As a graduate of the famously grade-free Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Nate Bowling received narrative evaluations rather than grades. “My transcript,” Nate writes, “shows who I was as a student far better than any series of letter grades or GPA could dream of.”

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.

Grading systems are remarkably resistant to rethinking given the vast infrastructure built up around our commonly-accepted approaches to grading. Barry Fishman recounts some of his encounters with both the institutional infrastructure, explaining how systemic inertia makes it difficult to give up the current system.

Lisa Wennerth interviews Juuso Nieminen, whose research focuses on the student perspective in assessment, and particularly how assessment shapes students’ identities in higher education and beyond. By entering into assessment partnerships with students, can teachers disrupt the usual power relations of grading and foster student empowerment?

Carla Meyrink, co-founder and secondary director at The Community for Learning, explains how a biweekly Project Day has revolutionized her school by providing students with the freedom to explore and create, free from the pressure of grades. It has lowered stress levels, encouraged creativity, and provided opportunities for cross-curricular learning.

Vanessa is an 8th-grade social studies teacher at Veterans Memorial Middle School in Columbus, Georgia. In 2017, Vanessa was named a Georgia Economics Teacher of the Year. This year, she officially joined our team here at TG2 and is currently one of ten finalists for Georgia Teacher of the Year. She resides in Midland, Georgia, with her husband and three children.

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.

Everyone, at some time or another, reaches a quit point—the moment when an individual’s productive energy toward a specific goal drops, causing withdrawal or minimized effort. With knowledge of quit point, teachers can meet students where they are, move them into more productive phases of the quit continuum, and engage all students to learn.

Jan McArthur is Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK. In her conversation with Michelle Cottrell-Williams, Dr. McArthur draws our attention to the all-important ‘why’ behind assessment, questions the value and meaning of grades, and examines how we might follow Maxine Greene’s exhortation to “imagine otherwise” about assessment.

How do we move students from the appearance of engagement into something far more meaningful? Miriam Plotinsky argues that to “win the people,” we must include students in every stage of instruction, including what occurs before anyone sets foot in a classroom. When that happens, students access deeper levels of motivation, which, in turn, leads to more powerful learning experiences and growth.

Gameful learning is designing for learning. Barry Fishman asks us to consider how games might inspire our thinking about learning, reminding us that good games don’t work because they are fun; they work because they are challenging and engaging.