Different Is Not Deficient
Let me paint a picture of a modern diverse classroom in today's public schools.
Close your eyes and imagine 31 desks. There are 19 students who identify as male and 12 students who identify as female. There are 15 black students, 10 white, 4 Hispanic, and 2 Asian/ Pacific Islander. There are 5 students for whom English is a second language. Many students have Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and 504 Plans which give kids with disabilities the services and support they need to learn alongside their general education peers. There are 5 students who have no Internet access in their homes. And there are 20 students with some sort of health condition.
These are the statistics of one of my classes that I taught years ago. And this is just the information I did know. But there was so much I didn’t know.
One of my strengths as a teacher is knowing and loving kids. All kids. But what I hadn’t considered is what I knew about them. I didn’t really know my students as full humans and learners. Sadly, I knew them in terms of the information I could find in our school’s student information system (SIS). I needed to go beyond looking at students as data points, demographics, and rows on spreadsheets which reduces them to numbers, rather than the people that they are. And furthermore, I didn’t realize how this limited information informed my teaching practices, not taking into account cultural differences and learner variability.
Little did I know that dissatisfaction with traditional grading would cause me to entirely rethink and restructure my classroom in ways that honor the humanity of my students.
Questioning the Status Quo
Admittedly, changes in my grading practices stemmed from my own frustration. I was just so tired of spending hours pouring over student work in isolation only for them to ignore my feedback and focus on the numeric grade. But that discontent led me to ungrading and by association, other student-centered, more humane pedagogical approaches.
I began to question everything.
How do you assign grades to someone who
Doesn't speak English?
Is reading significantly below grade level?
Doesn't see himself/ herself/ themself reflected in the curriculum?
I questioned the curriculum I was charged to teach.
Who sets the standards for what students learn?
Whose voices are included?
Whose perspectives are not even considered, or totally excluded?
I reflected over my assessment practices.
What was being assessed? Compliance or learning?
Did my students have opportunities to show improvement?
Did I acknowledge and cultivate students’ strengths and talents?
These inquiries challenged me, not only professionally but personally. The more I learned the more I began to feel guilty, complicit in systems that inflict harm on students. Obviously, you don’t know what you don’t know, but once I knew, there was no going back. Here’s what I’ve learned and am continuing to learn.
Traditional Assessment
Traditional assessment and grading are not rooted in inclusion and equity. Any number of studies show disparities in achievement among marginalized students. Think about those who historically make lower grades: African American and Hispanic students, the economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities, and boys in comparison to girls.
Is something inherently wrong with these students or is there something wrong with how they are assessed? Grades and test scores perpetuate deficit thinking, a blame-the-victim way of thinking that attributes students’ “failures” to their individual, family, or community traits while ignoring the systemic influences that shape disparities in social and educational outcomes.
In How to Be an Anti-Racist, author Ibram X. Kendi explains how traditional testing policies perpetuate racist (and inequitable) ideas and policies in education. Achievement in this country is based on test scores, and since white and Asian students get higher test scores on average than their Black and Latinx peers, they are considered to be achieving on a higher level. And then because we connect achievement to intelligence, we think that white and Asian students are intellectually superior to Black and Latinx ones. As a result, what tests really seek to measure is how closely Black and brown students can perform whiteness.
The current educational model caters to the “average” learner. However, there is no such thing. All students are not the same and therefore do not learn in the same way nor at the same pace. I have students who can't read in the same classes with students who read at a collegiate level. I have students who just came to this country and speak very little English sitting alongside students who have lived in the United States their entire lives and only speak English. I have students who need the teacher to guide them every step of the way during a lesson in the same classes as students who thrive working through the lesson at their own pace. And I have students carrying unimaginable trauma among students with relative comfort and privilege. But how can educators adequately serve students who have varying cognitive abilities, learning preferences, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences?
Equity-Minded Assessment
In a speech given by Rev. Jeremiah Wright at an event for the NAACP in 2008, Wright says,
I believe change is going to come because many of us are committed to changing how we see others who are different. One is not superior to the other. One is not normal with the other being abnormal. One is not deficient because it doesn't follow the same methodology of the other. It is just different. Different does not mean deficient.
Our kids are so diverse in terms of where they are from, what they look like, and how they learn but different does not mean deficient. We must develop instructional strategies, assessment methods, grading practices, and behavior management systems that honor the full humanity of our students.
Getting to know students
Getting to know our students and establishing relationships with them are the first steps in humanizing those we teach. Seeing them as people first and students second can simply begin with engaging in conversation with our young people. But don’t come out guns blazing, requiring students to be vulnerable and attempting to uncover sensitive information from day one. We must first establish trust and psychological safety so that students can reveal their identities on their own terms without us assuming. Begin with low-stakes yet important connections such as learning how to pronounce students’ names, familiarizing ourselves with their cultures and circumstances, and showing interest in their lives within and outside of the classroom.
Tapping into students’ prior knowledge is another way to get to know them. They are not tabula rasas. They do not come to our classrooms knowing nothing. They know all sorts of things! When we only consider what students don’t have when compared to those in the majority culture, educators overlook what assets students do have in terms of home language(s), experience, and background knowledge from such environments as work, home, and places of worship. These funds of knowledge offer students a wealth of strengths that educators can use to help them navigate and make meaning of the academic and social terrain that seems normal to us, but is new to them.
In addition to our students, we should get to know our students’ families, the communities in which they live, and also the experiences of staff members at the margins. In their book Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation, Shane Safir and Jamilia Dugan outline many ways to collect “street data” from parents, students, and staff through careful study and deep listening. Educators can shadow students at school, track student engagement in class to see if participation is equitable, and interview students and parents typically absent from the decision making table.
Inclusive class design
Once we become familiar with students’ backgrounds and their assets and receive input from families, we can use this information to help design our courses. We can’t engage in equitable assessment if we don’t give all students access to materials and resources. We must account for language differences, learning preferences, and lived experiences and remove barriers that hinder students. Having a consistent class structure and clear expectations helps level the playing field for students who lack executive function skills.
Students shouldn’t be penalized for not knowing how to “play the game” of school. They need to be taught how to navigate the educational system and given the tools to be successful. For example, understanding cognitive load theory can help teachers be aware of how students’ brains are inundated with new information, strategies, technology, etc. in all of their classes every day. We can help students better process all this information when we simplify and reduce the content as well as routinize the systems students engage in. When we intentionally structure our educational spaces with all students in mind, our students will be more confident and empowered to learn.
Assessment
To be more equity-minded in our assessment practices, we have to determine what we are assessing, why we are assessing it, and how this assessment moves students forward as humans and learners.
When the learning opportunities aren’t culturally relevant, are downright boring and uninteresting, and there’s little-to-no student input, teachers feel compelled to enforce compliance through grades. For students the work is transactional, checking a series of boxes to earn the mark. There is no incentive to learn the material and grow from one assignment to the next. To ensure completion, teachers assign and collect student work to grade, essentially performing data entry rather than spending that valuable time providing detailed and timely feedback.
When we eliminate grades or implement more progressive grading practices, we take away the reward and punishment incentive for completing assignments. In order for students to want to engage in the work, we have to redefine success. Traditional achievement metrics are dehumanizing. We have to craft learning experiences that are culturally relevant, inclusive, and empowering for all students and use assessment methods that are qualitative, leverage self-reflection, single-point rubrics, and anecdotal assessment whenever possible.
With fewer or no grades, the purpose of assessment becomes clearer: it informs our instruction in order to help all students progress in the learning process. I now offer a variety of ways for students to demonstrate their learning. I provide low-stakes, frequent assessment and feedback. And students are allowed to revise, re-do, and resubmit as needed to show improvement. Assessment is now a conversation, not a transaction, between myself and my students. The focus is no longer about the things they can’t do or aren't doing well. The dialogue is rooted in their abilities and assets. Everyday I strive to acknowledge and cultivate students’ strengths and talents.
Conclusion
Ungrading is not just a trend—it’s a movement to address the larger issues inherent in traditional assessment and to bolster quality teaching and learning for all students. We may not be responsible for the inequities our students have faced before they met us, but they are in our care now—and we have agency over the state of equity in our classrooms. This systemic inequity is reason to not only question the status quo, but undo the harm associated with traditional teaching methods. It’s never too late to rethink and restructure our pedagogical practices. We can seek a community of teachers who are doing this work to affirm our resolve and share resources. There is always room to improve our relationships with students, our instructional design, and assessment models. We have the power to create equitable, inclusive, and culturally responsive educational spaces in which student differences are not viewed as deficiencies and where their full humanities are honored.
Vanessa Ellis currently works as an 8th grade social studies teacher at Veterans Memorial Middle School in Columbus, Georgia. She is the 2022-2023 Muscogee County School District Teacher of the Year. She enjoys creating educational songs based on popular hits and finding other ways to make learning fun and exciting. You can get a glimpse into her classroom on Instagram and Twitter. She currently resides in Midland, Georgia, with her husband (who is also a teacher) and their three children.