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.

With student-led conferences, families hear how students are progressing, more than any number or letter could tell them. Families become a part of the process, learning about their child’s interests and passions. Learning extends beyond the walls of the classroom.

The evaluative gaze of school is so constant a presence, so all-pervasive an eye, that many people have come to believe that children would actually not develop without it. But an oak tree does not require your opinion to grow, and believe it or not, 90% of the time, neither does a child.

Students using spikeview view their learning as a journey. They see where they have been, can explore what’s next, and make informed decisions on where not to spend time. It’s not a snapshot of one class or one reporting period. It’s life, as they know it.

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.”