Assessment feels like something I practice on my students; something I do to, more than with them. It’s hard for me to remember a time when the struggle to get my thoughts about an education related topic onto the page felt this fraught. 

In my nitpicking, I spent far too much time bogged down in reiterating past teaching. In my marginal notes and technology-enhanced comments, I was giving a low-quality version of the lesson I’d given weeks earlier. I needed to notch up my nitpicking.

Although I always valued students’ improvement over time, the way I was assessing didn’t support those values. I said I valued process, but my vision was on product, which limited the opportunities for my students.

Grades are so much a part of our own learning experiences and the tools available to teachers today it might be hard to imagine your school without grades. But a it’s possible—and powerful—when you can make it happen! 

What happens when we decenter our authority in the classroom? How does such decentering facilitate communicating with our students about their learning? These and other questions led us to try a radical experiment. 

Learning is perhaps one of the most vulnerable tasks we ask young people to engage in. Every day, we tell students to walk into our classroom, sit down, listen, engage, follow rules, take risks, and be judged by someone who may not be justly judging.

Now, in my 24th year of teaching, I am the teacher I always wanted to be. I have strong relationships, my learners are engaged in the curriculum, and I feel I am making a lasting impact on their lives.

“Our grading practices haven’t changed much from when I was graded, to when my son was graded, to now,” writes Patti Forster. “Grades are still used as rewards and consequences to compare students, and the lowest grades leave scars of feeling not good enough that last a lifetime.”

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.

Everything in Mike McAteer’s class begins with the end in mind. But instead of focusing on the endpoint of a summative assessment, he asks the question: What do I want to read in my students’ reflections?

After a school-wide discussion on assessment practices, Rhonda Higgins found herself wondering: could this be an opportunity to shift the mindset of students from getting a good grade to learning the Spanish language?

In her transition to a gradeless math class, Lauren Thurber wondered: Were my eleven and twelve-year-old students ready for this responsibility?