Moral Aspects of Grading: A Study of High School English Teachers' Perceptions

ABSTRACT Moral issues embedded in grading practices of high school English teachers are central to this study. Arriving at a fair grade while weighing both achievement and non-achievement factors and the role of teachers' expectations are examined using a theoretical framework which considers grading processes in terms of truth, worthwhileness, trust, and intellectual and moral attentiveness. Grading is influenced by grading systems, perceptions of effort, and concern for moral development. Results indicate that English teachers struggle with issues of fairness, but are confident that their grades communicate the messages they hope to send. INTRODUCTION Giving grades is one of many activities associated with teaching. It is commonly taken for granted that grades are merely a kind of mathematical expression of the learners' progress in any given class. For some courses, like geometry or algebra, the conversion of student performance into grades is accomplished by averaging the scores of tests and quizzes, and the "best" student gets the highest grades because he or she performs the best on the tests and quizzes. The relative weighting of particular questions, if they are weighted, generally reflects the anticipated level of difficulty, and "right" answers are easily distinguished from "wrong" ones. In English classes, however, student performance is not so easily converted into grades. While some tests can be scored much like math tests, so that a given answer will garner a given number of points, many kinds of assignments pose difficulties in assigning point values to answers. Term papers, essays, journal assignments, and even "short answers" requiring only a few sentences may have wide ranges for acceptable answers which require subjective responses from the grader, making the assignment of grades less certain. Divergent answers require judgment, and a teacher's feelings about these answers can often affect the assignment of grades to a given response. A creative writing assignment may receive an "A" from a teacher in one class, but a "C" from a teacher in another class. Thus, English classes pose a special problem when converting student performance to grades. As only one part of an entire school program, however, the performance of students in English must be converted to grades which, on paper at least, look very much like those from a student's math or science classes. The moral issues surrounding grading are perhaps nowhere as evident as they are in English courses. CONTEXT AND LITERATURE Since the turn of the century, grading and giving marks in school have been a source of controversy (Cureton, 1971; Ebel & Frisbie, 1986; Hopkins, Hopkins, & Stanley, 1990). Ebel and Frisbie (1986) attributed much of the controversy in grading to three factors: the technical challenges of accurately measuring achievement, variations in educational philosophies among teachers, and the conflict in roles teachers' face when they must act as both advocates for, and judges of, their pupils. Feldman, Alibrandi, and Krkopf (1998) examined grading practices among high school science teachers in the hopes of providing "an indepth look at the ways in which teachers use the information they have about their students from various sources . to arrive at a summative evaluation of student achievement in class". They asked "How do teachers decide what grade to put on students' report cards? "(p.141) and produced a laundry list of devices teachers use to amass points and calculate averages. However, they did not explicitly consider the moral issues involved in grading. Hendrickson and Gable (1997) lamented that "the exact relationship between student classroom achievement and teacher grading practices is unclear" (p. 159). If this is so, questions of equity, accuracy, and even honesty in grading arise; clearly, grading is heavily laden with moral considerations that go well beyond the requirements of "achievement testing. …