University of Kentucky College of Education
University of Kentucky College of Education
EDUCATIONAL , SCHOOL , & COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY
WHAT ’ S IN A GRADE ?
UK ’ s Guskey Co-Authors Paper Aimed at Analyzing How the U . S . Evaluates Student Learning
Dr . Thomas Guskey is among a group of eight researchers who set out to tackle the question “ what do grades mean ?” Their work is the first of its kind to synthesize 100 years of research from five types of studies .
The resulting article , “ A Century of Grading Research : Meaning and Value in the Most Common Educational Measure ,” is the lead article in one of the centennial issues of Review of Educational Research , a journal of the American Educational Research Association . Guskey is a professor in the University of Kentucky College of Education ’ s Department of Educational , School , and Counseling Psychology .
During the 19th century , reports on student learning took place as conversations between parents and teachers in the student ’ s home , which later evolved into written narratives . As school populations grew , time constraints on teachers lead to the use of percentage grades . But studies in the early 20th century that showed the lack of consistency among teachers in assigning grades based on a scale with 100 distinct levels of performance led educators to abandon percentage grades in favor of scales with fewer categories , such as the letter grade scale still commonly used today . Many modern educators have now moved beyond the single letter grade to offer detailed reports of students ’ progress on more specific learning goals , referred to as “ standards-based grading .”
As the collaborators sifted through thousands of articles , they took note of how grading – and perceptions of it – have evolved . They focused on five types of research during their analysis :
• early studies on the reliability of grades ( Teachers often assign different grades to the same assessment of student performance because they don ’ t agree on what is most important for students to learn );
4 | COE COMMUNICATOR | FEBRUARY 2017