Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School

Table of Contents

Publisher’s Note

Preface: Six Years of Reflection and Progress

Introduction: Goodbye, Grades; Hello, Growth

Hack 1: Shift the Grades Mindset

Start a No-Grades Classroom

Hack 2: Promote Buy-In

Open Lines of Communication with Stakeholders

Hack 3: Rebrand Assignments as Learning Experiences

Design Comprehensive Projects for Optimal Growth

Hack 4: Facilitate Student Partnerships

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Hack 5: Digitize Your Data

Ease Data Collection and Inform Learning with Technology

Hack 6: Maximize Time

Confer Inside and Outside of Class

Hack 7: Track Progress Transparently

Discard Your Traditional Grade Book

Hack 8: Teach Reflection

Help Students Become Better Learners with Metacognition

Hack 9: Show Students How to Self-Grade

Put the Power of Grading into Students’ Hands

Hack 10: Deploy Cloud-Based Archives

Transition to Portfolio Assessment

Conclusion: Hack Your Growth

Appendices

Recommended Reading and Resources

About the Author

Acknowledgments

More from Times 10 Publications

Resources from Times 10 Publications

Publisher’s Note

Thank you for purchasing Hacking Assessment. We know this Second Edition, including 100 new strategies and resources, will help you reimagine assessment and feedback in your space.

We want to give you one more bonus—a free webinar featuring world-renowned educator and author Starr Sackstein. To view this impactful conversation with Starr, visit 10publications.com/starr or click the link below.

View the free webinar here

Thank you for all your amazing work as an educator.

— Mark Barnes, Founder and President of Times 10 Publications

Preface

Six Years of Reflection and Progress

Has it already been six years since I birthed the first edition of this book into existence? It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed and how valuable this text has been to so many educators making this important shift in service of equitable grading practices for all students. It has been humbling and eye-opening to see what my one shared classroom could inspire so many amazing educators to do in their own learning spaces.

Since Hacking Assessment first debuted, I’ve had years to practice, develop, and learn more about serving students as they grow as learners and supporting teachers while they help students grow. It has been my privilege to work with individual teachers, teacher teams, and leadership at the building and district levels as they consider the policies and practices to create true learning cultures. We’ve lived through a pandemic and countless atrocities perpetrated against black and brown populations, which has, once again, forced me to question practices, explore my own biases, and continue to work to use my platform to amplify voices. Together, we can remake systems that have traditionally marginalized many in service of the few. Reading this book can be the first step of your journey if you haven’t started yet.

For those of you who read the first edition, this newly improved second edition features many teachers and leader practitioners who live this work every day. The Appendix includes a variety of new resources based on the many emails I’ve received over the years and the detailed feedback from my people in the Teachers Throwing Out Grades Facebook Group. Thank you all for being a part of this journey and continuing to grow in this evolving and important work.

Although the core of this book will still encompass the tips and strategies in the first version, I’ve updated the technology, practice, language, and learning. Additionally, over the last few years, I’ve worn many hats, which have shaped my perspectives and points of view. I’m eager to add leadership tips for forward-thinking leaders who want to make this work a reality in their unique learning spaces.

Shifting to a gradeless approach to teaching is no small feat. If you’re doing it alone (like I did originally), then what you face is an even taller climb, but it’s not insurmountable. Bravo if you’re doing this work with your team, department, school, or district. We need more forward-thinking educators pushing back on the way things have always been and helping to educate communities about the possibilities. This book is about the possibilities. It’s about putting learning first and helping all voices be heard.

Introduction

Goodbye, Grades; Hello, Growth

Frustration. Every time I completed report cards, I felt frustration bordering on anger. How could I communicate learning with one single grade—without making every student’s learning appear the same? Averaged scores say little about learning: any number of students earn a B for different combined reasons. A gifted student who completes little work often receives the same grade as a struggling student who improved steadily throughout the course or a student who started strongly but performed poorly in the last quarter. Unfortunately, in high school, a single number or letter grade on a report card communicates a great deal of important information.

Every time a grading period ended, I struggled with meaningfully assessing my students, becoming increasingly less satisfied with system expectations of me. I needed to change something—I was doing a disservice to my students, even if they didn’t realize it, even if they had come to expect it, even if they didn’t understand how meaningful changes effectively honor their dignity.

We must converse about assessment using an enhanced narrative of what students know, what they can do, and what needs further work. Even more important, they need guidance to improve and recognize when they’ve legitimately grown.

My frustration continues to exist—but from a different perspective. I work with teacher teams all the time, and many just can’t envision schools without grades. The belief that students won’t perform unless they’re evaluated makes me cringe. Still, I realize we’re all in different parts of our journey. When we force big ideas into focus before educators or parents are ready, we end a potential opportunity (that comes after we start peeling back the layers). So I practice patience and make slow, measured suggestions, taking any occasion to push a little more, just as I did with my former students.

Almost two decades ago, I started dabbling in eliminating grades, initially taking the risk in one elective class. The class wasn’t essential for graduation, so it proved a safe testing ground to pilot the idea. After getting mostly positive feedback from students, despite my relatively novice understanding of the practice, I went all in. I made the move at the beginning of the school year and accepted that it would be messy and I’d need to change many things as we moved forward. With administration permission, I sent a letter home to parents, and when students arrived, we immediately started talking about learning.

As a high school English teacher in a small New York City school, I worked in an unconventional program comprised of five classes with varying content and student levels. The year I began my no-grades experiment, I taught ninth grade ICT Journalism (an inclusion class, operated without special education teacher support), eleventh grade Newspaper with students of varying skill levels, twelfth grade Newspaper, AP Literature and Composition, and Publications Finance (taught alongside two math teachers who were new to the subject). I served a grand total of 152 students. Undaunted by this huge undertaking, I hoped my enthusiasm and purpose would engage students in meaningful dialogue.

As with any new endeavor, running a no-grades classroom came with challenges. Although I’d taught all the classes before, I hadn’t done so without grades. Time management became an issue. At times, the shift away from tradition proved exceptionally challenging. I realized it’s much easier to just put a grade on student work. When I subsequently switched schools and roles, I started from scratch, putting all my practice to the test again. Would my initial practices work with a group of students who didn’t know me or in a community that viewed me as an untested figure? How would my new school react when I couldn’t use my reputation to support my why? Repetition forced me to test my practices, helping me reconnect with the challenges many of my readers face.

As we rid ourselves of the grades, risk-taking and questioning became a natural part of the process.

However, the immediate impact of the new system on my students encouraged me to persevere through these difficulties. My struggling learners were enticed by the idea of a no-grades classroom, often asking why other teachers weren’t taking the same approach. They liked not being judged. They hadn’t had success in a traditional space and were often negatively labeled because learning was more challenging, especially if the instruction wasn’t tailored to their unique needs to access the new information and skills.

Most of our learning and practice happened in class, so I was able to support students as they worked. Whereas almost none of them had been empowered to be an expert before, they developed expertise in different areas, such as identifying active headlines, writing engaging leads, organizing effective articles, and attributing quotations properly. They appreciated that we treated them like capable students rather than having the teacher assume they would always back away from a challenge. The truth is that all students crave a challenge; we just need to present it in a way that won’t shut them down. We can take a nurturing approach where key relationships can propel the positive risk-taking since we know our kids better; we know what they can do, even when they don’t believe it yet. Let’s show them they can. It starts with an opportunity to fail and then feedback, feedback, feedback to improve.

Since all students work at different paces, we didn’t assign nightly homework. Students were allowed to continue working on projects as they saw fit in and out of school, but there was no reason to burden them with busywork at home. Admittedly, this was a challenge at first. I had always given homework because I believed making students responsible for managing time and taking control of their learning was a mark of rigorous pedagogy. Of course, rigorous often meant more initially. You can deeply engage in conversations about homework by reading Hacking Homework, a book that Connie Hamilton and I wrote together to dispel such a notion.

After teaching for many more years and not seeing positive results with some of my older practices, I researched and read widely and determined that much of what I thought was good practice really wasn’t. While I no longer believed that giving homework was good practice, I had to remind myself that my students were getting an education that was often more rigorous than before, even without the homework. Rigor doesn’t necessarily have to do with the amount of work assigned but rather the difficulty and intensity of the problem or project.

Throughout this book, you will encounter many of the challenges I faced while successfully making changes. After working within a traditional system for two decades, a deprogramming process still occasionally causes me to pause. However, after seeing increased student commitment to learning once grades were eliminated, I’m constantly reminded of what truly motivates students: challenge, interest, and expectations, rather than a teacher’s rules.

These changes were ideal in the journalism class. As we rid ourselves of the grades, risk-taking and questioning became a natural part of the process. Students sought new online programs to test their ideas, and the outcomes were amazing. For example, when it was time to create journalism ethics PSAs, students found different storyboarding apps and cartoon apps rather than choosing to film themselves, which was uncomfortable for quieter students. Each group developed a different twist on the assignment, and this enriched the learning for everyone. The work was sound and creative, and learning was a positive experience for the students and me.

My highest-level students weren’t as excited by the idea. After all, most of the twelfth grade advanced placement class defined themselves as A students, and if I took this away from them, how would they know they were excelling? Achieving high grades is extremely important to an honor student. As a former honor student, I could empathize with their need for grade affirmations: I used to vigorously fight for every point I could get, just as they do. Looking back, I can see that the grade had little to do with the learning and more to do with my need to feel smart and to maintain my learner identity. I speak in depth about learner identity, and the often negative impact of grades on this identity, in Assessing with Respect. Those high grades were like a bulletin to the world announcing my achievement. I can’t imagine how much more I would have learned if I hadn’t felt the need to compete for better grades instead of just focusing on the learning. Hard conversations had to happen. Tough questions had to be answered.

What is achievement?

The question lingered in the air. I gave the students time to record their thoughts, and then they shared them in small groups. To many, achievement meant high grades in every class. I had to challenge that concept.

What does getting an A really mean?

We broke it down. Our debate opened strong feelings and stronger opinions. By the end of the first discussion, I could tell that they appreciated this new idea, but many weren’t willing to abandon their beloved grades, not for good, at least. Some may have been willing to delay gratification for a while, but What did I get? was still a mantra I had to deprogram at the end of the day. And over the years, the conversation on this point has continued to stir heated debate. In my TEDx Talk, A Recovering Perfectionist’s Journey to Give Up Grades, I openly share the inherent challenge, and I’ve continued to work with teacher teams and leaders; it is still a hard concept for many to wrap their brains around.

Buy-in was most difficult for the juniors. Seeing that this was a critical year for college, most of them didn’t like the idea of dealing with something new at this point in their educational careers. I couldn’t blame them for their skepticism, but I assured them that it would all be okay. We continued to converse throughout the early days of the school year. Their parents pushed back, too, as they worried about their children’s ability to get into college without grades.

I had planned to speak with parents about the shift away from grades on an open school night. Unfortunately, few parents attended; I had to reach them another way. Despite my discomfort with video at the time, I started a YouTube channel, which you can find under my name, so I could communicate progress and make learning transparent for parents and students. I committed to making a video a week, tracking both successes and challenges in our work. This channel ended up being a resource for my colleagues who were frustrated with grades. Unfortunately, few parents watched the videos. Although my initial attempts to communicate with parents weren’t as successful as I would have liked, there were still due diligence options. In the Appendix, you’ll find sample letters from teachers doing this work. In Hack 2, I also cover how to get stakeholder buy-in.

Undeterred by these initial failed attempts to get parents on board, I received the feedback I needed by sending surveys home with the students. The most vocal parents shared their concerns, which my high achievers and colleagues (and even I, at times) echoed, but instead of giving up, I continued to push forward, focusing on the improvement students showed in their portfolios of work. The progress was undeniable. I then used the YouTube videos to display what I saw in the work, and the students saw it too. The videos connected what I saw in the portfolios to the larger world and those committed to making these changes, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

I felt confident I was on the right track when I began to get feedback from colleagues worldwide. As it turns out, many educators are frustrated with the current grading system. They, too, work in traditional schools. They articulated many of the same worries I’d been trying to address. How could I sustain a bold risk like this in an institution where no one else was doing it? How could a no-grades classroom succeed when I was still required to provide progress reports and end-of-semester grades? The answer was Just keep going.

As the first progress report came due, it was time for student-led self-assessment conferences. I met with every child to discuss their progress. Now, this wasn’t the first time