The Benefits of Narrative Grading An alternative to traditional letter grades BY GEORGE LANG
Grading grades What does an “A” mean? For more than 120 years, its use in the standard letter-grade system employed by most K through 12 schools and universities connotes excellence and closeness to perfection. Every letter that follows it in the grading system — B, C, D and F — symbolizes diminishing returns on that student’s performance. It is a measurement so deeply rooted in our culture that, if it didn’t exist, literally hundreds of situation comedy episodes involving kids bringing home bad grades would make zero sense. It is also a built-in stressor in the American psyche. Grades are still a relatively new development in education systems. In the late-1700s, Yale University issued a kind of prototype letter grade based on the Latin alphabet and the concept of “best, worse and worst,” which does not seem particularly encouraging for anyone who does not score “best.” Nevertheless, Yale’s innovation established a foundation for the modern grading system. The earliest recorded use of letter grades came from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., in the late Victorian era, and due in part to an enormous influx of students, the beginning of a shift from an agrarian to a manufacturing society and the increasingly mandated concept of public education, letter grades became a kind of necessity, a Henry Ford-like way to assess performance, assembly line-style. The advent of multiple choice tests and quizzes was borne out of the same need to provide feedback in a timely, easy-to-produce manner.
Before he started Odyssey Leadership Academy in Oklahoma City, Dr. Scott Martin taught at private and public schools in central Oklahoma, both higher education and K through 12. What he saw in every school he taught was an over- reliance on grades as a measure of success. And the students were suffering. “I had a student who got a 34 [on the] ACT,” said Martin. “She got accepted on scholarship to Brown, and she was a brilliant, hard working student — just so full of life, so full of energy. And she ended up trying to take her own life. She took two razor blades and cut her wrists. Thankfully, she didn’t succeed, but it was because she was so stressed out about maintaining her 4.0 GPA.” Based on his experience with that student and several others who either did not receive proper motivation to excel or were caught on the hamster wheel maintaining high averages, Martin had to do something. He decided that, if he could help it, he would never give another grade to another student. Now starting its seventh year, Odyssey Leadership Academy still has not issued a grade, but its students are thriving. Last year, graduates of the small private school amassed $800,000 in scholarships, armed mainly with narrative assessments that tell the story of the students’ educations and accomplishments. “I’ve never had a school say, ‘No GPA? We’re not going to take your kid,’” said Martin. “It’s been the exact opposite of that.”
22 METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / SEPT-OCT 2021
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