Episode 160: Your Kid’s 'A' Might Be Lying, And So Is The Homework

Grades shape futures, but do they measure what a student actually knows—or how well they play the points game? I take a hard look at why traditional grading often blends behavior, compliance, and access to resources with academic mastery, creating signals that mislead families, fuel bias, and widen gaps. Drawing on current research and classroom experience, I break down how equitable grading centers learning with proportional scales, retakes, and a focus on recent performance, making grades more accurate, bias-resistant, and motivating.

I walk through the mechanics: moving from 0–100 to 0–4 to avoid the punishing weight of zeros, separating soft skills from academic evidence, and building transparency with standards-aligned rubrics and simplified gradebooks. You’ll hear how these shifts reduce Ds and Fs, lower classroom stress, and strengthen trust between teachers and students. I also address the pushback—fears of lowered standards, confusion about change, and top-down mandates—and explain why clear communication and collaborative rollout matter more than ever.

For parents and caregivers, I offer a practical script to start a productive conversation with teachers: ask for their grade meaning statement, review how mastery is determined, and clarify how retakes and recent learning are weighed. For educators and leaders, I highlight steps to align on what a grade should mean, report mastery consistently, and coach soft skills without hiding them inside letter grades. If grades are a compass, accuracy is non-negotiable—and equity is the calibration that makes the compass point true North.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Host Welcome And Purpose
• 4:01 Do Grades Mean What You Think
• 5:45 How Traditional Grading Skews Reality
• 9:30 Bias, Homework, And Resource Gaps
• 13:10 What Equitable Grading Looks Like
• 16:45 Evidence From The Equitable Grading Project
• 18:45 Why Pushback Happens
• 23:27 Three Common Myths Debunked
• 27:57 Grades Should Mean Learning Only
• 30:37 How To Talk To Your Child’s Teacher

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Welcome to another episode of K-12 Public Education Insights, Empowering Parents of Color Podcast. The podcast that converges at the intersection of educational research and parental actions. It's about making the trends, topics, and theories in public education understandable so that you can implement them into practical, actionable strategies that work for your children. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager, turned education researcher, and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African-American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of motherwood wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about the current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, and the action steps you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. Give me 30 minutes or less, and I'll provide insights on the latest trends, issues, and topics pertaining to this constantly evolving K-12 public education environment. Do you understand what your child's grades mean? Really? You may be surprised to learn that many common grading practices are outdated, inaccurate, and even harmful to student success. It may be time for grading reform, which wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? In this episode, I discuss what equitable grading is, the gist of the debate between traditional grading practices and equitable grading practices, and some myths about grading reform. I also provide a way to have the grading practices conversation with your child's teacher. Let's gain some insight on this. Grades are used to make several significant decisions about students, including promotions, retention, college admissions, and scholarships. However, many common grading practices are outdated, inaccurate, and harmful to student success. Now, this may come as a surprise to you. In fact, grading policies, which may appear to be objective, fair, and accurate as far as describing the student's academic performance, often increase academic gaps by infusing grades with teachers' implicit biases or by rewarding or punishing students based on their family's resources. Therefore, traditional grading practices result in grades that provide unclear and often misleading information to parents, students, and colleges and universities. Teachers often combine a range of unrelated student information into a grade, compressing a bucket of information into a thimble-sized container. This means that when teachers collapse academic proficiency, soft skills, behavior, attendance, and effort into one single letter, it's impossible for anyone to discern the student's particular strengths and weaknesses in each of these aspects, which yields a grade that is vague, confusing, and often invalid. Additionally, traditional grading practices are often corrupted by implicit racial, class, and gender biases. The same biases that affect a school's disciplinary actions, which are often disproportionately applied to African American, Latino, low-income, and special education students, and those biases also affect grading. Further, when teachers grade students on subjectively interpreted behaviors in categories of participation or effort, their perceptions and judgments of those behaviors are influenced by the teacher's race, class, and gender. Grades based on performance outside the classroom can also reproduce cycles of disparity by rewarding or punishing students based on their income and resources. For example, students are more likely to complete homework if they have more resources, such as higher educated and English-speaking parents, Internet access, and a safe, quiet space at home to do homework. Yet teachers often award points to students for their homework performance, which rewards or punishes students based on environmental factors outside of the student's control. Finally, most teachers use grading practices that are based on calculations that depress student achievement and progress. These practices conflict with contemporary understandings of a growth mindset and ways to encourage students to learn through practice and experimentation. An F early in the student's learning and an A at the end of that learning averages out to a C regardless of the progress over time and the final achievement. This approach punishes students that have early struggles, who are often those who enter the class with fewer resources and less prior academic success, yet have the most potential for growth ahead of them. Equitable grading, which is the current application of grading reform, is more accurate, bias resistant, and motivational. And it reflects these key aspects. It reflects growth and learning. Teachers should use a more proportionately structured 0 to 4 scale instead of a 0 to 100 point scale. They should weigh recent performance and growth instead of averaging performance over time, and they should allow students to retake tests and projects with the chance to replace previous scores. This supports a growth mindset and rewards learning. Another aspect is value knowledge, not environment or behavior. Instead of grading subjectively interpreted behaviors like a student's effort or participation, teachers should focus grades on required content or standards. Grades shouldn't be based on a reward compliance or homework completion perspective, both of which invite implicit and institutional biases. Another aspect is that equitable grading should involve being transparent about how to succeed. Standards-aligned rubrics, simplified grade calculations, and standards-based scales and gradebooks make the teacher's expectations explicit as well as facilitate students' understanding, ownership, and power over their grades. And finally, one last aspect of equitable grading is that it builds soft skills without including them in the grade. Teacher feedback strategies should include peer and self-evaluation as well as build self-regulation in students instead of relying solely on grades as feedback. In a recent study by the Equitable Grading Project, their analysis found that equitable grading practices did not just reduce D's and F rates. The grades were also more accurate. Their analysis also found that equitable grading improves the learning experience and environment for teachers because the classroom seemed to be less stressful. Teacher-student relationships were stronger and more trusting, and students were more motivated to learn after equitable grading practices were implemented. Here's the thing. When the subject of equity is discussed, grading is rarely mentioned. So it's incumbent upon educators at every level that includes teachers, principals, district administrators, school boards, and state policymakers to improve grading practices to ensure that they reinforce a commitment to equity. There is pushback, though, on equitable grading. Yet research has identified practices that make grades more accurate and more fair while reducing students' anxiety as well as improving their learning. These practices include using a proportional scale, reporting only a student's most current understanding, and excluding non-academic behaviors or circumstances out of the student's control because tardiness, participation points, late work penalties, and extra credit are all within the student's control. These improved grading practices have evolved from being called standards-based to competency based to now equitable grading, and they've been around for decades. They're built on a straightforward premise. A student's grades should report only what they've learned for a set of course outcomes. This common sense approach to grading should unite educators and parents, you would think. But these grading practices have generated surprising debate, even hostility. Some of the debate raises claims that equitable grading lowers standards, demotivates students, and even undermines public schools. So here are three of the most common sources of this pushback. One, parents and educators tend to misunderstand the changes to grading. Changes to the familiar practice of grading the way that it's been since the Industrial Revolution makes people vulnerable to misinterpretation and knee-jerk rejection, even when the changes ultimately improve learning. Equitable grading simply gives students multiple opportunities to demonstrate what they know. It allows students multiple attempts to show understanding, much like professional exams in the working world, where you have to demonstrate competency on medical boards, driver's tests, bar exams, project management credentialing, HR credentialing, teacher credentialing, etc., where you get a reasonable number of chances to retake the exam. Equitable grading practices protect awarding points for behaviors that incentivize students to perform as if they are learning behaviors such as participating in class. By removing external rewards for quote unquote compliant behavior, equitable grading is less subjective and it challenges students to build their intrinsic motivation to be engaged in learning. Two, district leaders try to fix grading too quickly through a top-down policy. When leaders treat grading reform as a technical fix, it is going to produce backlash from teachers, parents, and students. And number three, defenders of traditional grading allow students and teachers to avoid accountability for real learning. Traditional learning can make a student's true academic performance unclear, constructing the type of institutional self-deception. Let me explain further. Picture the student who hasn't mastered the course content but earned points for submitting assignments, following directions, and participating in class. Because traditional grading combines academic and non-academic information, their quote unquote good grade masks their gaps in understanding. This built-in grade inflation allows schools to quietly promote students who look successful on paper but actually are unprepared academically, which robs them of seeing where they need to grow as well as absolving educators of helping them get there. More equitable standards-based grading makes student achievement data that are reported by teachers more reliable. Equitable grading gives truthful information about student learning. The fact is that improving grading won't solve every problem in schools, but the problem in schools cannot be solved without improving grading. The goal of grading reform is to better reflect students' learning and comprehension and aligning students' grades with their actual academic performance. Whereas traditional grading combines academic achievement with behavioral factors by assigning points to assignments, which means that completing a math assignment, for example, while including participation in class, work turned in on time, etc., may not directly reflect the student's understanding of the academic material. Now let's talk about what grading reform isn't. There are four myths about grading reform that I'll mention here. Myth number one, grading reformers want everyone to earn an A. That's untrue. Grading reform is not a push for universal aids. It's about matching grades with actual learning, not blending achievement with behavior. The goal of grading reform is to make grades clearer so an A truly reflects deep understanding of the subject matter, not gaming the system by accumulating extra credit points or earning participation points from pleasing a teacher. Myth number two, grading reformers eliminate the use of a zero to inflate grades. Untrue. The intent is actually an underlying issue with the traditional 100-point scale. For grades A through D, the scale encompasses roughly the same 10-point numerical range, while an F can mean anything from 0 to 59. This is not a 10-point range. One longstanding grading reformer, Douglas Reeves, has suggested that transitioning to a different scale, such as a 0 to 4 scale, is a better solution. This scale reduces grade variability and measures student learning and performance more equitably. Myth number three. Grading reformers want to throw out every rating policy and start over. Not true. The problem isn't grades themselves, but with how grades are determined and what grades communicate. Grades should solely reflect student mastery of learning goals, not a compilation of point accumulating activities like receiving points for completing extra credit holiday crossword puzzles, essay drafts, and correct responses on tests. When grades only reflect what students have actually learned, they can serve as feedback and effective feedback at that. And myth number four, grading reformers should be able to snap their fingers and make it happen. Again, this is untrue. Effective grading reform is not a quick fix or a silver bullet to solving the grade inflation issue. What grading reform is, is a call for systemic change. And like any change, it is a slow and iterative process. It's about involving the true purpose of grades from mere point accumulation to genuine reflections of student learning. This type of reform requires a cultural shift among students, educators, parents, and all other educational stakeholders in understanding and valuing grades as learning rather than grades as earning. Let me repeat that. Valuing grades as learning. Rather than grades as earning. The bottom line is that students' true academic abilities aren't reflected accurately in the traditional grading system. And it's now time for a change. But that change doesn't mean that we have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I think what we need to do is take what works in traditional grading and combine it with the opportunity that grading reform provides. To be clear, variations in teachers' grading approaches can lead to students that earn different grades if they learn in different schools in the same district, or even different classrooms in the same school, even if those students have similar levels of content mastery. These differing approaches to grading can lead to equity concerns. For example, the teacher may view one student as more distracting than another because of that teacher's own internal biases. Whatever grading change policies are implemented by a district, the district needs to ensure parents are on the same page about what grades represent, how grading skills work, and the rationale behind the changes. The future lives of students academically depends in large detail on teacher grading practices. Grades matter. Most of us assume that grades represent student learning, but according to grading researchers, this is rarely the case. Grading seems to be an extremely controversial topic because teachers traditionally enjoy full autonomy of the practice, and as a result, some teachers feel that implementing grading reform infringes on the sacred teaching right passed down by Horace Mann himself. Grades need a definitive meaning so that parents and students clearly understand the students' performance in class. Focusing on grade meaning can provide teachers with a new lens to view their grading practices so that they are more intentional about how they create report card grades. Grades should mean only one thing: student learning of academic standards. Teachers should create a meaning statement about their grading practices that needs to be communicated to students and parents. The grade meaning statement should be concise and straightforward. It can be provided as a separate document in elementary school or as part of the syllabus in middle school and high school classes. When the grading culture of the classroom is centered on meaningful grades, each assignment and quiz becomes more meaningful for students because they can truly practice their learning, engage the breadth and depth of their learning of the standards, and prepare for the final assignment grade. Clearly establishing grade meaning can be the catalyst for grading reform. So, what can you do about the information that I just shared? Here are the action steps you can take regarding the need for grading reform. But first, a short story. When I was going to school, report cards were paper documents that contained your academic grades, behavioral scores, and a section for personalized teacher comments. These report cards had to be physically signed by parents after their extreme scrutiny and inquisition about the grades reflected on the card. And trust me, you don't want to know what was involved in those quote-unquote conversations. Well, report cards have come a long way, especially when they moved to the digital format. The question is whether grading practices that were used in the quote-unquote old school report cards are the same ones that are applied today. In some ways they may be, but in other ways they are not at all the same. So, how do you open a conversation about grading practices with your child's teacher? You should ask the teacher about their meanings statement that ensures clarity and transparency of grades and their grading practices. This meaning needs to be communicated to you clearly and hopefully should be in writing. This conversation helps you understand the teacher's grading culture in the classroom. It will inform you as to whether the grading culture is a classroom currency for punishing and rewarding students or whether the culture is one where grades provide data on student learning. The grade meaning statement should be concise and straightforward so it can provide this information to you either as a separate document in elementary school or as part of the syllabus in middle school or high school classes. It should be communicated multiple times to you and your children throughout the school year from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year. The ideal times to communicate grade meaning to parents, preferably in person, is in parent-teacher conferences, back to school night, and individual phone calls to the home. These face-to-face communications allow you to better understand the meaning of the grades and to have an opportunity to discuss any questions or concerns that you may have. It's important that you understand the meaning behind the grades your children receive so that you are not deceived about how well they understand the academic subject content in their classes. Here are this episode's takeaways. Traditional grading practices result in grades that provide unclear and often misleading information to parents, students, and colleges and universities. Teachers often combine a range of unrelated student information into a grade, compressing a bucket of information into a thimble-sized container. This means that when teachers collapse academic proficiency, soft skills, behavior, attendance, and effort into one single letter, it's impossible for anyone to discern the student's particular strengths and weaknesses in each of these aspects, which yields a grade that is vague, confusing, and often invalid. The goal of grading reform is to better reflect students' learning and comprehension and aligning students' grades with their actual academic performance. Whereas traditional grading combines academic achievement with behavioral factors by assigning points to assignments, the grade may not directly reflect the student's understanding of academic material. The bottom line is that students' true academic abilities are not reflected accurately in the traditional grading system. So it may be time for a change. But this change doesn't mean that we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think what we need to do is to take what works from traditional grading and combine it with the opportunity that grading reform or equitable grading provides. When the grading culture of the classroom is centered on meaningful grades, each assignment and quiz becomes more meaningful for students because they can truly practice their learning, engage the breadth and depth of their learning of the standards, and prepare for final grade assignment. When the subject of equity is discussed, grading is rarely mentioned. So it's incumbent upon educators at every level teachers, principals, district administrators, school boards, and state policymakers to improve grading policies to ensure that they reinforce a commitment to equity. What are your thoughts on the need for grading reform? Let me know by leaving me a text comment on my podcast website, K12 Education Insights.budsprout.com. Here's how you can leave that text comment. Go to the episode description page and click on the Send Me a Text Message link. Again, it's K12Education Insights.budsprout.com. If you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another episode from my catalog? It can take as little as 15 minutes of your day. And remember, new episodes come out every Tuesday. And before I forget, would you do me a favor? Go online or send a text right now and share this episode with a friend who you think will love it. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to come back for more insights on K-12 educational topics that impact you and your children. And just so you know, I'm taking a holiday break for about three weeks from the podcast. So this will be the last podcast episode for this year. The next episode will be published Tuesday, January 13th, 2026. Can you believe it? But not to worry, I will still be reaching out weekly via email. So if you want to be included in those email communications, be sure to contact me at Kim at Liberation From Education.com to let me know. Hey, I want in. Happy holidays, everyone. Until next time, learn something new every day.