. Yeah, this particular one is retakes are not real world.

Boz: Well, I, I, no, I would go further than that. It's also Okay, the you'll get this a lot when we're talking about like deadline.

sharona: But it's really those two. It's not the clearly defined learning outcomes. No one argues this on that. It's not on feedback loops. So you're right. It's on retakes and it's on deadlines.

Boz: Yep.

sharona: And that is students have to learn how to do things in the real world, and this doesn't do that.

Boz: Yep.

sharona: So what's your usual reaction to that statement.

Boz: I would actually argue that the only place in the real world that doesn't do this is academia, right? So, but my favorite one that I go to every time is driver's license. I took my driver's test multiple times. I failed the first one 'cause I hit a curb Parallel parking,

sharona: who hasn't?

Boz: But yeah, they didn't average my test. I, when I get pulled over, if I get pulled over now, there's nothing on my license that said, you know, he, he failed his driver's license test 30 something years ago. So that's one of my favorite like real world examples of, yeah, we do things like this in the real world, but man, there's a lot, a lot better ones that Dave goes into, but what's, what's some of your favorites?

sharona: Well, I tend to tailor it to who I'm talking to. So if I'm talking to a faculty member, I might talk about the journal paper submission process where you turn it in, you get reviews. Sometimes it gets rejected, but even when it gets rejected, you can resubmit it. If I'm talking to somebody who says one of the typical things like, oh, well you don't want a bridge built by an engineer who failed. Well, we talk about the licensing exams. I'll talk about the board exams for medical or the bar exams. I'll talk about. And, you know, I, I come from an advertising background. So in an advertising world you often are gonna submit advertising to the client and they're gonna give it back with feedback. So it's very, I I try to tailor it to who I'm talking to, but I agree. I love what Dave put in here 'cause this is so universal. So what did Dave put in his article?

Boz: So he, well he puts a lot of things, but he starts it off with the fact that he got this reaction from an accounting faculty member. During a q and a session and what does he do? He goes very quickly and finds IRS form 4 8 6 8, which is titled Application for Automatic Extension of Time, which.

sharona: To file your individual tax return.

Boz: Yeah. A no questions asked six months extension. So here's a faculty member that is saying that, and again, this would sounds like they were talking about deadlines or extensions and. We don't do these in real world, which, oh my God, I hear that all the time, you can't turn in things late in the real world. I don't know, a single real world scenario where if you're late on a report, that means you just don't finish it and you don't turn it in 'cause it's late and now you can't.

sharona: Exactly. And again, it's the, we get this on the deadlines, but we also get it on the retakes. You know, I don't wanna drive over a bridge built by an engineer who had to try 20 times to do it right. I do. I want them to have been in a lab and been in a class where they tried and failed and tried and failed and tried and failed and learned what doesn't work.

Boz: Yeah. That's why we have simulation programs. That's, that's why doctors don't start with anything living. They start with cadavers or models or now virtual models, and they continue to practice those. So yeah, I would much rather have someone that took them, you know, 5, 10, 20 times to get it a hundred percent right than someone that got it. 70% right on the first time.

sharona: Dave says a couple of things a little bit further down where he says, given that people will make mistakes, would you rather have them make mistakes while learning or put it off until the stakes are higher? So there's this very dangerous assumption that only the first attempt is what's worthwhile. Only students who do well enough the first time are good enough to move on.

Boz: That's kind of one of our fundamental ideas of most alternative graders is this understanding that we do learn at different paces that not everyone learns at the same pace. You know, I know another real world example. I know growing up it took me a really long time, especially compared to my brothers to learn to ride a bike. Does that mean anything? You know, five years down the road? Was I as good if not better bicycle rider than my brothers? Yeah. 'cause I rode all the time. But this idea of, it only only counts on the first time. And I really like how he ends this whole kind of conversation on this idea by really quoting Dr. Benjamin Bloom, one of the, especially in the K 12 world, one of the more influential you know, educational researchers out there.

sharona: And the academic father of the man you are most in love with as an educator.

Boz: Absolutely. Dr. Thomas Guskey was, he actually got his doctorate from Dr. Bloom. So Dave writes in his, in this article, Benjamin Bloom had a lot to say about this over 50 years ago, key thing, and I think it's even longer than that, and I, I agree with him. It is the task of instruction to find the means which will enable our students to master the subject under consideration, not to filter and accept only those who already know it.

sharona: This is something. That I've been working with the teams that I coordinate on this idea of accepting only those who already know it. What we're struggling with at the university in mathematics at our institution is having students who are coming to us with deficits, and nowhere in that quote from Bloom says we have to enable our students to master the subject in the same amount of time. As students who come already knowing it, we just gotta find ways that will enable them to master it. And that could take longer. It could also take more work, because if someone is coming into a class missing some prerequisite skills, it's not only, okay, in my opinion. Our obligation to work with the student to help them identify those missing skills and clearly communicate with them what it is going to take to get those skills.

Boz: Yeah.

sharona: It could be more work, it could be more time, but we just gotta provide systems that enable them to have the space to do it.

Boz: And you know that one. Excuse or knee jerk reaction that Dave writes about, which is I think related both to what we were just talking about and to that same reason that it comes up that you were talking about the re attempts, which is this is just lowering standards.

sharona: Exactly. You know, the thought that people have when we say that they're going to reattempt is well. Clearly if students get to do it more than once, it's easier to get it right the second time. So therefore, we're lowering our standards.

Boz: Yeah, and you and I have talked about this a lot. In fact, I would argue that my standards of my students are much higher now than they were when I was doing traditional grading because I'm allowing them to do these retakes. I'm not accepting types of errors and mistakes that I would've in the past. I'm not allowing the cumulation of small mistakes that, you know, a student might scrape by with a C or a C minus. Isn't cunning it for me anymore? So, no, my standards are not getting lowered. In fact, they have, they've been rising because. I give retakes and because I allow students to make corrections and get feedback, figure that mistake out and reshow me that they have learned from those mistakes.

sharona: And I wanna clarify something about retakes. Retakes does not mean retaking the exact same assessment. And I'm finding that when I talk about this outside of the alternative grading world, that is the default assumption. If I say they can retake an exam, people assume, I mean literally the exact a copy of the exact same master copy of the exact same exam, and I'm like, no, they're re attempting an exam. On the same content, but the questions are different.

Boz: Yeah. And that, that actually kind of goes to one of our other pillars of alternative grading, that our assessments directly aligned to our learning targets. So, I think, much easier for someone that is really doing alternative grading to understand this, that, yeah. The student didn't fail my quiz three, they didn't get proficiency in my learning target, you know, two or my learning target six. So I'm going to reassess that learning target. And like you said, that doesn't mean it's the exact same test they had before. Now in some cases, can it be, sure we're not saying it can't be, but it doesn't have to be.

sharona: And I think that part of this confusion. Because I just saw this even with an alternative grader I was speaking to, is there's some level of confusion between the, as an a structure of an assessment versus the assessing of a specific piece of content. So if you have, say, an exam that's a longer form assessment and it includes multiple learning outcomes on it, sometimes within a single assessment it could be attempt number one on some learning outcomes, attempt number two on some other learning outcomes, attempt number three on some other ones. And even in alternative greater, if they forget and they start to analyze the A, the exam as a whole, like that doesn't make any sense. Because some learning outcomes, you're on the first attempt and some learning outcomes, you're on the third attempt. Yeah. So to try to combine those in some way to evaluate the exam doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So that's a little bit, I think, where some of the confusion comes in.

Boz: You know, and to be honest, we've done two full episodes basically on reassessments how to Do 'em, why do them? So if, you're interested, we had. One of our early ones, our first one I think with Dr. Kate Owens talking about her reassessment carnivals on how you can do them. And then we had another really good one back on episode 70, our reassessment deep dive with Becky Pepler from STAGR.

sharona: Yeah. And that's one of the things we were noticing when we were prepping for this episode is like. In the show notes we're actually gonna link back to a bunch of other things 'cause we have talked about a lot of this stuff.

Boz: Yeah. It's just wanted to kinda bring them all together in one episode especially 'cause it was just fun reading.

sharona: Exactly. It was

Boz: blog and bringing it up so.

sharona: Well and he brings up additional good points that come together. Another one here is won't your student just turn in lousy work the first time? Since they know they can do better and. The answer I usually give is, is it depends on how you communicate with the students. Because if you don't communicate about the feedback loop part of it and you're just like, take this and you'll get a chance to take it again. Which by the way, I did early on, I absolutely did not do a good job with this. And so I definitely had students just coming in and throwing work at the wall and trying 5, 6, 7 times, like that's not what we want. So building in that from attempt number one to attempt number two. There's some work that has to be done, so it's not enough to just do number one and do number two, but you should be correcting and reflecting and engaging in deliberative practice.

Boz: And this also came up in that episode with Becky. I don't, I don't remember if it was that episode. No, I think it was. So we did see signs of this actually happening, and that is something that Becky talks about in that episode is students will do that. And she saw it too until she started to really communicate the why. The why behind her grading system, the why behind her retakes. So when you do what you were saying, adding some of those reflective pieces, like it's not just. You know, I'm gonna take this as many times as I I can until I get something right. So we're, we're adding those pieces, but you're also adding the understanding of the why we're doing this. What's the purpose of this kind of grading? What's the purpose of the retakes? Combining those you don't get this, I mean, yeah, of course you're always gonna get the one or two students, but this is not an issue that really is widespread.

sharona: I agree. Well, it's not widespread when you have the necessary conversation.

Boz: Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. I, and I think part of this comes from the idea of the automatic graded reassessments. Like if you're in a, some sort of testing program, you know, a like Khan Academy or an ALEX, something like that where you can just retake and retake until you get something right or get, you know, above 80%, which is great practice. Absolutely phenomenal way to practice. No, that's not what we're talking about. Or at least that's not what I'm talking about with reassessing for assessment of a student's proficiency of a learning target. I would never do that. You know, and a kid gets 78 tries in the matter of an hour. No, there's no real additional learning there. But , I'm starting to think, especially with the increased use of programs like Khan Academy, like ALEX, like IXL, like I i-Ready that when teachers, or at least K 12 educators hear reattempt without penalty, that's the kind of thing that their brain is going to either consciously or subconsciously. And that's where part of this, oh, we're just lowering the standards then comes from.

sharona: It's not just in K 12 though. I was just speaking, like I said, with another alternative grading instructor who had been using Pearson's my lab and mastering program, which is one of those homeworks that lets you do, you know, infinity and what, what we're seeing, and I think we're seeing it too on some of the systems we use. We see students spending inordinate amounts of time, like unbelievable numbers of hours to get a hundred percent on their homework, and we're seeing their assessment grades go down and down and down. So there's, we're getting a break apart between the homework scores with these huge amounts of time and the assessment scores. So I think that having, even in practice, infinite amounts of time of chances without intervention by whether it's a human or whatever, to work with a student like that, deliberative practice is not working the way we expect it would.

Boz: Yeah, that's an interesting point

sharona: and I, I'm going, I go back, especially to the one time that Aaron saw me do one of his physics problems 42 times. Until I got it right and he was amazed by my perseverance. But the reality is, and I knew this even at the time, I lost track of what I kept changing in that 42 times. Like , I couldn't recreate what the process was, what I missed, what I changed. 'cause I would change something and it wouldn't work. So I would change it back. But there was no consistent track or process through that. I could have gone back and recreated.

Boz: Yeah.

sharona: So I don't think those infinite tries are actually working the way that we think they should. So, but that's a little bit of a side thing. Okay. Can we move? Do you wanna move on to the next one? Oh, I know you. It's one of my favorites.

Boz: I say, I know you wanna move on. You've been dying to get to this one, 'cause this is your absolute favorite one.

sharona: Yes. So Dave titles it. It might work for your students, but not mine.

Boz: And we have, this is your favorite because we've heard this in so many different, environment circumstances and the mine and yours in so many different fields. It's very well and comical.

sharona: And the one that drives me absolutely crazy, like I get the discipline one, right? It's funny, but it doesn't drive me crazy. It works in math, but not English. It works in English, but not math. It works in like, okay, that's fine. Everyone thinks their discipline is unique. The one that drives me really crazy right now. Oh, the students at my institution are so unique that unless you find the exact twin of my institution, it's not gonna work for my students that came to my institution because they have these absolutely unique characteristics and demographics and you can't possibly. I'm like, no, no. There's entire classifications of institutions that are exactly like yours, whether it's public, private, regional, you know, community college, four year. No, there are many other institutions that are exactly like yours.

Boz: That. That's funny. I didn't even think about that when I read this. I went directly to the, you know, oh, I could see how that might work in your English class, but it won't work in my math class or I can see how that will work in your biology class, but it can't work in my art class, and we have, we've, we've heard so many of these combinations. I mean, my favorite is, you've heard this with a what? A dental hygiene dental hygienist.

sharona: Yeah. A instructor of Dental Hygiene was like, well, I can see how that works there, but not in dental hygiene. I'm like, you're a licensed professional. Like, I think dental hygienists have to do an exam.

Boz: I would hope so.

sharona: Well, yeah. Like literally everyone who needs a license, real estate agents, attorneys, medical, you name it, it's not a one and done on your licensing exam. It might cost you more money. You might have to re-register, but I can't think of any licensing exam that's like, oh, one time and if you don't pass, you're never doing this. I'm not familiar. So if you have a licensing exam that does that, let me know. I don't

Boz: but this, and you know it's funny that dave Clark is talking about this particular thing because what did him and Robert Talbert do together? They wrote a whole book about how you do this in several different, higher ed settings. Yes, their book grading for Growth is all about higher ed settings, but they do, they show so many different, different disciplines, different institution types, different sizes, like, so if you've not read that book yet, and, and you're looking for concrete ways to get started hands down, that is the best concrete book to get. There's lots of great theory books out there. There's a, a lot of, you know, other good books that deal with certain aspects, but if you are a practitioner that's wanting to start. Or you've already started doing alternative grading and you're struggling with some of the concrete ways of doing some of this, that's a must on your read list.

sharona: Absolutely. I would agree. I love something that Dave says in this article about this though. Okay, so Dave's been giving, I think, a little bit more public talk. So this, this is a little bit harder if you're talking one-on-one. If you're talking one-on-one, then you have to be the one to come up the example. But if you're in a group, what he says is, he says more than once before he could answer this question, one of their own colleagues will, oh, but I do this. Yes, in our discipline, our shared discipline, and here's how I do it. So, and it's al it's almost from the same institution in the same discipline. Like, oh really? You don't think it can be done? Well, I'm doing it, which I think is hilarious. Yeah. And it can even be their own department that this example comes up in. So that's, that's always fun. But I definitely think trying to get. A concrete example, but also being aware that for me, I've learned to not go into too much detail with my own examples. 'cause that's where I really get stuck in this conversation. If I'm like, well, you know, in my linear algebra class where I have 24 standards, I do this thing. And they're like, oh well we have 65 standards. I couldn't do that. Or I don't have standards, or, you know, things like that. So trying to stay. If you're not talking in your own discipline, if you're talking to someone of another discipline, staying closer to the principles and then pointing out that there are a lot of people in their discipline if they're interested, that you could pull from.

Boz: And then I've got one that I wanted to add to this list that's related to this one. So you did the institutions. You know, it works in this institution, but not mine. Something that I think is kind of related to both of those in the K 12 world, and I hear this from everyone except elementary student or elementary educators. I can't do that because that's not how they're gonna do it when they reach, dot, dot, whatever the next level is. So middle school teachers saying, you know, this isn't gonna prepare students for high school. That's not how they do it in high school. High school teachers saying, oh, we're just setting up our students for failure. 'Cause they don't do this in college. So that's another variation I think of this argument.

sharona: Except then it comes to a screeching halt because no one says this about grad school. Really?

Boz: That's interesting. You're right, you're right. I don't hear that.

sharona: No, because everybody in, like within the discipline, everyone's like, well, we just expect our students to do well enough to get A's and B's in their courses. And after that, they're in their disciplinary research and that's not graded. Or they're going to medical school and I don't know how medical school grades or they're going to engineering school and I don't know how, you know? So yeah, it comes to a screeching halt with undergrad, which I think is also very interesting.

Boz: But, it's funny with kind of the same argument that Dave gave with their book. I'm gonna throw in a plug for our conference, for the middle school and high school teachers that don't think it can happen 'cause it doesn't happen in the one above, Hey, we just had an over a thousand person conference of higher ed educators from every imaginable discipline from literally around the world. I think we had what, 13 different countries

sharona: Yeah.

Boz: Of people doing this.

sharona: Exactly.

Boz: So it, it is happening, it does happen at the next level. It happens a lot.

sharona: As we're starting to see from some of our previous episodes, it is particularly happening at the elite institutions, especially some of the elite feeders, some of those independent schools in New England. So if. You've ever heard me talk about grading is the misuse of mathematics and how so much of this comes from Yale, university of Michigan, Harvard, and Harvey Mud. Well, those institutions are changing, so as they go, so too does often the rest of education.

Boz: Well, and we talked about that not long ago, about was it Harvard that had an article posted about alternative grading?

sharona: Yep. Harvard with Derrick Box Center at Harvard Yes. Has a whole thing. And Eric Maer at Harvard and the physics department's been doing this for years, so. Yeah. Yep. It's even happening at Harvard. I was say, I'm, I wanna talk about the last one that Dave mentions.

Boz: Okay, because, yeah, we just talked about your favorite one. This is my favorite one. And it should be obvious 'cause I've brought this up i've probably brought this up on more episodes than we've not talked about it, and that is, well, it worked for me, or I had to suffer through it, so shall they.

sharona: This is the one that, I wouldn't say it's my favorite excuse, just because this one actually bothers me less than the previous one because I understand the psychology behind it, but I do think it's the most insidious, I think it's the one that is really driving to a large degree the resistance, and I understand the psychology behind it, but why? Why is this one the one you're most excited to talk about?

Boz: Because this is the reason I believe any kind of educational reform is so hard and so long to get done, and I brought this up over and over and over. If you are in, if you are an educator, if you're in the world of education at some point in time, you were successful at the game of education. Now, yes, we know lots of people like Dr. Lynn Cevallos that actually dropped outta high school. She now has a doctorate in education. She still did have success at the Game of Education at some point, even though it wasn't early on. Everyone that is in this kind of position had to have had some level of success at some time. So when the succeeds or the successors of the program are leading the program, of course it's going to be hard to change the program.

sharona: It's Well, and I'm gonna change your word of succeeds to survivors because this is an example of survivorship bias.

Boz: Right. And you're absolutely right.

sharona: So it reminds me of our favorite airplane picture in statistics where all the planes in World War II came home, shot up through the wings and the tail, and they almost, I don't remember if they did or they almost put armor on those sections.

Boz: So I, I wanna give a little bit more context to that. 'Cause if you, if you're listening to this, and that's the first time you've heard us talk about this example, I don't know if you'll, that would quite make sense, but yeah in World War II they did a survey trying to find ways to improve the armor on ours and allies planes. So they were studying the planes that made it back from missions and studying where the bullet holes were to try to predict where it would be best to add armor. So they were getting all these planes back that had, you know, holes in the wings, holes in, you know but it turns out that's not where the armor was needed. The reason the planes were the making, you know, showing so many bullet holes and wings and stuff is the ones that were getting shot and the other places weren't making it back.

sharona: Exactly. And so that's become a classic example of survivorship bias.

Boz: Yep.

sharona: So you need to look at who didn't survive almost more importantly than who did survive. If you want to increase the survivorship. And so if we look at academia, especially in higher ed, I think it's probably even more prevalent in higher ed than it is in K 12. But the mismatch between the demographics especially and the backgrounds of higher ed faculty, which is still predominantly white and Asian predominantly male, although that's bouncing out and Absolutely. Although it's still,

Boz: the, the gender is still pretty significant in certain, especially STEM areas.

sharona: Right. And what their backgrounds are. Did they come from affluent families? Did they come, were they first generation in their, in their family to go to school? Like all of the sort of equity variables that we measure at the higher ed level, if you slap those onto the faculty, you're gonna see massive equity gaps. So who is not there? People of color, especially women of color, women in stem. And so we've identified all of this and therefore we have to say, what is it that is causing these equity gaps to persist? And my argument is that is very much the grading that's doing all these people in from early ages. And so the thing is changing that though, if you're talking to the people who made it through, there's an element of, I feel special because I made it through. I survived this really, really hard thing, and that's what makes me special. And if you start changing that, you're kind of attacking what makes people feel special,

Boz: I think that's, I think that's true for some. I don't know if that's true for all, and I definitely think it is more prevalent in some areas than others, like stem. I know you and I both, we have been referred to I'm sure many times as being perceived as being highly intelligent because we're good in math and Yeah. You know that and quite honestly. Been given some passes and some other things because of that if you flip it the other way around doesn't work.

sharona: Well. And I would argue that although many people can overcome this, even, I still feel it. Like, not that I wouldn't do alternative grading, but I definitely feel special for having succeeded at something that so many people perceive as hard.

Boz: Yeah,

sharona: it is definitely part of my identity. And so sometimes I get uncomfortable with that. Not uncomfortable with letting others succeed, but uncomfortable feeling like, well, maybe that's not so special if anyone can do it. And I'm just aware of that. So I have a lot of compassion, I guess I would say, for people for whom this is a big deal.

Boz: And but this one also, I think. Because, you might be right with that, but I think the flip is just as important and just as prevalent and maybe even more so in the K 12. And this doesn't affect just the grading. This affects all of the practices that you do in the classroom. And it's that, that idea of, well, this is what helped me. This is how I learned. So this is how I'm going to teach everyone. 'cause it worked for me. Therefore it must work. And I see this and of course this is incredibly common and it almost has to be with new educators. Like, we've talked about the fact, how did most people learn how to grade? We grade something similar to what we saw in our student teaching . Yeah, this affects grading. It affects so much more though, and I do I think it's actually from a place of caring, it's, this is what helped me as a student, regardless of any kind of research on whether it's effective or not. But it worked for me personally. So therefore, it must be good and it's going to work for everybody.

sharona: And see, I think that my lived experience of the types of institutions and the discipline I'm in, I see that a lot less. Yeah. Because if you're taking specifically math faculty with PhDs, we know that so few people get to our level that we, we don't assume that what worked for us works for anyone else. We actually assumed kind of the opposite. You know, I was able to do this a different way because I'm special. I really believe that everybody else has to be spoonfed this. Yeah. I didn't need that because I was good. So I don't know. Maybe that's, I think that's just because I'm in such a specific discipline where there's such a perception of being weird and different.

Boz: Yeah.

sharona: That maybe that's it, because maybe it is in other disciplines, I don't know. But I feel like math faculty, many, many, many of them, they absolutely think there's a right way to teach. But they don't expect anyone to succeed unless the students behave the way that they behaved. Like there's a match between, I'm going to teach the right way to teach this, but you have to do the right way to work it to match my right way of teaching. And of course you're not gonna succeed if you don't. So I don't know. It's a little bit of a different philosophy, I think.

Boz: Well, no, I think that you're, we're looking at two different kind of reactions are two different issues coming from a similar place.

sharona: Okay.

Boz: Because I think a lot of those same instructors, would they not, like if given the choice more times than not teach the exact same way they were taught, whether that was stand and deliver lecture compared to, you know, trying to incorporate team-based learning or, or active learning or,

sharona: yeah. I guess what I was thinking though is that, from what you were saying in the K 12 world, it's coming from a place of caring. Like, I really think this is what's right for students, and I don't know that some of the instructors that I've met, they'll. Some of them are very caring, but some of them are like, no, this is just whoever manages to succeed. I'm good with those people being the ones to succeed. Like it's just, look, if you can't meet me where you need to be, it's a you problem, not a me problem.

Boz: Yeah.

sharona: So I, I just, I don't know, maybe I'm just down on math instructors at the university level, which is entirely possible. Sorry, math instructors. This is not personal to anyone. It's frustration you're hearing. So those are the four that Dave talked about, and then he says what else? He's sure he missed some. Yes. Dave, you, you missed some.

Boz: So we've already kind of added two versions of things that we've added. So your example of, it will work at your institution, but not mine. Kind of like his, it'll work with your subject and then mine of, we can't do it here because they don't do it in the next institution. Right. But I think we've got a few others. So what's we do? What's another one that we've heard?

sharona: So the next two are, are two more of my common favorites. So the first one is. I'm not allowed to, meaning my institution requires things that are in contradiction with the principles. All alternative grading.

Boz: Yeah.

sharona: I have to give this grade or that grade or this percentage or that percentage.

Boz: And hey, there's some real truth to this. I mean, there are definitely both at, you know, the K 12 world and at the higher ed world. So I don't want anyone to hear us say that this is an excuse and think we're being, you know, insensitive to some of those things. But yeah, there are some institutes that do place requirements that make this a little bit more difficult, or I don't know if difficult's the right word. You just have to know how to, you

sharona: have to hack the grade book. You have to hack the grade book. So the most common one that I hear is you have to have. No more than 15% of the grade on the final exam.

Boz: Is it no more than or nor less than?

sharona: I've seen it both ways. Okay. So sometimes you're not allowed to, sometimes you're required to, and I would argue that I can make that work either way, depending on how you define 15%, because there's a lot of ways to do that, that you don't actually need numbers. You don't need to put points on a final exam to be able to prove that the proportion of your grade that's based on that is either above 15% or below 15%. And I could probably do it with the exact same exam structure I've seen. It just depends on how I argue it.

Boz: No, no, no. I have seen you do it with the statistics class. I have seen you argue the way we do our statistics. Course at Cal State. The way our grading architecture is set up. I have seen you give that example in how we do our final to argue either side of no more than a certain percent or no less than a certain percent.

sharona: Yes. So I am the queen of hacking the grade book. So if you have an institutional restriction that you're trying to get around, please call me, not get around, let me rephrase that. Comply, but not in the way that perhaps was expected by the people who wrote the restriction.

Boz: Yeah, and Dr. Kate Owens talked about this on, I don't remember if it was her first episode, but she talked about this on one of her episodes too, because her institution has some real restrictions and rules for how their syllabi can be set up. And she talks about some creative ways of hacking those requirements too. Right.

sharona: Now the other one. The next one, though, I hear this so much and it drives me up a wall. So the excuse is that this is unclear or confusing to students, aka, they can't handle this. Now, the reason this drives me absolutely bonkers is because no one understands traditional grading. I, that's why I have a whole talk. Deconstructing the mathematics and every learning management system lies about the weighted grade for every moment of the entire course until you put the last grade in the grade book on the last moment. Until that time, the percentage that is showing is a lie. And if you don't think that that's unclear or confusing to students. I wanna have a conversation because I think traditional grading is completely non-transparent. It's completely unclear, but everybody thinks they know how it works.

Boz: Well, and that's the thing, it's because we grew up with it. We never question it. Then we think we understand how it works. Here's my perfect example of that? And I told this story before. When my oldest daughter was a senior in high school, which was last year, she was taking an AP statistics class and she really struggled like she was having a hard time. I came home one night, she was absolutely in tears because her grade had dropped from an A to a D overnight, and it was because, she had taken a test. She bombed her first test. Before that she, she had a hundred percent average on her homework. She basically had, was doing everything else. She's crying 'cause she's upset and she's worried that I'm gonna be mad because, you know, I am a statistics teacher at college and she is an AP student who's now failing. And in our conversation she was like, you know, I'll bring it up. I, I'll do all the homework, I'll all that stuff. She had a hundred percent on. That wasn't gonna move her grade at all, so to say. She could only go down in homework. Yeah, yeah. In fact, if she didn't maintain that a hundred percent, it was gonna bring it down. So the fact that she didn't understand how to move that grade, and I would argue that is not an issue that my daughter had. That is an issue that most students have. So, yeah, unclear and confusing. It might be new. It might feel that way at first. And yes, you might have to do some explanation, but that's not a reason not to do it. And I'm sorry, the traditional grading is not as clear and obvious as you think it is.

sharona: Well, and I always hear an element of condescending paternalism when they say, students can't handle this, you know? Students can handle what we give them the tools to handle. They really can. I really believe the students are much more competent than we give them credit for if we base it on their grades. From all the conversations I've had with students about why they don't turn in homework or this or that, the things that our students are dealing with are gargantuan. There's so much more than I know I had to deal with in college, and I don't like this well students can't handle this. I just can't stand that language and I hear it.

Boz: Oh yeah, I hear it. I hear it at the K 12 worlds. As well with grades, with discipline, with all kinds of other things. And it's like, no, your students are going to raise to the bar that you set. Now, they might be just below that bar, but the, if you set your bar way down, then that's where they're gonna perform. If you raise that bar, yes, some students gonna need a lot of extra support to get there, but, I promise you, most of the students are going to go to the bar that you set, not what you say you set, but what you, your actual actions set for them. So. Yeah, set your bar low, and your students are gonna achieve low. They're not going to, with few exceptions, go 20 feet above your bar when your bar is two inches off the ground.

sharona: But set it high and give them the proper support. And by support I don't mean fake, like I'll boost him over the bar. You give 'em the right training, you give 'em the right tools, you give 'em the right skills, they're gonna blow your socks off. So

Boz: absolutely.

sharona: Okay, we're getting a little close on time. We had a couple more that we just wanna mention but I don't think we need to talk too much 'cause we've got entire episodes that deal with this. So what's another one here?

Boz: So another one that I really enjoy because I think it is a real limitation, is. It can't be done in large classes. We've got a whole episode on that one, episode 21. Our keynote, one of our keynotes last year was all about how you do this. In a large fact, the keynote was the same person. That episode 21 was with Dr. Eden Tanner. Also, every single year we have had the grading conference. Other than maybe the first two, there has been multiple sessions on how to do this with large classes, so.

sharona: Now let's be clear. It takes work, it takes structure. It it's, it's not easy, but it can absolutely be done. One of my favorite ones to talk about that alternative grading leads to grade inflation. And we have a whole episode, episode 88 on unearned grades. Yeah, because we argue that traditional grading leads to grade deflation. So traditional grading is as bad or worse at inaccurately reporting student learning compared to alternative grading.

Boz: And we've actually also shown a difference, like with when we actually compared. Our traditional graded students to our non-traditional graded students. In the statistics course, we actually saw that it was the traditional grading that was inflating grades. So and then another one that I think is really important, and we kind of alluded it with the, oh, we're just, especially the first test, gonna just throw it away. 'Cause I know I've got another one, but other. Key motivators. So removing some of those motivating factors, which we talk a lot about. In episode 114, which grad exactly. So, grading what matters With

sharona: grading with matters with mark Aronson.

Boz: Yep.

sharona: I believe, yeah. Well, what I like about this one is . What the objection is if you don't have hard deadlines, students aren't gonna do their work. Or if you don't have deadlines, they're never gonna do it. Grades are the motivator, which, how much research is out there that says that grades are actually demotivational.

Boz: For most students. There are a group of students that it is very motivational and those are the ones that kind of succeed at the system. How it is now.

sharona: Exactly. So we would argue that there's ways to push back to say it's removing a key motivator for students. And I do think that the deadlines conversation is much more nuanced. Like we talk about no penalties for late work. I think that that's a situational thing. No penalties for some late work, but there's other late work that is either penalized or replaced.

So I think there, that's a very nuanced conversation because if you remove deadlines, you are gonna have. Some disasters happen.

Boz: Yeah. And, and we've talked about that in quite a few episodes. Don't quite have time to get into it now 'cause we are coming up on our time. So I wanna thank everybody for listening. This has been The Grading Podcast with Sharona and Boz and we'll see you next week.

sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode's page on our website, www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact us form on our website. The Grading podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State System or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.