Our guest on the Grow Beyond Grades podcast is Akil Bello, an expert in educational access with over 30 years of experience. Akil began his career as a test proctor in 1990 and has since held roles from CEO to consultant, working to improve outcomes for underserved students.

When you know what standardized assessment washback is, you can see ways that it creeps into our everyday pedagogies and narrows what kind of learning we aim to support. Even if your students have to take a standardized test at the end of the year, this doesn’t have to wash back into your instruction all year long!

Nate Bowling teaches Social Studies at a US Embassy School in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. He is a past Washington State Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year Finalist. He and his wife blog about living and teaching overseas at BowlingsAbroad.com and he is the host of the Nerd Farmer Podcast.

As a biology professor who has gone gradeless in favor of a labor-based approach, Greg Pask has moved away from exams entirely. Whether at the introductory or 300 level, he has found that tests don’t support the goals for his classroom. Greg describes the three major problems with closed-note timed exams, and explores alternative approaches that address these specific shortcomings.

Nate Bowling explains why we should displace the College Board from its outsized role in education. Draining billions of dollars from families and school districts across the United States, its exams function as gatekeepers to marginalized communities that would be much better off without it. The sooner we come to grips with that, the sooner we can decide if we want the power they have to remain in their hands.

Putting agency over one’s grades into the hands of learners allows them to exercise metacognitive skills. When students learn to self-assess accurately, it enables them to transfer skills and understanding well beyond the classroom.

To counteract the anxiety caused by high-stakes assessments and grades, Nate Bowling invites students to focus on feedback and learning. Life is hard enough for students; assessment practices should not add to that stress.

Teachers are often concerned about going gradeless in an AP classroom because the classroom context is inherently tied to content more than learning skills. My lived experience says otherwise.

Although most gradeless teachers engage in “subtraction,” removing traditional grading from our classrooms, we also need “addition” in the form of new infrastructure that connects our individual efforts to the larger systems students must navigate. 

As schools reconvened on Thursday, January 7, many teachers faced two tasks: helping students make sense of yet another traumatizing “day after”—and getting them prepared for end-of-semester tests.

Nate Bowling an AP social studies teacher and emigrant to the United Arab Emirates. In his teaching, writing, and advocacy, Nate challenges the politics and policies that impact his students, his classroom, and society at large.

The purpose of schools is to provide students with an opportunity to explore and experience new opportunities. When we choose to equate quality with test scores, families, teachers, and administrators lose sight of what truly is important—the child.