After this work we have a much higher percentage of passing grades and meaningful grades: the kids know why they got them and the teachers know why they gave them.

This has caused fundamental changes to my classroom. I didn’t think this work was going to be this big. This challenges what I’ve learned to do as a teacher in terms of what students need to know, what they need to show back to me, and how to grade them. This feels really important, messy, and really uncomfortable. It is ‘Oh my gosh look what I’ve been doing!’ I don’t blame myself because I didn’t know any better--I did what was done to me. But now I’m in a place that I feel really strongly that I can’t do that any more. I can’t use grading as a way to discipline kids any more. I look at what I have been doing and I have to do things differently.

This is all about equity. This is grading and assessing students on what they do inside the classroom, not based on their lives outside the classroom. It’s about giving every student second chances, and third chances, and more, to learn. It’s about giving every student hope. This is equity-based grading—grading in a way that is fair and transparent to students, parents, teachers, everybody.

What surprised me was that I actually changed my mind on some grading practices that I have been using for 8 years!

I used to think grading was confusing and overwhelming but now I feel more confident in my grading practices. Last year I used grades almost as punishment: ‘Oh, you didn’t do the work, now you have a bad grade.’ Doing this work really changed my perspective. It helped me realize that the main purpose of grading is to see how much the students know, to assess their learning instead of assessing their efforts: do they really understand the work, as opposed to did they do all of the assignments.