Why are we so obsessed with ranking everyone? I talk to my students about this every year, because they worry so much about grades. I dislike grades, and I give grades only because I would be fired if I didn’t. Evaluation is fine, but that’s different from grading. Evaluation might say, “This part of your essay was very interesting; I think there’s another issue you need to consider. Your grammar is better this time, but keep watching out for sentence fragments.” This kind of evaluation notices improvements and problems, but it does not rank the student’s work by comparing it to the work of the other students. I want the students to do their best, and to get better, no matter where they are in some ranking system. How many times will a student in our system get a grade? Hundreds of times, hundreds. It’s just not necessary to grade people all the time.
Why are we so obsessed with ranking everyone? I talk to my students about this every year, because they worry so much about grades. I dislike grades, and I give grades only because I would be fired if I didn’t. Evaluation is fine, but that’s different from grading. Evaluation might say, “This part of your essay was very interesting; I think there’s another issue you need to consider. Your grammar is better this time, but keep watching out for sentence fragments.” This kind of evaluation notices improvements and problems, but it does not rank the student’s work by comparing it to the work of the other students. I want the students to do their best, and to get better, no matter where they are in some ranking system. How many times will a student in our system get a grade? Hundreds of times, hundreds. It’s just not necessary to grade people all the time.