Evidence of learning: a passion to be, belong and become

Over the last weekend, I met with experienced early childhood educators as we celebrated the life of Kathleen Marie Comber, a remarkable, passionate early childhood educator who cared about children and their learning and was very clear that she was not going to teach or assess children in ways that she believed interfered with their capacity to learn. We were reflecting that in 2023, there is an even bigger push for ‘evidence’ of learning and a strong belief that grades somehow convey information which is reliable and not weighted by the subjective view of a teacher who has built a relationship with the child.

In 2009, I remarked that ‘grading is degrading’ while also attributing the quote to Ivan Illich. A search on ‘Ivan Illich’ and ‘grading is degrading’ led to Alfie Kohn’s writings on assessment and grading, a fabulous article by James Allen and extracts from ‘Deschooling Society’.

Alfie Kohn’s article “From Degrading to De-grading” still rings true and he has other more recent articles that demonstrate that the issues haven’t gone away. An historical review of grading by Jeffrey Schinske and Kimberley Tanner (amongst many)encourages us to “exercise scepticism about the meaning of grades”.

Diane Ravitch writes: “Anyone who truly cares about children must be repelled by the insistence on ranking them, rating them, and labelling them. Whatever the tests measure is not the sum and substance of any child. The tests do not measure character, spirit, heart, soul, potential. When overused and misused, when attached to high stakes, the tests stifle the very creativity and ingenuity that our society needs most. Creativity and ingenuity stubbornly resist standardization. Tests should be used sparingly to help students and teachers, not to allocate rewards and punishments and not to label children and adults by their scores. We cheat children when we do not give them the chance to learn more than basic skills. We cheat them when we evaluate them by standardized tests. We undervalue them when we turn them into datapoints.”

So what’s wrong with grades?

• Learners learn to value the mark rather than the learning.
• The purpose of schooling becomes getting an ‘A’ or a ‘B’ rather than learning.
• It’s easier to grade facts than creativity, with the result that the areas which can be easily graded are elevated above those that cannot.
• A grade doesn’t tell us what a learner knows, can do or understand, let alone where help might be needed.
• A grade on a test depends on how what was tested (or not) and the weighting of the questions.
• Grades are subjective. Different teachers are likely to give different grades depending on how they make their judgement.  Even with moderation to ‘help teachers make consistent judgements’, it’s hard to describe what constitutes an ‘A’, let alone a ‘D’.
• Teachers teach to what will be assessed, rather than what children need (or maybe even want) to learn.
• If you add up the hours teachers spend preparing learners for tests, administering the tests, marking the tests, assigning grades and debriefing learners on what the grades mean, that’s a lot of time NOT spent teaching or learning.
• The more learners focus on grades the more they are likely to look to others for the ‘right’ answer.
• The grade tells the learner what is important.
• Grades mark individual achievement and devalues group collaboration.
• Grading implies that some learners are ‘better’ than others.

What ‘evidence’ can teachers and educators provide that children are learning if there are no grades? Talk to any teacher about the children in their class or group and they will excitedly tell you about what engages them (and what does not),  their skills and interests (and the things they are not interested in and don’t want to do) and the ways they work with others (or don’t).

When teachers are able to create meaningful learning opportunities with built in authentic assessment asks, teaching and learning are both supported. Educators and children are motivated. Schools become vibrant places to be.

“When the curriculum is engaging” writes Alfie Kohn, “for example, when it involves hands-on, interactive learning activities — students who aren’t graded at all perform just as well as those who are graded (Moeller and Reschke, 1993)”.

So, Kath, your puppets, stories and songs, the long blocks of time you facilitated in which children built, role-played, sculpted, drew, painted, read and measured as they worked together to solve a problem or write a play or construct an edifice and your focus on inquiry-led learning about things that were important to the children were appreciated. Past students, new graduates and colleagues will carry on your focus on children being, belonging and becoming.