{"id":1774,"date":"2014-08-12T17:08:14","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T03:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/?p=1774"},"modified":"2014-08-12T17:08:14","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T03:08:14","slug":"why-your-kids-grades-wont-matter-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/learnedleadership.org\/divi\/why-your-kids-grades-wont-matter-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Your Kid's Grades Won't Matter: Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks back I received a grade for a class in which I was enrolled for my doctorate.\u00a0 I received a B+ for 95%\u2026that damn curve.\u00a0 At first I was upset.\u00a0 I thought “in what world is a 95% a B+” or “who curves grades anymore?, why is this happening to me?” or “why is the measurement of my learning affected\u00a0by someone the grade of someone else?”\u00a0 And then it occurred to me:<\/p>\n

Grades are Dead!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sure they might not look dead, but they’re gasping for their final breath of importance.\u00a0 A hold over from a different time, like square school lunch pizza and overhead projectors, we will soon see the traditional A-F grading scale finally put out of its misery.<\/p>\n

I say good riddance.\u00a0 There are few things in this world that make less sense than the traditional model of grading.\u00a0 It’s really not surprising if you think about it, I mean how effective can any system be that is supposed to sum up weeks or months of learning into a symbol.\u00a0 Do we do this in other places?\u00a0 For example, later this month when the school year begins, the inevitable question will be asked “how was your summer?”\u00a0 That’s a hard question to answer, the summer is three months, filled with some great days, a few ok afternoons, and an occasional grumpy morning.\u00a0 Nowadays many of us seem to take a lot of photos with our phones, but I bet people would look at me kind of funny if I showed them a photo summarizing my summer.<\/p>\n

\"If<\/a>

If you look closely you can really see the joy in my eyes from the amusement park we went to a few weeks back.<\/p><\/div>\n

Now that you’ve viewed\u00a0this picture do you feel like you have a good understanding of how my summer has been going?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 Keeping with this example, let’s imagine the summer of my dreams: I win the lottery, get to live in a big mansion, all my friends and family get to visit, the food is great, I do some traveling\u2026oh but on the last day my family dies in bad accident.\u00a0 So using our A-F logic, I was doing great for most of the summer and then had one really bad day, so the summer was about average\u2026I might be able to even use the same picture.\u00a0 Sound accurate?\u00a0 No!\u00a0 This is because averaging is often the worst way of measuring experience and learning.<\/p>\n

Of course, I’m not the only one who thinks this.\u00a0 I highly recommend you take a minute to look at this video by education guru, Rick Wormeli (especially around assessment).<\/p>\n