The American GPA has been on the rise since 1990—more students than ever before are enjoying the supposedly elusive A, the epitome of academic achievement (U.S. News & World Report, 2011). Many of us in education know the real story behind the numbers. Actual content mastery in U.S. schools has plateaued, especially when compared with other developed nations (DeSilver, 2015). What's most troubling, however, is that GPAs for students in poverty still lag significantly, despite national increases. Low-income students average a 2.64 GPA, while their more affluent counterparts average 3.16 (Marcus and Hacker, 2015).
Whether our solutions come from mastery-based grading reforms or a focus on equity in achievement testing, change must take place in the classroom and not on Capitol Hill, where even the term education has become politicized. Teachers carry the influence, the ability to assess students with both poverty and social justice in mind. And yet, when it comes time to yield this influence, we stand paralyzed, caught between competing ideologies. Questions turn to dilemmas:
- How do I maintain high standards while demonstrating compassion?
- Do I give my student an extension, knowing that his mom was working her second job so he was left caring for his young siblings?
- How do I teach students who have entered my class below grade level?
The questions remain unanswered, time goes on, and our students continue to underachieve academically. The 2.64 average GPA is sent out on transcripts to colleges, who then reject students' applications on the basis of these very GPAs.
Too often we insist on grading policies that assume learning can take place in environments beyond our control. Have we been wrong to insist that students living in the often harsh realities of urban poverty complete all of their coursework, typing essays while babysitting or working, only to penalize them when they submit their assignments late? In a culture where low-income students often find themselves marginalized, educators face the question of what a student's grade should truly measure. To accommodate for the realities of urban poverty, while maintaining high standards for all students, the first step is reflection. The second, and more important, step is action.
As Paulo Freire put it, "[T]he educator has the duty of not being neutral." Neutrality, in this case, is to perpetuate the status quo in the face of systemic injustice when it comes to the transcript disparity between students of means and low-income students. Rather than lowering expectations or accommodating in ways that could jeopardize college and career preparedness, our task is to work with students, measuring their mastery in a manner both conducive and realistic to their needs and hardships. If poverty can be classified as a psychological trauma (Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice, 2014), why then are we administering the trauma of the gradebook that implies to low-income students that their realities preclude them from academic success?
Poverty undeniably plays a role in achievement, but we cringe any time poverty is mentioned in the same sentence as grading. Regardless, the circumstances beg the question, are we just as committed to social justice in our gradebooks as we are to high standards and ethical standards?
Once you have considered your role as an educator in the context of social justice, the call to action is at once profoundly transformational (and maybe even cathartic), while also extremely practical. Here are some practical suggestions that can bring innovation and social justice to your grading practices, based on our own in-class findings:
- Shift the focus from "hard" deadlines for assignments to skill mastery. Assignments are meant as evidence of mastery, so allow students to submit and resubmit until a skill is mastered.
- Implement a "depth versus breadth" philosophy in selecting assignments, emphasizing meaningful, culturally relevant, and skill-based assignments.
- Incorporate office hours into your classroom culture. Use this time to check in on students' progress toward academic goals, while continually pushing them to higher levels of achievement. This is an opportunity to hold students accountable for meeting or exceeding standards and to strengthen the teacher-student relationship. It is also the strongest rebuttal to the idea that being flexible on deadlines means decreasing academic expectations.
- Collaborate with a colleague (or group of colleagues) on core grading practices, in an effort to invite transparency and accountability to your own gradebook. The more open we all are with each other, the less we run the risk of failing students whom the world has already failed many times over.
This is the call to action. Yet, it's not the tidy prescription of once-upon-a-time teachers. It has worked and is working in our respective classrooms, on a daily basis. So let's take a moment, right now, to think about how we can modify our gradebooks in the name of justice. Let's reflect on what we can do. And finally, let's do something about it.