I've given much thought to assessment and learning in my almost 30 years as a teacher. I've returned to this subject repeatedly, writing about it (here, here, and here) For most of my career, I did not give traditional letter grades. 20 years of going gradeless showed me that grades have very little to do with motivation and very little to do with learning. My students did their homework and were engaged in learning in the classroom. I've personally noticed only a slight difference between my graded students and my ungraded students respond to my teaching even though I find them cumbersome.
Look, it is easy to find a study that supports one's own viewpoint. Some studies suggest grades work. Alfie Kohn points to dozens of studies suggesting grades are harmful. I find much of what Alfie argues to be true. In my experience, I've found grades to be slightly inhibiting to learning. Yes, some students work harder when graded. Some students are inhibited/ intimidated/ discouraged by grades and work harder and take bigger risks without them . Yet, to be candid, I've found little difference in how the vast majority of my students reacts to my teaching with or without grades. To me, this in itself is an argument against grades, at least as a motivating agent.
Still, what about the pressures schools face to sort kids? How can we tell colleges and the workplace how well kids did? What about college readiness? This new model hopes to better meet this need than traditional grading practices have done. Some big names in education circles are advising this consortium, such as Tony Wagner.
I'm becoming increasingly interested in micro-credentialing. It seems easy and obvious to use as a train teachers in tech. It is less clear to me how to use them in the history class. Badging discreet skills is easier in tech. In history, in some ways the content is the skill. There are historical ways of knowing that are hard to separate from content. It is easy for me to badge someone who learns how to use WeVideo. History skills, and many other content area skills, are much harder to differentiate and assess discretely. The Mastery Transcript tries to give a holistic view of a student's progress.
I am not trained in the Mastery Transcript. It is likely they have anticipated the problems I expect it to have. Here's my biggest fear. to paraphrase The Who, I worry about a certain "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" scenario arising once the new model is widely adopted. I find some rubric practices to be just as capricious as grading practices. When we get down to details, will people game the new system just as they've gamed the old? Will learning by co-opted by kids trying to tick certain boxes?
I am concerned about badging getting in the way of learning. I want students to embrace learning, not thinking about school as the equivalent of getting a Boy Scout merit badge. Will "badge-ering" (you can groan) replace grade grubbing? What I like about badging is the precision it potentially can support. It is far, far better to say specifically what a child can and cannot do instead of giving a rather meaningless 88/ B+. Yet, if badges simply come to support a system that essentially has students jump through hoops instead of pursuing their own passions, badging will have replicated some of the worst practices of grading.
My hope is that the Mastery Transcript Model works and works very well. If it does, some of the more inane education practices we currently live with might finally be put down. A, B, C, D, F grades have been around since the 1890s. I hope this new model ends their current nearly universal dominance
before the end of the 2020s.
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