Teacher Grading Decisions: Influences, Rationale, and Practices

Student report card grades are an integral part of K-12 education, and grading is an important teacher responsibility, but experts are in agreement that grades largely fail to accomplish their main purpose of communicating student academic achievement (Cizek, Fitzgerald, & Rachor, 1995; Guskey, 2015; McMillan, 2001; Stiggins, Frisbie, & Griswold, 1989). Instead, because student grades are often created from an imprecise amalgam of factors that includes achievement, ability, effort, and behavior (Cross & Frary, 1999; Randall & Engelhard, 2010; Reeves, 2011), exactly what they communicate is rarely clear (Allen, 2005; Marzano, 2000). Failure to use grades for their primary purpose leaves educational stakeholders largely uninformed about students' true level of learning. This may lead to such negative consequences as passing students with deficient knowledge and skills, misinforming parents of student learning, and misrepresenting student merit to colleges and universities (Allen, 2005; Reeves, 2011). Although a substantial amount of literature has documented the discrepancy between expert recommendations and teacher grading practices and has called for reform (e.g., Cizek et al., 1995; Cross & Frary, 1999; Randall & Engelhard, 2010), grading practices have remained largely unchanged in schools throughout the country (Reeves, 2011). Teacher Grading Decision-MakingGrading is an especially important area for teacher decision-making (Allen, 2005; Sadler, 2009), and requires an effective teacher decision-making process (Cauley & McMillan, 2000; McMillan, 2003). The literature on teacher decision-making about grading is sparse, but it does include some promising initial findings. Frary, Cross, and Weber (1993) and McMillan (2001), for instance, found that teachers' grading practices often differ from their own grading beliefs. Randall and Engelhard (2010) examined teachers' grading decisions in cases of borderline grades (e.g. grades at the border of an A and B, B and C, etc.) and found teachers made grading decisions based more on student ability, behavior, and effort than on achievement. The authors claimed that teachers regularly rely on a combination of factors to make grading decisions such as personal philosophy, college classes and professional development, school or district policy, and perceived consequences, but they provided no systematic way of interpreting the process.In an article advocating for the use of grades as valid measures of student academic achievement, Allen (2005) suggested that a solution to enabling teachers to create valid grades is helping them to make good grading decisions. He explained that teacher education programs may accomplish this by challenging future teachers' previously held knowledge and beliefs about grades, by presenting strong measurement theory, by providing grading practice opportunities before student teaching, and by facilitating students' creation and implementation of a valid individual evaluation and grading plan.McMillan and Nash (2000) and McMillan (2003) have likely shed the most light on teacher decision-making about grading. McMillan and Nash (2000) conducted a qualitative study of 24 elementary and secondary English and mathematics teachers that explored teacher grading and assessment decision-making. Findings showed that teachers' idiosyncratic grading practices were determined by a decision-making process that largely balanced teachers' personal learning and beliefs about the topic, with classroom reality and external pressures. McMillan and Nash (2000) explained that the tension created in balancing these three influences leads to varying grading practices within and across classrooms. McMillan (2003) further analyzed these findings in a follow-up article and created a refined grading decisionmaking model.Considering the current state of teacher grading practices, the importance of grading decision-making, and the dearth of research on the latter topic, further research on teacher grading decision-making seems warranted. …