equitable homeworks

How to Make Homework Equitable

Listen to the full episode about making homework equitable.

I put a poll on my Instagram stories asking teachers if they give homework. Of the almost 200 teachers who responded, here’s what the data showed:

Obviously, homework causes a HUGE divide in the education space. So I wanted to do some further digging. What was the reason for teachers either assigning or not assigning homework?

For teachers who said yes here’s the breakdown:

• 53% said students need practice
• 22% said to learn responsibility
• 21% said school policy
• 3% said other

For teachers who said no here’s the breakdown:

• 41% said they don’t believe in HW
• 39% said they don’t want to overwhelm students
• 14% said they don’t have time to make it
• 5% said other

And of the teachers who said no, I got several replies talking about how homework is inequitable.  This is my standpoint as well . 

But what does the research say? Is homework effective? Is there a way to make it equitable? Let’s take a look!

The Pros of Homework

According to over 60 studies done by Duke University researchers , homework has a positive impact on student success. In addition, students who completed homework, had higher academic scores.

My response: NO DUH! 

When we have time to practice, the better we are going to become at it. Practice helps students progress in their understanding. And this aligns with one of the main reasons why teachers said they give homework: students need practice.

But here’s what else it said:

In order for homework to be advantageous for students, it needs to be academically enriching and developmentally appropriate.

If we keep that in mind plus we want to help students progress in their understanding and become a better mathematician and person as a whole…how does homework fit in…and should it?

The Cons of Homework

While completed homework has a strong correlation with academic success, studies lack a wider lens. Most don’t take into consideration socioeconomic status, race, internet access, home life, and ability level. All of those matter in this conversation of is homework equitable.

Think about this too:

What percentage of students are TRULY completing homework with integrity? Meaning they aren’t using PhotoMath, coping from someone else, or just putting in fake work to make it seem like they tried? Or for that matter, how many students are ACTUALLY doing the homework?

To prove this point, a study done is 2013 by Peter Liljedahl and Darien Allan show that only 12% of students actually completed homework with integrity and didn’t mimic procedures. The rest of the students either didn’t do it, cheated, mimicked procedures from notes or got help on the questions.

How do we mesh the two worlds of “practice improve academic success” and “not every student can do homework”? What do we need to do, in terms of homework to make that a reality?

1. Homework cannot be graded.

This means it cannot get a completion score, it isn’t turned in, and it does not go in the gradebook. Homework should have zero impact on students’ academic marks.

Hearing that, one might ask, “If it’s not graded, how are students incentivized to complete it?” I challenge you to think about this: If students are just doing it because of the consequences of not doing it, they are way more likely to cheat, get help, or mimic. And that right there defeats the purpose of giving the homework in the first place.

2. Homework is 100% optional.

Making homework optional relieves the pressure of having to do it right. Yes, some students will then not do it because there’s no “consequence” for not doing it. But think about all the students who might do it because the focus isn’t on completion and a grade, it’s truly about practicing to understand and gain mastery in the concept.

3. Homework should be a self-reflection tool.

This idea transforms homework from a “must do” to a “how well am I doing?” It becomes an opportunity for students to check their own understanding.

With this in mind, homework should then reflect whatever is going on in class. I’d say it’s okay to add in spiral review, but homework is NOT the place for concepts students haven’t learned yet. Students can’t reflect on something they haven’t learned. That’s also why I dislike the traditional pre-assessments.

With homework being a self-reflection tool, I encourage my students to work through the same problems over and over again. This works because I post the answers, the bare minimum answers, for them to check their work. This helps students see if they are on the right path without giving away the whole shebang.

4. Homework needs to be academically enriching.

I love that phrase, academically enriching. It implies so much in only two words.

What academically enriching means is that whatever questions you put on the homework need fall under these categories:

• high cognitive demand
• connects them to their world and/or community
• not procedure based

This is not the place for 100 plug-and-chug problems. That’s not going to be helpful to anyone. We want them to truly think about and use their brain power to solve a problem.

I know that what I have just said, is a high demanding order on us as teachers. I know we already have so much on our plates as it is. And this is just adding one more thing to it. Think about this:

What is your goal as a teacher?

For me, it’s to academically engaged students to help them deeply understand and love math.

If I’m giving them and forcing them to do homework every single night that has no tangible benefit that they see , not me, that my students see, how is that working towards my goal? What I shared with you is what I am striving for, and definitely not perfect at yet. You can only change so much every school year. But that change starts with us.

If our goal is to truly academically enrich our students to benefit them as a whole human being. Then that change needs to start with us. And it starts in the classroom.

Hi! I’m Johanna Kuiper. 

As a middle school math teacher, my goal is to help your students gain confidence in their math abilities. And to help you do that too.

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Rick Hess Straight Up

Education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute think tank offers straight talk on matters of policy, politics, research, and reform. Read more from this blog.

What Many Advocates—and Critics—Get Wrong About ‘Equitable Grading’

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Joe Feldman is a former high school teacher, principal, and district administrator and the author of Grading for Equity , now in its second edition. He’s also the CEO of Crescendo Education Group , which works with schools and systems on grading practices. Well, Joe reached out after a recent RHSU post in which I expressed my concerns about “equitable grading.” While we haven’t been in touch in a long time, I’ve known Joe since I TA’d a class he was in at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education 30 years ago. We wound up having a pretty fruitful exchange that, with Joe’s blessing, I thought worth sharing.

Joe: Rick, you’ve written recently about the harms of grade inflation and how a primary cause is educators who, influenced by “equitable grading,” compromise rigor and award students higher grades than they deserve. As someone who has researched equitable grading, written about it, and worked with hundreds of teachers to understand and implement the practices for it over a decade, I wanted to share some thoughts and explain that there are some common misunderstandings about equitable grading. One of the biggest is that the goal is simply to raise grades. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, a goal of equitable grading is actually to reduce grade inflation.

Rick: Thanks for reaching out. OK, I’m intrigued. While I’ve heard a lot of advocates and educators talk about equitable grading, I don’t recall any raising concerns about grade inflation. They’ve mostly urged policies that are less stringent and more forgiving, while sounding skeptical about traditional norms like hard work and personal responsibility. And, as I think you know, I rather like those traditional values. I fear that easy grading sends the wrong signal to students, gives a false sense of confidence to parents, and makes it tougher for teachers to maintain rigorous expectations. So, I’m delighted to hear you say that equitable grading isn’t at odds with all that. Tell me more.

Joe: OK, so the bottom line is that you and I both want the same thing: We want to be confident that the integrity of a student’s grade isn’t compromised by a teacher’s opinion or emotions about a student. Teachers can be tempted to reduce expectations for some students out of a heartfelt empathy for those with challenging backgrounds or circumstances. The student whose family is unhoused, has responsibilities to care for younger siblings, has ill family members, or lives amid daily violence all deserve care and support. Of course, we want our teachers to be compassionate and caring for each student, particularly those who face struggles outside their control, but unfortunately, teachers’ empathy can be misplaced when they give students grades that are higher than their true course content understanding.

Equitable grading presumes that our students and their families deserve dignity and respect, which means we must always be honest and accurate in our communication about where they are in their learning. One of the least equitable things we can do is mislead students by assigning them inflated grades and false descriptions of their performance, because doing so sets them up for a rude awakening and possible future failures. Equitable grading means accurately describing their achievement and channeling empathy for students—not into reduced expectations but through actions that truly improve their learning: additional supports, relevant and engaging curriculum and instruction, and multiple pathways to access and demonstrate learning.

Rick: OK, so I’m mostly nodding along here. I get honest and accurate information as a sign of respect for students and families. And I buy the problems you describe with easy grades and misleading feedback. And yet I’m used to hearing such concerns brushed off by those who champion equitable grading. So, what’s up? Why is the common sense you’re offering here not more commonly on display?

Joe: It’s unavoidable that as ideas spread, they get misinterpreted and misapplied, but I think there are a few things going on. First, the issue is deeper than people first realize. Grading is much more complex than it seems at first blush, implicating fields of pedagogy, adolescent development, and concepts of statistical validity. But in order to fully explain the complexity, I’ll have to expand on that in another post.

Second, sometimes we who advocate or implement equitable grading don’t explain ourselves enough to skeptical observers. Many well-meaning district and school administrators can make the mistake of quickly enacting equitable grading policies without meaningfully engaging and educating their teachers or student and parent communities. In order for equitable grading to work, we have to explain the theory and research—including teachers’ classroom-based evidence—demonstrating both the harms and inaccuracies of traditional grading practices as well as the benefits of equitable grading practices, and then provide teachers the support to implement them effectively.

But it’s also about how people receive these ideas. Changes to grading can elicit strong concerns and emotions, and the word “equity” itself is so charged right now that it’s easy to make assumptions about equitable grading before it’s understood. Every time I speak with educators, parents, or students, I realize that while grading and equity are both hot topics, we’re not used to talking about the deep complexities of either. So if we’re ever going to understand their intersection, then we’re obligated to approach equitable grading with curiosity and to make sure we don’t propagate misunderstandings or half-understandings.

Rick: That’s all fair enough. But a lot of the practices I’ve seen presented as “equitable grading”—by prominent advocates and big school systems—don’t seem to reflect your commitment to honesty-for-all. I’m thinking of policies that offer endless retakes or put an end to graded homework. I’ve had plenty of educators quietly complain to me that this stuff is a recipe for lowering expectations, permitting students to coast, and making diligent students feel like suckers. Am I getting this wrong? What do you think of these practices?

Joe: You cite perfect examples of where equitable grading ideas have gotten warped by superficial understanding or overzealous policymakers. Let’s take your example of “endless retakes,” which I have a hunch is hyperbolic shorthand. When we grade equitably, we offer students the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. If we agree that the principle of a retake or redo is a good one, then teachers need to figure out the most effective answers to a series of challenging questions: How can we create and implement retakes efficiently? What is necessary before a student gets a retake? When can they be administered and by whom? When is it time to move on? How can we make sure that the retake grade doesn’t have a “ceiling” score or that we don’t average a student’s scores—both of which would misrepresent their current and accurate understanding and would punish students who struggled but ultimately demonstrated understanding?

Another example: With equitable grading, a student’s homework performance isn’t included in their grade calculation, and therefore some misconstrue equitable grading as de-valuing homework. On the contrary, meaningful homework can serve a vital role in learning: practice. Teachers should give feedback on homework and even record a student’s work in the gradebook, but if we agree that homework is the opportunity for students to practice and make mistakes, then we undermine those purposes if we include their performance on that homework in the grade calculation. No one would argue that a runner’s time in a race should incorporate their practice times, so why would we believe our grades are accurate and fair when we include students’ performance during their practice?

There’s no coasting in equitable grading. In fact, teachers tell us—and students complain but appreciate—that equitable grading raises expectations. Rather than take a test and be done with it, equitable grading normalizes subsequent learning through additional practice. In traditional grading, whether students learn from homework is irrelevant so long as it’s completed—regardless of whether it was completed by the student, their tutor, or the internet. In equitable grading, successful learning depends on students learning from their homework. After all, no one counts the free throws you make during practice and adds that score to the game score. But if you don’t practice free throws, you won’t make them during the game. That means that teachers need to help students understand the value of homework by having clear ties between what’s on the homework and what’s on the test and to incorporate consequences for not doing homework that aren’t grade-based, like requiring extra time or providing supports.

Rick: OK. Love the point about not getting extra points for practice performance. While I wouldn’t say I’m convinced, I’m certainly a whole lot more sympathetic to what you’re talking about than to what I’ve generally encountered as “equitable grading.” But I think that’s partly because what you’re describing sounds like it could just as easily be tagged “honest grading” or “rigorous grading.” Given that, I’m just curious: Why call it “equitable grading”?

Joe: You’re not the first to suggest that I should call this something else, like “common-sense grading” or “accurate grading” or “fair grading” to avoid the political radioactivity of “equitable grading.” But I believe it’s important to call it what it is—improvements to traditional grading with an explicit awareness of the history of grading, and schooling, in this country—and to correct ways in which our traditional grading practices disproportionately benefit or harm groups of students.

Interestingly, people can mistakenly assume that it’s the historically underserved students who are the primary recipients of grade inflation. In fact, research and my organization’s experiences working with teachers suggest that grade inflation and false reporting of student achievement occurs just as frequently—and leads to a greater number of inaccurate A’s—among students who have more supports, whose families are of higher income, and who attend higher-performing schools. In these circumstances, grade inflation is not generally a result of empathy, but is instead fueled by a version of Ted Sizer’s famed Horace’s Compromise : Powerful parents support a school—and possibly pay expensive tuition—with the expectation that their child will receive high grades and be maximally competitive for admission to the most selective colleges. The good news is that while teachers may have little influence to counteract the intense pressures of families, they have nearly complete authority to improve their grading in order to correct the harms of traditional grading and to align the best teaching with the best grading.

Another example: In most classrooms, teachers include in a grade not only a student’s performance on assessments—what a student knows —but also whether a student completed homework, came to class on time, raised their hand in a discussion, brought in a signed syllabus, and everything and anything else that happens in a classroom; in other words, what a student does . The result of this incorporation of both academic and nonacademic criteria into a grade—what Robert Marzano has called “omnibus grading”—is that the accuracy of grades becomes compromised, and it’s unclear what a grade represents: The student who showed A-level understanding on an assessment but handed it in late receives a B, while the student who showed B-level understanding on the assessment but completed an unrelated extra-credit assignment receives an A. Now, imagine the complex formulas in many teachers’ gradebooks—30 percent tests, 25 percent homework, 25 percent participation, 15 percent group work, and 5 percent extra credit—and the dozens of entries in the categories, and grades become a stew of so many diverse inputs of student performance that in the quest to mean everything a grade means nothing and introduces both inaccuracy and confusion. Teachers can make grades more accurate by reducing the “noise” of data so the grade is simply, and entirely, a description of a student’s understanding of course content.

Rick: So, let me see if I have this right. While I’ve generally found equitable grading presented as measures that seem calculated to lessen rigor and “decenter” traditional academic norms, you’re telling me that it should be about ensuring a rigorous, consistent bar for all students?

Joe: Exactly. In fact, it has implications that are surprising to some. While most talk of equitable grading focuses on low-income students and children of color, including behavior and nonacademic criteria in grades tends to inflate the grades of students who have the most resources and are best able to accommodate, adhere to, and comply with a teacher’s expected behaviors. The student who has a stay-at-home parent, higher income, greater fluency in English, and more academic support—perhaps a tutor—is more likely to earn all the points from the nonacademic “assignments” of getting to class on time, completing every homework assignment correctly, contributing to every discussion, and satisfying every extra-credit opportunity, whether points are awarded for bringing in tissues for the classroom or a ticket receipt from a local museum exhibit. In this way, if a student has less understanding of content, but can compensate for that deficiency by satisfying other categories, then their grade will be inflated. In several studies, including Fordham’s 2018 Report on Grade Inflation , grade inflation was more pronounced at schools with fewer students from low-income families. Plus, when students’ nonacademic behavior—categories such as “participation” or “effort”—are included in the grade, teachers award points to students have particular personality types: those “who appear attentive and aggressive during class and who therefore receive higher grades than others, not because they have learned more material but because they have learned to act like they are learning more.” I’m sure we agree that a student’s personality type can’t be accurately assessed and certainly shouldn’t be included in the grade.

We can make our grades more accurate and fair for all students by excluding nonacademic criteria, dampening subjective biases, and reducing the impact of resource disparities.

Rick: All right, my friend. You’ve got me interested. I’m not confident that schools can do this responsibly. And I’m concerned that the zeitgeist around “equitable grading” is so far from what you—the author of the go-to book!—has to say. But let’s get into all that at greater length. If you’re game, we’ll dig into all this further.

Joe: Absolutely!

The opinions expressed in Rick Hess Straight Up are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Remaking the Grade: A District's Quest for Equitable Homework Policy

Snapshot: in this case study,  arlington, va, faced criticism from teachers and parents when the district announced a plan to make homework more equitable by eliminating deadlines and other requirements. how can schools address inequalities in the resources available to students when it comes to homework completion what can schools do to level the playing field between students who have ample family, social, and financial resources to support their educational success, and students who have access to fewer such resources.

Case Description :   Many school systems have recognized that homework can compound inequalities when students with the most social and financial resources are best able to complete out-of-school assignments. Critics allege that schools can reduce existing inequalities by reducing the burdens of homework by relaxing deadlines and other requirements.

This case study describes efforts by the Arlington, Virginia public school district to address homework inequalities by proposing that for grades 6-12, there would be no grading of homework, no late penalties for homework, no extra credit assignments, and unlimited redos and retakes. Within days, several teachers at one of the local high schools anonymously issued a statement condemning the proposal, arguing that these modifications to homework policy would cause a “decline of high expectations and rigor.” The proposal made local and then national news when an education columnist for the The Washington Post characterized the proposal as a “catastrophe” and the anonymous educators as “smart teachers fighting a dumb plan.” Rather than fostering equity, the columnist argued, abolishing grades on homework would “hurt the neediest kids.”

This case is designed to foster discussion among educators around the ethics of homework in an increasingly unequal society. Does homework exacerbate existing inequalities, or does it provide an opportunity for disadvantaged students to demonstrate and improve upon their achievements in school? How can districts write policies that promote equity when there’s disagreement about what equity actually means in practice?

Additional Resources:  

Jay Matthews of the Washington Post brought national attention to the homework controversy in Arlington, Virgina, with his December 26, 2021 opinion piece. Click here to read his article.

Click here to read the full text of an open letter teachers at Wakefield High School wrote criticizing Arlington's revised homework policy.

On October 19, 2021, the school board received a presentation on the homework and grading proposal from the working group. You can see that presentation here .  

Arlington drew heavily on Joe Feldman’s book Grading For Equity when designing their revised homework policy. This written interview with Feldman in Harvard’s Ed Magazine provides an overview of his vision for equitable grading practices, along with a link to a longer podcast interview.

This piece from Education Next examines the impact Grading for Equity has had in schools and explains what standards-based grading looks like in practice. 

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How Teachers Are Changing Grading Practices With an Eye on Equity

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This is the second article in a two-part series about equitable grading practices. The first article sets up some of the challenges . In this post, learn how teachers are addressing this issue.

Nick Sigmon first encountered the idea of “grading for equity” when he attended a mandatory professional development training at San Leandro High School led by Joe Feldman, CEO of the Crescendo Education Group . As a fairly new high school physics teacher, Sigmon says he was open-minded to new ideas, but had thought carefully about his grading system and considered it fair already. Like many teachers, Sigmon had divided his class into different categories (tests, quizzes, classwork, homework, labs, notebook, etc.) and assigned each category a percentage. Then he broke each assignment down and assigned points. A student’s final grade was points earned divided by total points possible. He thought it was simple, neat and fair.

Looking back, however, Sigmon said this kind of system made it seem like teachers were setting up rules to a game. “They say these are the rules and whatever the score works out to be that is your grade," he said.

Feldman’s training questioned whether that approach to grading is fair. Feldman laid out a case against giving points for homework and extra credit, and is absolutely against the 0-100 point scale that dominates many classrooms. He maintains that for grades to provide an accurate picture of what students know, they shouldn’t include behavioral things like homework and participation. And, he says when every teacher has a different set of grading practices it’s not only erratic, it’s inequitable.

“A lot of those ideas [presented by Feldman] questioned the reasons behind our grades,” Sigmon said. “And so it’s easy to get defensive about your grading policy or get defensive about those ideas. There was definitely part of me that was resistant and I could see why other teachers would be resistant. As a teacher you want to believe that you’re doing the right thing and that your grades are meaningful and that you’ve figured out a system of grading that makes sense.”

But as Sigmon looked at the logic and supporting data Feldman presented and tried tweaking a few things in his classes, those challenging ideas started to make sense to him. He realized the way he graded was largely based on his own experience in school and beliefs about what students “should do.” But when he started to see each teacher’s grading policies as a set of arbitrary rules students are expected to follow, as opposed to a coherent indication of what a student knows, he was ready to make a change.

“I have to be more thoughtful. My grades now are meant to be an accurate reflection of a student’s mastery of the standards set by the state in high school physics,” Sigmon said. If a student can display their knowledge of those standards without doing the homework, he shouldn’t be penalized for that in his grade, especially because students all have different responsibilities outside of school that can make getting homework done difficult.

The first thing Sigmon did was think carefully about what it means to show mastery of each standard the state expects him to teach. He asked himself, “What can I expect high school students to do with this content?” That became the qualification for a B grade. To get an A students had to go beyond that. Earning a C meant the student was close to understanding, but not quite there. Getting a D would be very little understanding, and an F would be almost no understanding at all.

“It feels biased and subjective and that’s because it is,” Sigmon said. “I have to kind of trust myself as the professional to judge their understanding of a certain concept. That's a tough adjustment to make.”

Sigmon doesn’t grade by assignment anymore; he grades by standard. That means he’s not assessing things like lab work, classwork or homework anymore. “Those things are all practice,” Sigmon said, although important practice. He only wants to include information that directly relates to their ultimate understanding of the standards in their grade, which he reasons, is supposed to reflect what they know at the end of his course, not how compliant they are.

Like many teachers who hear about this style of grading, Sigmon was worried students wouldn’t do homework at all if points weren’t attached to it. And, in fact, he did see a dip in homework completion at first. But, when students started to see their quiz and test grades drop because they weren’t doing homework, they made the connection pretty quickly. Now, Sigmon says his students' homework completion rate is higher than ever, and even better, they have no reason to copy each other’s homework.

“I was really surprised because after students started failing the assessments they started realizing the only way to improve their grades was to improve their understanding,” Sigmon said. There are still a few kids who try to do as little as possible, but some will even email him for extra questions to get more practice.

Grading and Equity

This kind of  standards-based grading approach is a growing trend in some corners of education. It’s part of a push to make sure kids are actually mastering the information they’re supposed to learn, not just playing a points game . That reasoning is compelling to some teachers who are excited about shifting pedagogy, but Joe Feldman thinks he has an even more compelling reason that schools should start making a shift in how they grade -- equity.

Feldman has worked in education a long time, first as a high school teacher, then a principal, and later as a central office administrator. He’s been around enough schools and classrooms to know that even when teachers have worked hard to align their curriculum and assessments in order to provide coherence for students, the experiences students have in each teacher’s class can be vastly different. That’s because each teacher grades differently, allotting a different percentage for tests, participation, homework, and even things like effort. Some teachers accept late work with no penalty, others allow students to do extra credit to make up work; some allow retakes on tests and quizzes, others don’t. For students, the result is a thicket of different rules that must be navigated each year or class period.

“The more I really investigated and researched it, I found it wasn’t just an issue of consistency,” Feldman said, “it actually had implications for equity in schools. Many times the grading practices teachers use inadvertently punish students with fewer resources.”

The way Feldman sees it, teachers use grades for much more than indicating whether students have mastered the academic content. For example, teachers often deduct points for late work because they want students to respect deadlines and learn responsibility. Or, they know that engagement is important for learning, so they include participation as a portion of the grade. Grades, then, become a behavior management tool, a motivational tool, and sometimes an indication of mastery too.

Take the common practice of averaging grades, for example. One student might come into class with no experience writing a persuasive essay. The first time he tries, he turns in a terrible essay and gets a low score. The next time he improves, and by the end of the semester he’s nailed it. But that student will always have a lower grade than the student who came into class knowing how to write a solid persuasive essay, perhaps because of a summer camp opportunity, and never progressed much further during the year. The second student will get a better average grade, even though she didn’t show growth in her writing.

“That’s really inaccurate to describe a students’ work like that,” Feldman said.

To be clear, Feldman is not saying that teachers consciously develop inequitable grading systems. He knows from experience that the opposite is true. Many teachers go to great lengths to remove bias from the process, doing things like covering student names while grading. The trouble is that some long standing grading practices may be perpetuating bias anyway. Take student participation as an example.

“If I grade on participation and I'm looking for: Are they looking at me? Are they taking notes? Are they not talking when I’m talking? They are descriptions of how that teacher learned,” Feldman said. “And they believe that if other students exhibit those qualities they’re more likely to learn.” But, he says, that’s subjective, which means a whole portion of a students’ grade could be filtered through a teachers’ unintentional bias towards the style of learning they prefer. The way to get rid of this potential bias in grading is not to reward participation in final grades.

“This elicits a lot of different emotions form teachers,” Feldman said. “I’ve had them cry, yell at me, walk out of the room, write me off as some sort of nut. But as I work with teachers they’ll start to confront the idea that what they believe about students may not be true.”

Feldman understands this reaction from teachers. Education has become more top-down with mandates from the state and district level making teachers feel that their professional judgment is not valued. Grading practices are often the last bastion of autonomy a teacher has and independent grading is enshrined in many teacher contracts. When principals or districts try to suggest ways to make grading more equitable, they are often met with accusations that they are infringing on classroom autonomy.

Feldman says the only way teachers come around to what he proposes is by looking at the data, deeply discussing the ideas, and trying some of his strategies in their own classrooms. That’s what convinces most of them to dig in and make changes.

One easy way to dip a toe into more equitable grading is to get rid of extra credit. Often these assignments are things like, go to a museum and submit a report, or write an extra essay.

“These things depend on a student having the time, money, resources to be able to do those,” Feldman said. More importantly, they’re beyond the curriculum and shouldn’t be required for the student to understand the material.

Another strategy Feldman recommends is requiring retakes if students score below a certain level. Right now, many students take a test, get a score and move on. The learning stops there. Feldman thinks a more equitable practice is to encourage students to learn from the errors they made on the test and take it again.

“Teachers have told me that when they suggest to students that they’re going to have to retake it there’s resistance from students, but they ultimately appreciate the teacher doing that and build a stronger relationship,” Feldman said. “There’s no clearer message that your teacher cares about you than that they won’t let you fail.”

And teachers can put parameters on retakes. They may say students can only retake after demonstrating growth on the missed skills, or they may require students to go back through the homework and pick out the questions related to the skills they missed. This not only requires students to reflect on mistakes, but it also reinforces the value of homework for learning.

Importantly, after the retake, teachers should enter the best score in the grade book, not an average. To Feldman’s thinking, students shouldn’t be penalized for putting in the extra work to understand the concepts. If they show they know it, they should get credit. And Feldman has a response for teachers who say that students need to learn to meet deadlines and pass tests the first time -- very few measures of adult learning are one-and-done. People can retake their driver’s tests, their teacher licensing exams, their SATs and MCATs.

In a world of high stakes tests, the discrete skill of test taking may be worth teaching students individually to make sure they know how to face the exams when they come. But Feldman would prefer teachers were honest with students about test-taking as a skill, as opposed to rolling it into the course grade.

Feldman also doesn’t think behavioral things should be included in the grade because they don’t reflect mastery of content. That doesn’t mean a teacher can’t keep track of things like on-time work, organization, or other scholarly behaviors. Perhaps after the next test the teacher can then sit down the student and point out the relationship between some of those tracked behaviors and a poor test performance.

“It opens up a much wider range of conversations teachers have about the purpose of behaviors and their relation to academic success,” Feldman said.

He also doesn’t think teachers should give grades for group work. It’s too hard to determine if the individuals have mastered the content in those settings. That doesn’t mean group work isn’t valuable, it just means the assessments should be individual.

“We want people to collaborate well because when you collaborate well you make a better product and there’s a great reward to doing that work,” Feldman said. “We think it will increase their individual learning. The only way to know if they were effective in their group work is to see if they improved in their individual learning.”

This also prevents one or two students in a group from doing all the work. And, it reflects the inherent value of skills like collaboration and communication because when used on a group project they lead to success.

“There are certain strategies that have been used year after year that are just a barnacle on the ship,” Feldman said. “Teachers feel they just have to do it.” And often the systems within a school building make it hard to break free. The 0-100 scale, for example, is the default setting on many high school online grade books.

Feldman hates this scale for many reasons, but the biggest one is the destructive power of a “zero” for missing work . He contends the scale is weighted towards failure because 0-60 represents failing, whereas there are only 10 points between every other grade delineation. And if a student gets a zero on an assignment, it’s almost impossible to climb out of the hole that creates in their grade. Many students just give up. They know it’s mathematically impossible to pass after that.

One tweak would be a 50-100 scale, although Feldman understands that psychologically it’s hard to give a 50 to a student who did nothing. That’s why he prefers a 0-4 scale, with none of the nit-picking over a few points to get from a B+ to an A-. Students either meet the requirements for proficiency or they don’t. They exceed the requirements or they don’t. Feldman sees the gradations in-between as unnecessary and leftover from a points-based system.

While he doesn't disagree with all of Feldman's points, Ethan Hutt , an assistant professor of teaching and learning, policy and leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park, worries that taking process out of student grades sends the wrong message. He contends students do need to learn to be conscientious, responsible, hard working and to seek help. In his classes, those are the students that succeed. Homework and other incremental assignments build those skills.

“The foolish thing is to teach students that the only thing that matters is the disembodied work product," he said. He thinks it's silly to expect teachers to separate the work from everything else they know about that student. And on a broader scale, he wonders if learning to "play the game" is such a bad skill to teach. Much of life is about learning to navigate bureaucracy and hierarchies, so why shouldn't students start learning to do that in school?

Putting It Into Practice

“I didn’t feel good about what I was doing when I was assigning grades, so I was very much ready for something like this,” said Sarah Schopfer, a 10th grade English teacher at Colfax High School in Placer County, California.

She knew her grades were subjective, but didn’t know how to change them. She noticed that a lot of her grading was based on participation, and the same handful of kids always participated. Those were also the kids who would do whatever she asked of them. But she knew there were other kids who wouldn’t “play the game,” and whose grades didn’t reflect what they could do.

“So that would show them failing,” she said. “And then they think they’re stupid and they’re not. They just do things differently.”

She admits changing how she grades was hard at first. She was uncomfortable with the 0-4 scale and had to change how she teaches to focus more on building relationships with students, as well as helping them find intrinsic motivation.

“It completely rocks your world and that’s why some teachers don’t," she said. "I can see the hesitation." But still, Schopfer said shifting her grading practices is the best -- and hardest -- thing she’s ever done in teaching.

“The biggest changes that I felt comfortable doing right away were that we don’t put things in the grade book that are behavior related,” Schopfer said. If kids are late, acting out in class, or not participating it doesn’t go into their grade anymore. “I know that scares the hell out of teachers because they’re like, how do I get them to turn things in on time?”

This question forced Schopfer to sit down and look at her assignments closely. Some projects were fun and glittery, but didn’t align with the standards as well as she thought, so she jettisoned them. Now she focuses on making the rubrics clear and transparent. She wants her assessments to be accurate. And she promised her students she won’t give them busywork, a commitment she takes seriously.

“Now I manage my class with relationships,” Schopfer said. “They have to trust you. They have to respect you. They have to want to do things for you because you've shown them that the things you ask them to do are important and matter.”

She says students still turn things in on time, but when they can’t for some reason, they apologize to her and let her know when they will be able to get the work in. She doesn’t have as many students sitting in class who think they’re bad at English. They have opportunities to redo things, to learn from their mistakes, and that’s motivating.

“Ultimately to me there’s no question. It’s an ethical issue,” Schopfer said. “Now that I know this I can’t go back. It’s not equitable.”

When she asked students what they think of the new grading system, here’s what she heard:

"It makes sense. All assignments add up and relate to learning overall. You have to do the work to be able to do the next step. You have a clear purpose for us, and the grade is just a side aspect.”

"You realize that we are people. We have crazy home lives, or some of us do. This makes my life less stressful, and they are accurate. I'm learning."

"You are treating us like adults, but with a cushion."

"The old grading methods are straight hypocritical and don't make sense when you think about it."

Nick Sigmon has also asked his students about their perspectives on his new grading system. He was shocked by how clearly students see through traditional grading.

”Students are very much aware that school is a game and that your grades aren’t based on how well you understand something, but on how well you play the game,” he said.

When he surveyed his students, many thanked him for moving to a more transparent form of grading, one that forced them to be responsible for their work, but in a clear, transparent way.

Sigmon has also found that changing how he grades has created a shift in his teaching by giving him a more clearly defined goal. "Now that I have established what my grades mean and what they’re based on then everything works backwards from there," he said. "I know what students need to be able to show, what they need to be able to do. So I had to rethink everything to make that the focus.”

For example, Sigmon has stopped doing the typical “I do, we do, you do” formula for a new concept. He realized that perpetuated memorizing a procedure, not deep understanding, especially when all the practice problems are a clear imitation of the test questions.

“It’s changed the kinds of questions I ask,” Sigmon said. “I try to always ask questions the students have not seen. It’s the same concept, but being applied in a new way.”

For his part, Joe Feldman wasn’t sure these practices would work when he first started developing them, so he invested in external evaluation of grade distribution among teachers who were changing their grading practices. The results from independent evaluator Leading Edge Advisors showed that the rates of D's and F's went down, but the number of A's also went down. One immediate response to this might be that teachers lowered their expectations, but Feldman says grading this way actually made it harder to do well.

The decreases in D's and F's were clustered among Latinx, African-American, low-income, and students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Meanwhile the decrease in A's mostly affected white students. “It reflects how the current system has been benefiting and punishing certain students disproportionately,” Feldman said.

He also wanted to test the accuracy of grades in this new system. He found that when teachers graded with his proposed equity strategies student course grades more closely correlated to their standardized test scores, indicating that the teacher’s assessment that a student mastered a standard was aligned with that same demonstration on the tests.

All of this is strong proof for Feldman that it’s important to have conversations about grading with teachers. He knows teacher experiences will drive change -- they must have opportunities to try out strategies and see the effects themselves -- but district leaders also have to provide the tailwind for this to become a reality. And that’s where he sees the biggest challenge to this work.

“[District leaders] know it’s going to require a lot of relationship building with teachers and parents. And some aren’t really sure it’s worth it,” Feldman said.

This is the second article in a two-part series about equitable grading practices. The first article sets up some of the challenges . Read an excerpt from Joe Feldman's book " Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms " to learn one principal's journey in recognizing how inequitable grading was affecting her students.

Read the new report “Can We Trust the Transcript? Recognizing Student Potential Through More Accurate Grading”

Grading for Equity

What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms

This book will stop educators who want to improve their practices with underserved students right in their tracks. Feldman offers an insightful invitation to teachers who dare change the ways in which we have been taught to grade students’ products. He demonstrates how our grading practices are grossly under substantiated and too often unquestioned, and he challenges educators to build equitable assessment tools and mechanisms to support learning and development of all students. A must read for justice-centered educators.

Co-author of These Kids are Out of Control , Past President of the American Educational Research Association Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Education Peabody College, Vanderbilt University

Feldman shows us how we can use grading to help students become the leaders of their own learning and lift the veil on how to succeed. Authentic assessment and transparent grading are essential parts of a culturally responsive classroom. This must-have book will help teachers learn to implement improved, equity-focused grading for impact.

Education Consultant and Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain

Reading this book will make you re-think the way you assess students and will inspire you to enact a system that encourages revision and redemption instead of compliance and corruption.

Ph.D., Senior Lecturer at Stanford School of Education and Co-Founder of Challenge Success

Feldman is the nation’s leading expert on equitable grading. It is an honor to feature him and his insights in ACUE certification courses. The proven approaches he recommends are as relevant to professors as they are to any educator committed to grading as a tool for deeper learning.

PhD, President and Co-Founder Association of College and University Educators (ACUE)

Authentic assessment and transparent grading are essential parts of a culturally responsive classroom. This must-have book will help teachers learn to implement improved, equity-focused grading for impact

How Equitable is Your Grading?

Students need equitable grading in every classroom in every school. We are here to help!

Bring Equitable Grading to your PLC, School, or District

We have many resources and ways to support teachers and school / district leaders to bring improved grading to your students. Join us in our mission to transform schools and classrooms!

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Grading is one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today’s schools. Teachers are protective of their right to grade, but inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps among our students make grading an issue of equity. There are grading practices that are more bias-resistant and motivational that can improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and create stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. Let’s take a look.

Perpetuating inequity

Think about your grade book. Think about how you approach that stack of papers to grade. Do you grade students differently? Have you been harsh to one student and more lenient to another?

“Most teachers believe that students who try should not fail regardless of whether they actually learn, but other teachers believe the opposite: that fairness is honestly reporting academic performance regardless of effort,” says Joe Feldman in his book Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classroom . “Because each teacher’s grading system is virtually unregulated and unconstrained, a teacher’s grading policies and practices reveal how she defines and envisions her relationship to students, what she predicts best prepares them for success, her beliefs about students, and her self-concept as a teacher.”

The implications are profound and disturbing: we may have perpetuated inequities in our classrooms and schools for years without realizing it. Our use of inaccurate and inequitable grading may have barred students from getting in the college they wanted, kept them out of honors classes, and prevented them from graduating.” So, what can we do? Examine our systems and be willing to let go of an industrial model of grading (the idea that only some can achieve success and meet expectations on a curve) for a more 21st-century viewpoint (where everyone can achieve success given the right supports and opportunities).

Making grades meaningful

Most teacher grade books are broken down into categories like Classwork, Projects, Homework, Exams, and Participation, but it’s important to truly consider just how much subjectivity is involved in one’s grading policy and just how much that practice evaluates learners based on compliance. “Inequity is woven into our current grading practices in an even more obvious way: categories included in grades such as “effort,” “growth,” and “participation” are based entirely on a teacher’s subjective judgments,” says Feldman. “We know that teachers interpret student behaviors differently based on the student’s race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Including these criteria makes a grade more reflective of how the teacher interprets a student’s actions than what the student knows and can do.” Knowing this, we must consider what is truly worth evaluating. The answer? A student’s mastery of skills and content. If we remove elements like behavior and compliance  — they can be dealt with in a more restorative context — and solely grade on mastery and growth, we can free students from the shackles of subjectivity, bias, and evaluation on anything but their pure demonstrations of learning.

Making grades consistent

In one classroom, a student may be doing terribly because they missed a few homework assignments. In another, they may be doing well while missing the same few assignments. In yet another room, the student could be doing all the homework and still failing because they don’t participate in class discussions. Managing ever-shifting and uneven grading policies through the school year can make it difficult for young learners to meet expectations and success. While some may argue that managing a multitude of expectations is good preparation for life, our young learners and particularly those who need to learn how to succeed, may need some consistency. When schools work together to establish clear learning objectives, clear evaluation systems, and overall consistency, students are better able to navigate and drive their success.

Rethink the zero

There is so much debate about the zero. While some argue that doing nothing warrants a zero, some educators use the zero for non-compliance, absence, behavior issues, and non-mastery. On a 100-point scale, where A, B, C, and D are 10 points apart, the zero puts the F over 60 points lower. A 50 or 55 is still an F. Do we need to grade using the harshest F possible? A zero is devastating to an average as well as a student’s motivation. There are many factors that contribute to a student missing an assignment and it’s our job to help that student learn and demonstrate that learning through revision and continued opportunities for mastery. “Grading should communicate information about student learning in school, not punish students in ways that make recovery from transgressions impossible,” says Thomas Guskey , professor at the University of Kentucky who’s done extensive research on grading. “To recover from a single zero percentage grade, a student must achieve a minimum of nine perfect papers. Attaining that level of performance would challenge the most talented students and may be impossible for most others, especially those who struggle in learning. A single zero can doom a student to failure, regardless of what dedicated effort or level of performance might follow.”

Grades can’t represent everything

The truth is, grades cannot represent everything . They can’t encompass a student’s behavior, ability to meet deadlines, mastery of content and skills, participation, effort, professionalism, attendance, punctuality, neatness, and likeability — all without regard to any of the real-life obstacles and personal growth that may be occurring. It may feel like adding an attendance and lateness grade will deter students from lingering in the hall. It may feel like adding compliance to a class grade is the extrinsic motivation needed to compel students to fall in line, but the truth is it’s just too much packed into one measurement system. Feldman argues the following:

• If the work is important, require it. If not, don’t grade it.
• Grade the work — the learning and mastery — not the timing.
• Grades are not for control. They’re for teaching and monitoring growth.
• Allow for mistakes and allow for revision.

If you’re using grades for compliance, really ask yourself: Is it working? Chances are, it’s not and students are progressing through school not really mastering or receiving the evaluation they need. In letting go of our very embedded notions of grading, we just might set our students free.

To read more on this topic, check out Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classroom by Joe Feldman.

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Beyond standards-based grading: Why equity must be part of grading reform  

By Joe Feldman | Apr 29, 2019 | Feature Article

  Traditional grading methods perpetuate inequities. Any new grading system must counteract both individual and institutional biases.  

In the May 2018 issue of  Kappan,  three experts on grading — Ken O’Connor, Lee Ann Jung, and Douglas Reeves — make a convincing case for teachers and school leaders to reject traditional approaches for evaluating and reporting student performance. The authors argue that instead of using grading practices that emphasize mathematical precision and the accumulation of points, teachers should implement standards-based grading practices that are Fair, Accurate, Specific, and Timely (or “FAST”). Such practices exclude student behaviors — such as lateness or compliance — and rate students only on academic performance and include a more flexible array of assessment strategies. The authors also call for educators to incorporate into the grade a student’s performance on only summative, not formative, assessments and to consider a student’s recent academic achievement rather than averaging performance over time.   

Standards-based grading and examining grades through a schema such as FAST is a vast improvement over common grading  practices . However, the authors’ argument overlooks one of the most insidious aspects of traditional grading: Many common grading practices in K-12 classrooms perpetuate the historical inequities woven into our schools for a century. The Grading for Equity Initiative that I lead critically examines the legacy of traditional grading and considers how teachers can reduce bias in grading and promote educational success, particularly for students who have historically been underserved. Multiple qualitative and quantitative external evaluations of the initiative conducted by Leading Edge Advisors and Elite Research, LLC, have found that equitable grading practices that are more accurate, bias resistant, and motivational lead to stronger teacher-student relationships, less stressful classrooms, reduced failure rates and grade inflation, interruption of the cycle of achievement disparities, and grades that are more closely correlated to student test scores (Feldman, 2018).   

Grading’s historical legacy  

In the early 20th century, as techniques of mass production reshaped the U.S. economy and families from rural areas and immigrants flooded to cities, the need to educate large numbers of students led educators to apply the efficiencies of manufacturing to schools. So, just as manufacturing sought to increase production and maximize value, our schools were charged with sorting students into academic tracks that best reflected their supposedly fixed intellectual capacity and prepared them for their assumed life trajectories. In most cases, this sorting, facilitated by the introduction of the A-F scale, was used to justify and to provide unequal educational opportunities based on a student’s race or class.  

A century later, we have drastically different beliefs about students and the goal of schools. We believe that every student can meet challenging academic standards, and we want our classrooms to interrupt the cycle of disparities that allows us to predict students’ success based on their race, resources, and native language. To promote equity, we implement restorative justice discipline policies, learn culturally responsive instructional strategies, teach more diverse authors and perspectives, and expand our repertoire of assignments and assessments to address the different ways students learn. Yet our grading system remains virtually unchanged. By continuing to use century-old grading practices, we inadvertently perpetuate achievement and opportunity gaps, rewarding our most privileged students and punishing those who are not.  

O’Connor and his colleagues mention equity in passing, but a focus on making grades equitable not only provides a sharper lens through which teachers can interrogate and examine how they grade, but also provokes an ethical obligation to change. Grading for equity goes beyond FAST grading and standards-based grading in two ways: It protects grading from  implicit individual  biases  and it counteracts the  institutional biases  in traditional grading.   

Inoculating grading against implicit bases

Many teachers are familiar with the concept of implicit biases: attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions without our conscious knowledge or awareness. We make assumptions about people and interpret their behavior through lenses that are clouded by our personal experiences, our country’s legacy of discrimination, and media-driven stereotypes; and because we may not be consciously aware of our biases, they may even be contrary to our explicit beliefs. In other words, even those of us with an avowed commitment to impartiality and fairness are susceptible to judging students unfairly.  

Grading practices in which teachers choose to award or subtract points in a grade for students’ behaviors are susceptible to misinterpretation and implicit bias.  

Educators, policy makers, and social justice advocates have taken this idea to heart when reforming school discipline policies and practices in recent years. For example, when researchers found that implicit biases contribute to disproportionate punishment of Black and Brown students for infractions based on educators’ subjective judgments, such as showing “defiance” or “disrespect,” some schools and districts dropped those infractions as punishable offenses (Staats, 2014).   

Grading practices in which teachers choose to award or subtract points in a grade for students’ behaviors are just as susceptible to misinterpretation and implicit bias as these disciplinary practices. For example, in classrooms taught by White teachers, Black students are typically rated as “poorer classroom citizens” than their White peers (Downey & Pribesh, 2004) based on the types of behaviors often included in graded categories of “participation” and “effort.”   

As O’Connor and his colleagues (2018) assert, including student behavior in grades creates “an uncertain mix of achievement and behavior” that renders grades meaningless. But that’s just the beginning of the problem. When teachers include in grades a participation or effort category that is populated entirely by subjective judgments of student behavior, they invite bias into their grading, particularly when teachers come from a dominant culture and their students don’t. Awarding points for behavior imposes on students a culturally specific definition of appropriate conduct that involves interpreting their actions through an unavoidably biased lens. Just as teachers might require students to write their name on the back of a test to  prevent their opinions about students from infecting scoring, equitable grading inoculates grading against bias by excluding from grades any judgments about student behaviors.   

Counteracting institutional biases 

Institutional biases show up when the procedures and practices of institutions, which may appear neutral, result in certain groups being advantaged or favored and others being disadvantaged or devalued. Many traditional grading policies that seem innocuous on the surface can reinforce existing disparities, rewarding students who already have more resources and punishing students who come to the classroom with fewer resources.   

Consider the common practice of factoring students’ homework performance into their end-of-course grades. Students are much more likely to complete homework if they have a quiet, well-lit space to work and college-educated   parents who have the knowledge and availability to help (or, if not, a paid tutor). By contrast, students are much less likely to complete homework if they live in a noisy apartment or have parents who didn’t graduate from high school, have jobs in the evening, or speak a first language that isn’t English. Plus, nearly one-fifth of students report that they are unable to complete homework because they lack internet access at home (Project Tomorrow, 2017). When teachers include homework performance in the grade, they give points to students with resources and deny points to students without. Put simply, educators often inadvertently translate student economic disparities into achievement disparities, replicating in classrooms the very achievement disparities they want to interrupt.    

Another example of an institutional bias in traditional grading is the common practice of averaging a student’s performance over time. O’Connor and colleagues (2018) explain how this practice violates the A (for accuracy) in FAST grading: When students struggle with content initially but ultimately master it by the end of the term, the averaged performance will inevitably be lower than their actual achievement, and the final grade will misrepresent the students’ true level of content mastery. Viewing the practice through an equity lens reveals another problem: Students who earn high marks from the start of a unit likely had prior experiences with the content before the unit even began. Perhaps they participated in an enrichment program, received tutoring from an instructional program that anticipated the school’s curriculum, or had teachers the previous year who effectively taught essential pre-skills. Other students who lack these advantages may receive lower scores early in the unit, and although they can make up the ground during the unit, when all performances are averaged together, those early scores place them at a disadvantage. By only considering students’ final learning in the grade rather than averaging performance over time, educators more accurately  describe  students ’ level of content mastery and level the playing field, allowing all students to be successful regardless of their resources and histories.  

The benefits of equitable grading  

There is evidence across dozens of schools, hundreds of teachers, and thousands of students that more equitable grading practices not only make grades more accurate but also reduce achievement disparities. When teachers use equitable grading practices their rates of failing grades decrease significantly, with low-income students and students of color experiencing a more dramatic decrease. Across all middle and high school students in an urban California  school district, for example, the percentage of D and F grades assigned dropped by almost a third when equitable grading practices were put in place, allowing the district to reallocate the cost of what would otherwise have been 250 remedial seats to other instructional needs (Feldman, 2018). At the same time, equitable grading decreases grade inflation, and does so more significantly for White and higher-income students. In a cohort of teachers across four high schools in California, there was a statistically significant decrease in the rate of A grades awarded, particularly for White students and students not qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch (Feldman, 2018). With a reduction of D and F rates for historically underserved student groups alongside a reduction of A rates for White and higher-income students, more equitable grading reduces achievement gaps in grades.   

A focus on making grades equitable not only provides a sharper lens through which teachers can interrogate and examine how they grade, but also provokes an ethical obligation to change.  

In addition, independent research on the Equitable Grading Initiative has found that equitable grading results in a statistically significant increase in the correlation between teacher-assigned grades and standardized test scores, with a greater increase in this correlation for low-income students. These results illuminate how traditional grading disproportionately punishes vulnerable students and rewards more advantaged students.  

Finally, we’ve seen that equitable grading affects student motivation and the culture of the classroom. Students who have experienced years of failure — whether from constant judgments of their behavior or unsound mathematical calculations — respond to more equitable grading with more intrinsic motivation to learn, more trust in and stronger relationships with their teachers, and greater confidence in their own capabilities as learners. (See www.gradingforequity.org  for direct quotes from teachers and students.)  

The motivating power of equity  

Teachers are always interested in improving their work, and for some teachers, pedagogical justifications may be enough incentive to make a major change. However, teachers often enter the profession because of a conviction that every student deserves a full opportunity to succeed. When we explicitly connect grading to equity and teachers learn how traditional grading practices undermine the very equity they want in their classrooms, they feel the urgency and develop persistence to learn more, to push through skepticism and discomfort.   

Nearly every school and district’s goals include a commitment to equity, which makes the importance of tackling grading more obvious and justifiable. Explicitly naming the inequities in current grading and how grading can promote equity means seeing grading improvements as more than a nice-to-have pedagogical shift. Educators have a moral imperative to dismantle the inequities that endure in our schools, and we cannot make good on our promise to give every student a real chance at success until we make our grading equitable.   

References  

Downey, D.B. & Pribesh, S. (2004). When race matters: Teachers’ evaluations of students’ classroom behavior.  Sociology of Education, 77  (4), 267.  

Feldman, J. (2018).  School grading policies are failing children: A call to action for equitable grading.  Oakland, CA: Crescendo Education Group.  

O’Connor, K., Jung, L.A., & Reeves, D. (2018). Gearing up for FAST grading and reporting.  Phi Delta Kappan, 99  (8), 67-71.  

Project Tomorrow. (2017).  How America’s schools are addressing the homework gap: Speak Up 2016 findings.  Irvine, CA: Author.  

Staats, C. (2014).  Implicit racial bias and school discipline disparities: Exploring the connection.  Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.  

Citation: Feldman, J. (2019).  Beyond standards-based grading: Why equity must be part of grading reform.  Phi Delta Kappan, 100  (8), 52-55.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Feldman

Joe Feldman is a former teacher, principal, and district administrator and the founder and CEO of the Crescendo Education Group, Oakland, Calif. He is the author of Grading for Equity .

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Think Again: Does "equitable" grading benefit students?

Recent years have seen a flurry of new grading policies that risk lowering academic standards in the name of equity. Newly popular practices include “minimum grading” policies, which prevent teachers from assigning students less than 50 percent credit; prohibitions on grade penalties for late work; and bans on grading homework and class participation. Such changes in grading practices, which accelerated during the pandemic, deserve greater scrutiny. Indeed, they risk removing both discretion from teachers and crucial incentives for students to study hard and cooperate with teachers and peers. Although some grading reforms may benefit students, those that water down expectations ultimately harm the students they are meant to help.

Download the brief here or read below.

Executive Summary

This policy brief challenges four key ideas that underpin “equity”-motivated trends in grading reforms.

Claim 1: “The existence of grade inflation has been exaggerated.”

Maybe historically, but not now. While standards for assessing student work have been falling steadily over time, the “grading for equity” era appears to have supercharged grade inflation.

Claim 2:  “Strict grading is harmful to students.”

False. To the contrary, lenient grading policies risk lowering expectations, and there is evidence that more lenient grading leads to less learning.

Claim 3.  “Traditional grading doesn’t communicate what students know and can do.”

False. If accompanied by clear expectations, a traditional summary grade can indeed communicate what students know and what they don’t.

Claim 4:   “Traditional grading perpetuates inequities.”

In some cases. Without efforts to increase transparency and reduce bias, traditional grading can perpetuate inequities.

The Bottom Line

The push for more “equitable” grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation and proffered little evidence of greater learning. Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges of the postpandemic era.

Implications

1. Policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies . Those include “no-zero” mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers’ ability to manage their classrooms and motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All of this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

2. District leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation. Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide data about their grading standards relative to their peers. Individual schools or departments should often be allowed the flexibility to weigh the costs and benefits for themselves and to experiment with grading reforms—and individual teachers should have flexibility in adjusting deadlines or penalties based on student circumstances.  What districts and states should not do is mandate reforms that could force teachers to lower standards and expectations. Such mandates are doomed to fail because so much depends on implementation, stakeholder buy-in, and the ways that reforms interact with other local policies.

3. Take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches . Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms should be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra credit assignments and implementing rigorous grading rubrics. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

In the 2000s and increasingly in the 2010s, the movement for “equitable” grading took root. Inspired by grading-reform gurus such as Ken O’Connor , Cornelius Minor , and Joe Feldman, a number of school districts—and at least one state —began implementing grading policies that explicitly or implicitly lowered expectations, including prohibiting teachers from assigning zeros (i.e., “ minimum grading ”), penalizing late work, and even marking down assignments on which students were caught cheating. Reformers have also argued for changing grading scales , which can have the effect of mechanically increasing students’ grades.

Then, in the face of widespread school shutdowns in the spring of 2020, districts scrambled to respond to students’ unprecedented needs. Amidst the context of racial reckoning, economic crisis, and a global pandemic, concerns about equity and mental health motivated many educators and policymakers to add on to or expand previous grading reforms, whether through pass/fail options , counting “needs improvement” as a final grade, prohibiting grade drops below prepandemic levels, or waiving standard graduation requirements .

The push to “give students grace” was understandable in that moment. Out-of-school inequities played a larger-than-ever role in students’ academic lives, with many students sharing devices with siblings, lacking quiet places to study, and struggling to access the internet to join class. Yet the return to traditional, in-person instruction did not bring a return to traditional grading policies. To the contrary, more districts than ever put into place grading policies that many district leaders believed were better for “equity,” or more precisely, leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students. Some of these policies—such as minimum grading (e.g., giving students no less than 50 percent of possible points) and prohibiting grading penalties for late work and even for cheating —make students’ grades rise automatically. Others seek alternatives to the traditional 0–100 scale, revising it to a 0–4 scale, for example, or to mastery grading (which is more qualitative than points based). Of course, not all equity grading reformers advocate all these practices, but these are all policies that, justified by a focus on equity, have gained substantial traction in recent years.

Such grading reforms were not birthed during Covid, but their increasing popularity and growing implementation by states and districts is new. Unfortunately, many of these policies lower academic standards and are likely to do long-term damage to the educational equity their advocates purport to advance.

“The existence of grade inflation has been exaggerated.” Maybe historically, but not now.

Concerns about whether grades accurately reflect student learning have been raised for decades. As far back as 1913, educational psychologist Guy Montrose Whipple questioned “the reliability of the marking system,” which he characterized as “an absolutely uncalibrated instrument.” Since then, grade inflation , by which teachers assign ever higher grades for the same level of academic work, has persisted.

Yet in the last few years, grade inflation has not only accelerated but has become normalized and pervasive, reframed as a core battleground in the struggle for greater educational equity (Table 1). Although not all reforms lead to more lenient grading, many do (Figure 1).

Table 1: Equity-oriented grading policies

Figure 1. Although traditional grading tends to be strict, a few grading reforms may result in even stricter practices.

Note: This figure represents the authors’ subjective evaluation of the extent to which grading policies are traditional and/or strict. The upper-left quadrant shows reforms that tend to make grading stricter, while the lower-left quadrant shows reforms that tend to make grading more lenient. The upper-right quadrant shows traditional policies that tend to make grading stricter, while the lower-right quadrant shows a traditional policy that tends to make grading more lenient. Bolded policies are those that may help combat bias, and italicized policies are those that may contribute to bias. Descriptions of policies or reforms based on these policies are included in Table 1.

Feldman, who regularly consults with school districts and whose 2018 book Grading for Equity has become a staple of teacher professional development , contends that his proposed grading reforms actually counteract grade inflation, “particularly for more privileged students,” because “ equitable grading no longer includes nonacademic, compliance-related, and subjectively interpreted behaviors. “ In discussing whether “classroom participation” should count, for example, Feldman worries that subjective grading practices will disproportionately inflate the grades of privileged students—who often benefit from advantages such as being more likely to encounter academic English at home.

Although this may be true in some cases, the claim that his recommended policies combat grade inflation ultimately confuses two aspects of grading: what should contribute to a course grade and how those activities should be assessed. After all, a teacher might grade class participation (the “what”), which Feldman claims may lead to grade inflation, but also use a rubric to do so strictly and fairly (the “how”). Meanwhile, another teacher might put more weight on an end-of-unit assessment (the “what”), which Feldman says will better capture a student’s mastery , but that assessment could be below grade level and scored based on subjective criteria (the “how”). 

In the case of “no-zero” policies and prohibitions on marking down students, there is little possibility of counteracting grade inflation because grades inflate automatically. As explained below, mechanical grade inflation can also result from switching grading scales, for example going from a 0–100 scale to a 0–4 scale, because the same work is automatically assigned a higher grade.

Although it is difficult to quantify the impact of these specific grading reforms on national grading standards, pandemic-era grade inflation is well-documented and persistent. For example, a 2023 report from ACT showed that “the rate of grade inflation increas[ed] substantially during” the pandemic years. Not only was the average 2021 ACT composite score the worst of any year they reported (going back to 2010), but the average GPA of ACT test takers in that year was the highest ever recorded at 3.4 on a 4-point scale. In late 2023, studies in both Washington State and North Carolina also confirmed enduring disparities between student grades and test scores.

Although researchers assured us a decade ago that the “sky was not falling” when it came to grade inflation, ever more students are now winding up in the highest GPA range. And as colleges have relaxed or completely removed standardized testing requirements for admission, grades are more important than ever. So while standards for assessing student work have been falling steadily over time, the “grading for equity” era appears to have supercharged grade inflation.  

“Strict grading harms students.” To the contrary, lenient grading leads to less learning.

The world of education is awash with rhetoric about the importance of holding “ high expectations ” for all students. What grading reformers have not understood is that high standards, rigorous grading, and student accountability are the incarnation of high expectations. Yet several of the core “equity grading” reforms—including not grading homework , allowing unlimited test retakes or assignment revisions, and prohibiting penalties for late work and cheating —weaken accountability for students. There’s ample research to support it , but the notion that students do better academically when they face some consequences—positive and negative—is common sense. Moreover, there is not an iota of hard evidence that reforms that make grading more lenient benefit students in the long run.

Rather, a growing literature on grading practices strongly suggests that students learn more when teachers hold them more strictly accountable for their performance in class. For example, a 2004 study by professors David Figlio and Maurice Lucas analyzed the academic performance of elementary school students based on their teachers’ grading practices. Those students assigned to teachers who graded more strictly—meaning that the teachers assigned relatively low grades to students while controlling for students’ test scores—went on to experience greater test-score growth in both reading and math. And in a similar 2020 study , American University’s Seth Gershenson found that high school students assigned to a tougher-grading teacher scored higher in math, both in that teacher’s class and in subsequent math courses, and that was true of all student subgroups.

The rationale behind rigorous teacher grading standards is straightforward: being exposed to a higher standard prompts many students to try harder, and this increased effort leads to more learning. In a study of college students, economist Phillip Babcock found that students who expected a “C” in their class studied about 50 percent more than students who expected an “A.”

Some promoters of more lenient grading encourage two practices that can contribute to grade inflation: the elimination of zeros for incomplete or missing work and the recalibration of numerical grading scales. Consider the adoption of the “0–4” grading scale as opposed to the traditional “0–100” grading scale. After the switch, students receive a 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 (meant to correspond to an F, D, C, B, or A). As with no-zero policies, the negative effect of low grades is reduced, because traditionally half or more of the 100-point scale corresponds to an F, whereas just 20 percent of the 0-4 scale does. Although teachers in different contexts frequently use alternative grading scales, including check marks, “satisfactory/unsatisfactory,” and variations of 100-point scales and letter grades, switching from a 100-point scale to a 0-4 scale typically means assigning higher grades for the same work, which is the definition of grade inflation.

A 2023 working paper used data from North Carolina to examine the effects on student attendance and test performance when the state recalibrated its grading scale in 2014. The range for A’s expanded from 93–100 to 90–100, while the range for F’s shrank from 0–69 to 0–59. In the year of this recalibration, high-performing students were awarded even higher grades (unsurprisingly, since the grading scale had lowered the numerical threshold for earning top letter grades). What happened to initially low-performing students, however, should give grading reformers pause: their grades failed to rise, while their attendance actually declined. This troubling finding provides further evidence that grade inflation can exacerbate inequities.

This type of grade inflation could be thought of as “points-based leniency,” where students are disincentivized to work hard. But another aspect of student accountability hindered by equity grading is “time leniency,” where students are disincentivized to complete work in a timely manner. Grading reformers often argue against grading interim work, including formative assessments and homework, or insist that students should be offered nearly unlimited time to complete revisions. For example, Feldman earnestly argues, “Students must fix their errors and give it another try until they succeed, which means we have to offer them that next try.” Unfortunately, the effect of reducing expectations for on-time work is to encourage procrastination, and this leniency on time surely has negative consequences for learning as well. One recent study , conducted as part of a master’s thesis, showed that when late penalties were lifted for assignments in a high school chemistry course, homework completion dropped by more than one-third.

Lowering expectations is bad public policy, as it reduces learning and undermines the capacity of schools to help students succeed in the long run. Truly excessive academic pressure can be harmful to students, but international studies have indicated that moderate levels of stress can actually lead to greater student motivation and achievement. What’s more, affluent students often have built-in mechanisms that hold them accountable, such as involved parents , as well as other resume boosters to distinguish themselves, such as AP courses and extracurricular activities . It is the students facing disadvantage who disproportionately rely on schools for motivation and credentials that can distinguish them academically. So-called “equity grading,” when it leads to more lenient grading, will often harm these students the most.

“Traditional grading doesn’t communicate what students know and can do.” False.

Advocates of grading reform argue that traditional grading obscures how students are actually performing in a class. First, they critique typical “ omnibus ” or “ hodgepodge ” weighted grading systems, wherein teachers calculate students’ scores in various categories—such as homework, tests, projects, and participation—and then weigh them to calculate an overall grade. Homework might be worth 10 percent of the final grade, tests worth 40 percent, and so on. As a result, a student who turns in all her homework and has average test scores may earn a final grade similar to that of a peer who missed some homework but earned superior test scores. Such a grading system, Feldman warns , “conceals critical information about students and leads to decisions that harm [students].” Parents and educators could over- or underestimate students’ level of content mastery, for instance, depending on how participation grades impact their averages.

Thus, some reformers call for grades to reflect only student mastery. If effort and behavior must be scored, the reasoning goes, those grades ought to be assigned separately, as has been policy for Boston Public Schools since 2023.

In fact, this practice is misguided. Modern online grade books already present students’ scores within different categories and provide parents access so that they can see, for instance, how their child performed on tests versus on homework. Most importantly, all final grades are—by definition—a summary of performance. Even if a school uses mastery grading, in which scores are based exclusively on demonstrated mastery of specific content or skills, the final overall grade will still reflect students’ mastery of the various categories of content being assessed. What’s more, having a single summary metric for communicating information can be helpful for a number of audiences: college admissions officers, for example, may not have the capacity to examine individual grades on five different categories for every single high school course.

Reformers’ greatest source of concern when it comes to grades and communication is that traditional grading partly reflects student behavior. That is, score penalties for behaviors like tardiness, cheating, and incomplete work produce grades that do not communicate information exclusively about students’ understanding of course content. A student who turns in an excellent paper late may, for example, receive the same grade as a student who turns in a decent paper on time.

Yet to many stakeholders, that is a desirable feature of grading, not a bug. After all, success in both college and career depends not only on academic abilities but also on soft skills (sometimes called “noncognitive” or “social and emotional” skills) that enable students to follow instructions, persevere, and cooperate with their peers. Down the line, college students receive serious consequences for cheating, including course failure, probation, and even expulsion. Employees cannot consistently submit late work or skip assignments without consequences. Ability and behavior go hand in hand in determining success, which is probably why course grade point average has historically been such a powerful predictor of later success.

Just as grade inflation diminishes standards and expectations, it also distorts signals about student performance. Whether about points or timelines, when grading is stricter, it can help educators identify students who need the most support, academic or otherwise. That is, regardless of whether students are struggling with content or with timely work submission, lower grades flag for teachers and administrators the students most in need of intervention; indeed, research confirms that GPA is a reliable predictor of dropping out . Being able to accurately identify at-risk students can therefore boost the effectiveness of preventative intervention programs.

Likewise, parents need to know when their children are falling behind. Between 2018–19 (the last prepandemic school year) and 2021–22 (the first postpandemic “in-person” year for most students), the average student lost about five months of learning in both reading and math, according to state tests. Yet, according to TNTP, most students “ earned the same grade—or better—in 2022 as they did in 2019 .” Putting the same trend into different terms, another study revealed that although under half of students are performing below grade level, almost 90 percent of parents believe their children are performing at or above grade level and two-thirds of parents rely on report cards as a primary indicator of their children’s academic progress. In the long term, stricter grading can also help guide students into best-fit college and career pursuits. That’s because grade inflation can lead students and parents to overestimate students’ knowledge and skills in a certain field; these false signals can contribute to poor choices of college major or career path.

When colleges cannot distinguish among applicants using measures like GPA, they make admissions decisions based on less objective and less equitable measures , such as extracurricular participation and teacher recommendations, which may communicate very little about students’ actual academic performance.

“Traditional grading perpetuates inequities.” In some cases.

Though many grading reforms result in lowered standards and expectations for students, that does not mean that all changes to traditional grading practices are inherently undesirable. Indeed, some reforms do not make grading more lenient, and others may hold students accountable even more effectively (see the upper-left quadrant of Figure 1, above).

First, grading reformers are right to call attention to the inequities perpetuated by teacher bias in grading. Biases around race , ethnicity , prior academic performance , physical attractiveness , student weight , and teacher perception of student organization and attendance can all affect grading decisions. As Feldman observes, it’s unfortunately not a realistic solution just to “ stop our implicit biases ,” which are deeply ingrained in individuals and our society.

Such biases are not just about outright prejudice. Classrooms often operate under an unspoken code. What constitutes successful “participation,” for instance? And even if that definition is clear, does it advantage students of certain personalities or language skills? What makes an essay a “B” paper, rather than an “A”-level exemplar or a still-passing “C” submission? Without clearly articulated answers to such questions, many students may face disadvantage, including those whose families have less experience in the U.S. education system and those who do not speak English fluently. A lack of transparency can thus be both discriminatory and an obstacle to learning.

That is why reforms that increase transparency around expectations and grading can be beneficial. Research confirms that scoring rubrics can reduce the effects of bias . Rubrics explicitly delineate the categories on which an assignment will be assessed; one category to be evaluated on an argumentative essay, for example, would be the thesis statement. The rubric should also lay out the criteria to earn a particular score in each category: an A-level thesis is clear, persuasive, and accurately synthesizes the paper’s argument; a B-level thesis is clear, persuasive, and partially synthesizes the paper’s argument; and so on, for each possible score and for each category.

As such, rubrics allow teachers to convey to students in advance of an assignment what the expectations are, as well as help teachers grade fairly and consistently, and they show students after the fact how they can improve (and where they have already been successful!). They can also help promote “interrater reliability,” so that teachers across the hall from each other aren’t assigning different grades for the same caliber of work. For a class discussion, for instance, a rubric can include categories such as the number of times a student participated and whether she cited class readings to support a claim, offered new ideas to the discussion, asked questions, or replied to a classmate’s remarks. In this way, rubrics establish clear expectations and a relatively objective—not to mention efficient—means of scoring students. A student’s discussion grade, therefore, really can reflect and communicate to others their mastery of discussion skills.

Other equity-centered reforms that deserve much greater attention are blind scoring (anonymized grading) and asking teachers to grade the work of students assigned to other teachers. If teachers do not know the identity of students, biased grading practices are less likely to seep through. Technology makes such approaches easier than ever, as grading platforms like Canvas offer anonymous grading options for teachers.

When it comes to what gets graded, equity-minded reformers get it right on some counts. Educators must be conscious of disparities in access to technology and quiet work spaces outside of school, and homework should not require parents’ help . However, inflexible no-homework policies throw the baby out with the bathwater; quality homework can offer important opportunities for independent practice, foster positive attitudes toward learning, and boost academic achievement . A truly equitable approach could also involve creating quiet spaces and times for students to complete homework within their school building.

As for what should not get graded, there are indeed good reasons to believe that extra credit should be eliminated in most cases. Although it is occasionally used as a way for advanced learners to attempt work that goes beyond the scope of the course, extra credit often involves assigning points for optional activities that only loosely pertain to the course, abetting not only grade inflation but miscommunication of students’ abilities and behavior. Instead, students who deserve an opportunity to earn more credit should have the opportunity to reattempt the assignments already given.

Grading reformers are also right to point out that grading “behaviors” can sometimes disadvantage the most marginalized students, communicating their personal obstacles more than their knowledge and skills. Late submissions may happen, for example, because a student is overwhelmed by family responsibilities, lacks a quiet space for homework, or is experiencing homelessness. But the top-down elimination of the expectation that students do their work on time is the opposite of equity. Instead, teachers should be able to exercise discretion over extensions, retakes, and the like—to provide each student with what is appropriate and needed.

As with monetary inflation, the point of combatting grade inflation is not to return to a golden age when a dollar could purchase a bushel of apples or an A was only assigned for truly remarkable academic achievement. The important thing is to hold the line. While the traditional 0–100 grading scale does not by itself uphold high expectations and academic rigor, adopting a more lenient grading scale is guaranteed not to do so. In the North Carolina study, for instance, the reform was simply to lower the numerical thresholds to obtain better letter grades, which in turn lowered standards and expectations. But there is no inherent reason that mastery grading or scales other than 0–100 cannot maintain or even enhance both rigor and transparency, when implemented conscientiously .

Above all else, grading reforms should not be mandated from the state or district down to classrooms. Individual schools, departments, and teachers should have the discretion to implement their own grading policies, depending on their school contexts and students’ needs. Equally important, administrators need to provide examples of and supports for rigorous and transparent evaluation of student work so that teachers can hold the line on grades.

Policy Implications

1. Policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies. Those include “no-zero” mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers’ ability to manage their classrooms and to motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All of this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

2. District leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation.  Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide data about their grading standards relative to their peers. Individual schools or departments should often be allowed the flexibility to weigh the costs and benefits for themselves and to experiment with grading reforms—and individual teachers should have flexibility in adjusting deadlines or penalties based on student circumstances. What districts and states should not do is mandate reforms that could force teachers to lower standards and expectations. Such mandates are doomed to fail because so much depends on implementation, stakeholder buy-in, and the ways that reforms interact with other local policies.

3. Take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches. Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms should be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra-credit assignments and implementing rigorous rubrics. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

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About the Report

This report was made possible through the generous support of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. We are grateful to Tim Daly, CEO of EdNavigator, and Sarah Ruth Morris, doctoral candidate at the University of Arkansas, for their feedback on a draft. We also extend our gratitude to Pamela Tatz for copyediting. At Fordham, we would like to thank Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner for authoring the report; Amber Northern, David Griffith, Daniel Buck, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Michael J. Petrilli for reviewing drafts; Victoria McDougald for her role in dissemination; and Stephanie Distler for developing the report’s cover and coordinating production.

Meredith Coffey, a senior research associate at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is a graduate student in education policy at Johns Hopkins University. Originally from Miami, Florida, Meredith holds a BA in comparative literature & literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania, a PhD in English literature from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MS in education from Hunter College. Before coming to Fordham…

Adam Tyner is national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he develops, executes, and manages new research projects. Prior to joining Fordham, Dr. Tyner served as senior quantitative analyst at  Hanover Research , where he executed data analysis projects and worked with school districts and other education stakeholders to…

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Are Homework-Free, 'Equitable Grading' Schools What Most Parents Want?

There was a story in The Wall Street Journal in late April that should concern parents across America. It wasn't about inflation or the peril facing regional banks: It was more serious than that. It was treated as an education story but was in fact a culture story about the push by progressives for "equity" in our nation's public school classrooms. A push that affects American families and, in the end, American employers too.

Unlike the better-known fights over woke curriculum attacks involving white privilege, antiracism and "The 1619 Project," the "equity" part of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (or DEI) push may be the most controversial. The story's headline caught my eye: Schools Are Ditching Homework, Deadlines in Favor of 'Equitable Grading.' It caught the eye and ire of thousands of Journal readers too.

"Las Vegas high-school English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod initially thought the grading changes at her school district made sense," the story began. "Soon after the system was introduced, however, Ms. Penrod said her 11th-grade honors students realized the new rules minimized the importance of homework to their final grades, leading many to forgo the brainstorming and rough drafts required ahead of writing a persuasive essay. Some didn't turn in the essay at all, knowing they could redo it later."

The teacher in the story disagreed with the change. "They're relying on children having intrinsic motivation, and that's the furthest thing from the truth for this age group," Penrod, a teacher for 17 years, said.

Readers learned that the Clark County School District where Penrod works—the nation's fifth-largest—joined school districts across the country in this equitable grading revolution, and with "varying degrees of buy-in," the Journal noted.

Were the parents of Clark County a part of the buy-in process? Or the parents of America? Did any of us sign up for this radical change?

Readers soon discovered the driving force behind this radical new way of incentivizing and measuring student performance, buried in the Journal 's story: homework and traditional grading methods "favor those with a stable home life and more hands-on parents."

And there you have it! In the name of "equity," progressive education consultants—and the progressive educators who pay them to advance their ideological goals—drove this change, not parents. And the problem they're trying to fix is parenting itself, or the lack thereof.

It turns out—this is a shocker—that kids in "stable homes" benefit from homework because there's an adult at home supervising their behavior with an enforcement mechanism called disciple. Some—parents like mine and millions of others—call it love.

But the answer to this homework parenting gap wasn't to provide after-school homework or tutoring opportunities to kids in unstable homes, an idea an overwhelming majority of Americans would favor. Clark County's educators—and the consultants doing their bidding—instead punished not just kids living in stable homes but all kids by eliminating incentives for homework entirely. Under the banner of equity, Clark County's educators punished good parenting.

Clark County's educators—and the consultants doing their bidding—instead punished not just kids living in stable homes—and getting what used to be called good parenting—but all kids by eliminating incentives for homework entirely. All in the name of "leveling the playing field."

One consultant featured in the Journal story, Joe Feldman, author of Grading Equity , is a driving force behind this movement. And a highly paid one. We learned in the story that the Albuquerque Public Schools signed a $687,000 contract with Feldman for a two-year pilot, a high-priced experiment in social engineering—with local students as the guinea pigs. He's worked with 50-plus school districts since 2013.

What is "grading equity?" It's as bad as it sounds. Homework, in-class discussion and other practice work are downplayed in this new progressive education scheme, as are extra credit and grades for behavior in the class, all replaced by "summative" assessments such as essays and tests.

Worse, the grading scale starts at 49 or 50 percent instead of zero, all designed, as the Journal story noted, "to keep a student's grade from sinking so low from a few missed assignments that they feel they can't recover and give up."

One high school student, Samuel Hwang, a Clark County senior, spoke out against the grading changes, saying they provide incentives for poor work habits. "There's an apathy that pervades the entire classroom," he told the Journal , noting that the new grading system affected the behavior of the honors and Advanced Placement classes too. More students, he added, were more prone to skip class unless there was an exam.

We also learned that students in this "equitable grading" regime are given multiple opportunities—multiple do-overs—to complete assignments and tests. One teacher understood the negative implications. "If you go to a job in real life, you can't pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones," Alyson Henderson, a high school English teacher said. "Lessons drag on now because students can turn in work until right before grades are due. We're really setting students up for a false sense of reality."

What does the Clark County superintendent, Jesus Jara, think about this experiment? He's pleased, and pleased because fewer students across racial demographics received an F and there are fewer A's too in the system, which he advocates. He's doubling down on his commitment, telling the school board that "successfully shifting the system will take years, as the district's 18,000 teachers shed the traditional grading mind-set," according to the Journal .

Here's what the new reality—the brave new education world—will look like if people like Jara and Feldman get their way: a grade-free, homework-free, deadline-free world with public educators playing the role of equalizer and enforcer.

All of this is happening without the constructive consent—or knowledge—of America's parents. School board elections are not high-turnout events, but as progressive educators continue to advance radical notions like homework-free schools and "equitable grading," they soon will be.

Journal readers will be leading the charge. Here are a few of the more than 1,700 comments.

Here's Barry W: So let me get this straight, coming from a stable home with two parents is an unfair advantage that needs to be remedied?

This is from Janet P: What happens when these kids go into the workplace? Do employers allow this sort of nonsense?

From Julie K: When you lower standards, kids know it. You're just reminding them they're from a broken home.

From William M: Less work for the teachers to look over homework and grade it. A win-win for teachers and students!

Here's Joe H : I wonder if the coaches on these schools' athletic teams are using similar "equitable" principles in selecting who makes the team and who gets playing time.

Here's Sarah L: Everyone will suffer. As someone who did not have "hands-on" parents, school activities, and a job, I still managed to graduate with a B average.

And this from Tom S: Go ahead, America, embrace this scholastic ribbon-for-all nincompoop. It will ensure decades of an underachieving US matched up against over-achieving China. Good Choice!

This progressive march to change how America teaches, incentivizes and rewards student performance is about to become the biggest education battle in America. One that will make its way to the ballot box, where progressive educators had best be prepared for the backlash to a battle they began.

The WSJ 's inbox is the canary in the coal mine.

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5 Ways to Create an Equitable Math Classroom

By lanette trowery and margaret bowman.

McGraw Hill

Inspired Ideas

Educational equity has been, and continues to be, an essential foundation in our nation’s schools and classrooms — and is critical in math instruction.

Geneva Gay (1988), in her work on designing relevant curricula for diverse learners, posits that a focus on the equitable outputs should lead the development and selection of the inputs, or materials and practices, used in classrooms:

“…the real focus of equity is not sameness of content for all students, but equivalency of effect potential, quality status, and significance of learning opportunities” (p. 329).

From a mathematics perspective, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics states:

“Acknowledging and addressing factors that contribute to differential outcomes among groups of students is critical to ensuring that all students routinely have opportunities to experience high-quality mathematics instruction, learn challenging mathematics content, and receive the support necessary to be successful” (NCTM, 2020).

An equitable classroom is one where all students are supported to learn rigorous academics and where teachers leverage the materials and practices needed to support positive academic outcomes for all students .

Equity in practice is very complicated, and there’s so much we still need to learn about reaching and empowering every learner — but in the meantime, here’s what the research tells us are the most important factors in creating equitable math classrooms, starting with some core pedagogical principles that are applicable across all disciplines:

Practice culturally responsive teaching

Research on culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies aligns with how equitable teaching and learning experiences are defined. Geneva Gay (1988) introduced culturally responsive teaching , which focuses on teacher practice and ways to make learning more relevant and effective for all students. She put forth a set of dimensions that guide teaching:

• Being socially and academically empowering;
• Setting high expectations for all students;
• Engaging in multidimensional knowledge building, contributions, and perspectives;
• Validating all students’ cultures through diverse instructional strategies and materials;
• Being socially, emotionally, and politically comprehensive in educating the whole child;
• Using students’ strengths to drive instruction; and
• Being thoughtful and critical about how educational practices and ideals may form barriers to student success (Gay, 2010).

Adopt culturally relevant pedagogy

Culturally relevant pedagogy , originally described by Gloria Ladson Billings, steps back from teaching practices and focuses more broadly on three key concepts or tenets of a classroom:

Academic achievement, in which teachers expect, develop, and reinforce students’ academic excellence;

Cultural competence, in which students maintain their cultural integrity alongside academic excellence; and

Critical consciousness, in which students are expected to critically engage with the world around them (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Practice culturally sustaining pedagogy

Finally, Paris (2012) argues that culturally responsive or relevant pedagogies may not go far enough in the efforts to push schools to create spaces that are affirming and supportive of all students. Paris maintains that culturally sustaining pedagogies address the need in our pluralistic society to think about not only how to make instruction relevant and responsive, but also how to preserve, celebrate, share, and sustain the diverse cultures that our students bring to the learning experience.

Connecting research on culturally responsive, relevant, and sustaining pedagogies with research on educational equity provides a framework for building equitable classrooms. Research has helped uncover several factors that support classroom equity and echo the tenets of culturally responsive and sustaining practices:

• Supporting high academic expectations for all students;
• A socially and emotionally positive and safe school and classroom climate;
• Authentic and rigorous tasks;
• Inclusive, relevant, and meaningful content;
• Open and accepting communication;
• Drawing from students’ strengths, knowledge, culture, and competence;
• Critically and socially aware inquiry practices; and
• Strong teaching and teacher professional support for equity and inclusion.

(Aronson & Laughter, 2016; Gay, 2010; Krasnoff, 2016; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Morrison, Robbins, & Rose, 2008; NYSED, 2019; Saphier, 2017; Snyder, Trowery & McGrath, 2019; Waddell, 2014).

Differentiate to reach every student with rigorous math instruction

In the studies that focused on equitable teaching in mathematics classrooms, the findings are consistent with the work on educational equity as a whole (Brenner, 1998; Bonner, 2009; Gutstein, Lipman, Hernandez, & de los Reyes, 1997; Matthews, 2003; Nasir, 2002; Osisioma, Kiluva-ndunda, & Van Sickle, 2008; Tate, 1995).

💡 Research Spotlight : Boaler and Staples (2008) conducted a longitudinal study comparing how equitable teaching impacted students’ math achievement in three high schools. In the school where the teachers taught mixed-level math classes, students were provided additional time to work together and grapple with more conceptually focused problems. Despite having begun the study with pre-test scores far below the comparison schools, students in this school outperformed the others in years 2 and 3 on post-test measures of math achievement. The researchers contend that because the focus school held high expectations for students; presented all students with a common, rigorous curriculum to support their learning; offered learning supports to struggling students; and enacted a high level of challenge in classroom tasks, inequalities in teaching practices were reduced, thus increasing students’ math achievement levels (p. 635).

Make learning relevant to students’ lived experiences

Other findings in the research on equitable and culturally relevant mathematics teaching demonstrate how teachers make effective connections to students’ lives and communities with real-world applications of mathematics (Ensign, 2003; Enyedy & Mukhopadhyay, 2007; Gutstein, Lipman, Hernandez, de los Reyes, 1997; Rosa & Orey, 2010; Tate, 1995).

Gutierrez (2009) posits that to move toward equitable mathematics teaching, teachers must know their students through a variety of lenses — academically, socially, personally — without essentializing who they are.

💡 Research Spotlight : In a study examining the effects of specific culturally relevant teaching practices on high school students’ mathematics achievement, Langlie (2008) found that time teachers spent with students getting to know them outside of formal teaching and teachers who employed practices that encouraged students to see and use math as part of daily life were both factors that had statistically significant, positive effects on students’ mathematics achievement. In creating equitable classrooms where all students have opportunities to learn math at high levels, the research demonstrates the influence classroom culture has on the math knowledge being shared with students as well as the impact classroom culture has on how math knowledge is learned by students (Waddell, 2014).

What does this look like in a curriculum?

Incorporating all of these elements into instruction is easier said than done — which is why resources for teaching and learning should be created to make math more equitable.

Our K-12 math program, Reveal Math , supports the development of equitable math classrooms through the variety of resources and practices embedded into the program.

For example, equitable math programs…

• Contribute to a growth mindset in students . Reveal Math places an emphasis on creating a positive and productive classroom culture where all students have common access to rigorous instruction while supporting the student’s development of growth mindset and a positive math identity. The Math Is… Unit, which is the first unit in each grade level, focuses on helping students see themselves as “doers of mathematics.” Students develop thinking habits that are integral to mathematical problem-solving and co-create classroom norms that lead to a mutually supportive and productive learning environment.
• Prioritize social and emotional learning . In Reveal Math , SEL objectives are integrated within every lesson, allowing teachers to support the whole child within the math classroom and understand who their students are and what skills and habits they bring to the classroom.
• Are designed to ensure all students will have access to rigorous instruction . Every lesson in Reveal Math highlights the Focus, Coherence, and Rigor of the content and sets the stage for establishing high academic expectations, a main tenet in culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995). The Be Curious activity found in each lesson uses sense-making routines to engage students in a low floor, high ceiling discussion, creating an equitable classroom culture where all ideas are welcome and respected.

There’s a great deal more that you should expect from an equitable program — including differentiated resources, supports for English Learners, opportunities for reflection, and flexible modalities. To read more about how those elements are integrated into Reveal Math, and to find additional research on educational equity in the math classroom, read the full brief, A Research Summary of Program-Focused Outcomes :

About the Authors

Lanette Trowery , Ph.D. is the Senior Director of the McGraw Hill Learning Research and Strategy Team.

Lanette was in public education for more than 25 years, working as a university professor, site-based mathematics coach, elementary and middle school teacher, mathematics consultant, and a professional learning consultant, before coming to McGraw Hill in 2014. She earned her Master’s and Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lanette’s team, Learning Research and Strategy, serves as the center of excellence for teaching and learning best practices. Her team conducts market, effectiveness, and efficacy research into products to provide insights and recommendations to product development. They collaborate across internal teams, external experts, and customers to establish guiding principles and frameworks to move from theory to practice.

Margaret Bowman is an Academic Designer in the Mathematics Department at McGraw Hill. Margaret earned her Bachelor of Science in Education from Ashland University with a teaching license in Middle Grades Education, and her Master of Education from Tiffin University. She was a middle school Math and Language Arts teacher for six years before joining the middle school team at McGraw Hill in 2012, writing and designing print and digital curriculum.

Margaret is also a Research Associate in the Research Laboratory for Digital Learning at The Ohio State University. She is nearing completion of a PhD in Educational Studies with an emphasis in Learning Technologies. Her past research and journal publications have focused on teachers’ value for using technology in the classroom and technology’s impact on student learning. Her current research examines how students’ use of technology can improve the value they have for mathematics and their expectations that they can succeed.

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6 dishes that’ll make you want to learn Tatar and visit Kazan

Try it at the Tatar Estate Restaurant. Kystyby is baked in an oven here and this method of preparation adds an almost exotic taste that heightens the senses.

2. Echpochmak

But the secret is in the details. It is very tricky to get the dough just right so that the triangles have a crunchy crust despite the juicy stuffing inside. Old Tatar women will tell you that an echpochmak must be cooked with love and this is why you shouldn’t eat them in a restaurant. My research proves that they are right.

A classic echpochmak is hefty, aromatic and hot and stays warm inside for several hours. The triangles are stuffed with different kinds of meat, with the best combinations being beef and duck and mutton and goose. When the pastries are almost ready, a drop of thick broth and a piece of butter are added through a special hole on the top to enhance the flavor of the stuffing.

Where to eat: ideally a hospitable Tatar family will invite you to their home and you can try it there. Alternatively you may book a table at The House of Tatar Culinary Art. Their echpochmaks are as close to what an old Tatar woman would cook at home as you can find.

It is hard to mess up a kazylyk, so order it in any restaurant, food store or market place.

4. Kaklagan kaz (air-dried goose)

The most important factor in raising a tasty goose is a good diet. Geese should be fed millet, barley and sugarbeets. The process of drying is an ancient one, and while simple, it demands time and patience. The goose is gutted, rubbed with salt, wrapped in wax paper and hung for 3–4 months in a cool place where there is no direct sun or wind. During that time the goose absorbs aromas and healthy fats. The color of the meat becomes dark red, similar to the color of Spanish ham and the taste becomes refined with a sweet and salty taste to it.

Where to eat: In restaurants or at a market place. It is also worth going to the new Kazan shopping center where farmers sell their homemade products.

5. Zur-belish with goose

A round and well-baked closed pastry that is the size and form of a giant soup bowl, it spreads the heat around while being prepared in the oven. Belishes are made of unfermented dough, because regular yeast dough won’t survive the intense heat required for its preparation. Goose meat and giblets, potatoes and onions are stewed inside the pastry.

Little spice is used in Tatar cuisine. This is due to historical habits borrowed from the nomads using a policy of “zero kilometer food”: This is when food is cooked only from products that can be sourced in the closest neighborhood to the kitchen.

Where to eat: At a guest’s home or at a food fair in Kazan. Check the calendar of events at gokazan.ru to see what’s on offer.

6. Talkysh kaleve

One of the most delicious and complex Tatar deserts is talkysh kaleve. This Turkish recipe was brought to Kazan in the 19th century by the Tatar Borkhan, an ancestor of the Saifullin family. In the 1990s Niyaz Saifullin started producing talkysh kaleve on a mass scale, a sugary empire that has no competitors because of the complexity of the process.

Two experienced masters stretch the honey and sugar candy mixture and transform it into white fragile threads until this hot mass turns into a web of threads. The web is powdered with a mixture of melted butter and flour so that the threads don't stick to each other and immediately form miniature cones while the mixture still has the right temperature. This is a work of art for discriminating sweet-toothed foodies.

Where to eat: At Tatar restaurants or the chain store Bakhetle .

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