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Day 24: Should schools change how they grade during the pandemic?

This one is our weekly New York Times Learning Center writing prompt, but it’s also a HUGE question on the minds of teachers and students alike as we head into the first days of May. What should grading look like during a global emergency? Is it even something we should (or can) worry about right now?

There are probably as many ways to answer these questions as there are students in our school. Everyone’s situation is going to be different, and everyone’s ability to do schoolwork while COVID-19 is spreading will be different. In order to come up with an answer that works, we’ve got to agree first on what is most important in the discussion — what my debate class is exploring as values.

Academic honesty might be the most important idea to some teachers; keeping sanity and peace in the home might be the most important value for some parents! Keeping the lights on by continuing to work might be most important to some students. Their decisions may vary based on the value at stake.

With so many different people (and values) interacting, how do we make a decision as a school, state, or country?

For me, as a teacher and a new parent, the value in my mind when considering grading is learning. This isn’t a normal school year, and we have so few of the tools that are normally available to us. Whatever encourages or allows students to learn the most is what we should do; and in this time of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty, I feel that the biggest thing we can do to support learning is to create engagement.  The best thing I can do is what helps my students and families connect to school. Staying active on Instagram? Sure. Learning goofy Tiktoks? No problem. Texting because it’s more convenient than a phone call? Absolutely.

This attitude extends to the way I think we should grade, too. Any grading policy that makes students want to disengage with school or give up is right out the window. This is where the question gets sticky, though: get too generous (no grades will be given for anything!), and no one feels there’s a point to working. Get too strict (grades must be given for everything, including zeroes!), and you burn out families already overwhelmed by the expectations of working from home or continuing to work in the public. We absolutely have to grade differently from normal, but in a way that allows students to feel the work is worth their time (meaning they get points for it) without pressuring them to the point of shutting down.

No problem, right?

Published inELA IIITeaching in the Time of Coronavirus

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