When I speak to adults—that is, those people who are free of the educational institution—about grading and all of the harm it does, even those who are sympathetic to at least some of what I have to say follow up with the question: If we eliminate grades, how are we going to motivate students? The question is a good one, but the answer is not more grading, or different grading. Not only do grades not motivate students, they actively demotivate them.

Greene, D., & Lepper, M. R. (1974). Effects of extrinsic rewards on children’s subsequent intrinsic interest. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1974.tb00720.x

Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. (1975). Turning play into work: Effects of adult surveillance and extrinsic rewards on children’s intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(3), 479–486. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076484

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.68

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000a). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1020

You’re not alone. Other teachers are successfully quitting the grading game. In my own experience, it has been very helpful to hear their voices. Stacie was the first teacher to whom I reached out and she had encouraging words for me. I wanted you to hear them as well.

You can easily find articles discussing the 2010 IBM survey of CEOs by just searching these terms. But here’s a starting point.

Articles about Stacie’s teaching:From Global NewsFrom the Toronto StarFrom the Globe and MailFrom CBC

“Grading to the curve” is bullshit. Why do we do it? Because, like “standardization”, it holds out the promise of making educational measurement scientific. But when you scratch under the surface, you see that this promise is empty. We don’t need the curve, and we don’t need to make grading scientific.

Kulick, George and Wright, Ronald (2008). "The Impact of Grading on the Curve: A Simulation Analysis," International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 2: No. 2, Article 5.

Bresee, Clyde W. (1976). On "Grading on the Curve", The Clearing House , Nov., 1976, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Nov., 1976), pp. 108-110.

Grant, Adam. “Why we should stop grading students on a curve”, New York Times, 11/9/16.

Kahneman, D., O. Sibony and C.R. Sunstein (2021). Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. New York, Little Brown Spark.

The modern institution of education has an addiction problem. We are addicted to standardization. Even when we are shown how standardization is making us worse, we conclude that the answer is more standardization. We can break this addition—we must break this addiction. But there’s no 12 Step Program for what we’ve got. We’re going to have to go cold turkey.

Brimi, Hunter M. (2011) "Reliability of Grading High School Work in English," Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation: Vol. 16 , Article 17.

A Break From Grades

Grades ruin everything. But I wanted to take a break from this topic to discuss something a bit more enlightening, if not uplifting. I am an admirer of the work of Richard Rorty. I think that he has changed the way we do philosophy in North America for the better. Nevertheless, his meagre writing on education deserves serious criticism. James Baldwin’s “paradox of education” points out precisely the weakness in Rorty’s position. And although the two are not specifically speaking to one another, I think it is worth putting them into dialogue.

Rorty, R. (2000). Education as Socialization and as Individualization. In Rorty, R. Philosophy and Social Hope. Penguin, pp. 114-126.

Here is a link to James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers”.

Rob Reich gives a critique of Rorty similar to my own in his “The Paradox of Education in Rorty’s Liberal Utopia”.

Ever wonder why we have the A-F grading scheme? You're not going to like the answer!

Here are the articles I mention in this episode:

Starch, D. and Elliott, E.C. (1912) Reliability of the Grading of High School Work in English. School Review, 20, 442-457.

Starch, D. and Elliott, E.C. (1913) Reliability of Grading Work in History. School Review, 21, 676-681.

Starch, D. and Elliott, E.C. (1913) Reliability of Grading Work in Mathematics. School Review, 21, 254-259.

Starch D. (1913) Reliability and distribution of grades. Science, 38, 630–636.