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Parent of a teenager here, but I am not rolling my eyes at your "naiveté". Even as a high school teacher myself, I recoil from the industrial complex of fear mongering around the good-grades-to- college-to-good-job pipeline. Admittedly, my students are incredibly privileged and my own kid possesses many unearned social identity advantages, so I appreciate your point that my unwillingness to engage that route is a privilege that people of the global majority and working class folks don't have. Ultimately though, I don't want to participate in the ideology that says we have to toughen kids up for "the real world". Prepping our kids for "the real world" will only perpetuate its shittiness and I feel more responsibility to improve its conditions than to toughen mine or anyone else's kids up for it.
Yes, this is such a tension for me. I don't want to toughen them up exactly, but I do want to give them opportunities to build skills for coping in imperfect circumstances, because lordy is the world imperfect. It's sometimes hard to tell how much "imperfection" to ask them to tolerate.
Thank you for validating. My oldest is 9, so I'm hoping to avoid the space-race type mentality of the other parents to get kids tutors, apply to private schools...all to set them up for "success". I've also been worried it is naive to opt out of that mentality. It is certainly privileged to be in a place to do that, I try to maintain that awareness, but I do not see why it is all necessary to push our kids so early to "prepare" them for later in life success. Can't they just be kids?! (This all applies to kids sports as well. Trying to fight the push to competitive sports constantly, can't we just have fun together?)
Right? Kids are so naturally awesome in so many ways and we push them to conform in all kinds of ways once they hit school settings. It bums me out a lot. The best teachers I know seem to really adore the weirdness and wonderfulness of kids and try to protect that in them as long as possible.
Okay, I love this. After I sent my architecture student the link to your husband's 'trash house' I settled in to read the rest of the article. I have an uneasy relationship with grades and the push for the status of a particular college, major, career. And yet...once I oh so helpfully told another parent that college wasn't for everyone and trade school was a FANTASTIC path for many. Several years later my own child whose potential for success I measured far too often by her good grades decided during her first year of engineering school that she would prefer to switch to trade school and be a diesel mechanic. I have supported her relentlessly but it required swallowing a lot of pride and expectations and elitism I did not realize I had. (She is, however, an avowed anarchist so I have that going for us, I guess?) I blame some of this on the unspoken 'mom games.' I think there's often a drive to validate our successfullness and our parenting choices by how our kids turn out, and rather than measure by the intangible "happy' we turn to the things that CAN be measured. Grades. Dean's list. Awards. Marriage. And so on. I suspect it takes years of practice to really let go of those falsely comforting signals that somehow our child will soar above every challenge that life might throw at them and never experience hardship or pain.
I’m a teacher, and I could care less about grades. I wouldn’t grade anything numerically if I could get away with it. I can write paragraphs of feedback and all students will read is the number. So why not just get rid of the number?
I actually do think we grade not for students but for parents and for a larger “system” that not enough of us are ready to (or, er, know how to) dismantle.
This growing mentality drives me crazy because it's a never ending cycle. We need college to get good jobs... But don't we remember that's originally what high school was made for? It was high school, then college, then university, and now you need internships after university. It keeps getting pushed further and further out, and the only people winning are debt collectors.
Courtney, I am such a huge fan of your writing! This piece made me pause though. I think it's odd that you end by noting your good grades don't mean shit now. But they do, don't they? Because they helped get you into college? And that ostensibly shaped your trajectory significantly?
I grew up in a household where my parents were not very invested in my academic success. I was "smart enough", and took AP classes and read a ton, but if I got a D on a math test no one pushed me. I wish they had. I did not get into the college I wanted because of my grades, and I think if I had been more encouraged by my parents to dedicate myself more to getting good grades, it would have saved me a lot of pain attending a college I was very unhappy at my freshman year, and from which I transferred. I get the overall sentiment, and of course grades are not a reflection of intelligence or talents, but I do think that given the society we live in, kids benefit from being set up for success by achieving the best grades they can within reason. Kids need so much guidance and scaffolding when it comes to helping prepare for the future they may want for themselves - it's not just about replicating class status or some commitment to elitism through education...it's about helping your kids have the paths and opportunities available if they want to choose them.
Thanks for this complication--it's such an important one. I know someone close to me who feels this same way about her parents' lack of rigor and the way it impacted her journey. I think this is so true: "it's about helping your kids have the paths and opportunities available if they want to choose them." But maybe we think differently about how to get there, given our own contrasting experiences? I think that if I don't push my non-academic kid to get good grades, she will either move towards a non-academic path and that will be great, or she will authentically ask for help doing better because she realizes she wants to do something in the future that requires that of her and I will do everything I can. I guess I just want it to be intrinsic instead of coming from the outside or pushing some outdated idea of how "success" happens.
Barnard shaped my trajectory in certain ways, for sure, but so many other things shaped me WAY more that we rarely talk about in conversations about success, like my mom's creativity and modeling of community-building, my friendships, so many of which shaped me in massive ways, many of which had nothing to do with Barnard, and so much more.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply! In response to your hope that your child will ask for help if she realizes she wants a future which could be made more possible by getting good grades in school...I just think that's expecting a lot of a kid who doesn't have a fully formed adult brain! Kids are so motivated by emotion and pleasure/reward. Kids are less able to accurately assess risk and realistically imagine negative consequences. Your child may not be able to reflect on the significance of grades in their desired life trajectory in the way you as their parent are able to. They may feel uncomfortable and frustrated with academic challenges, and decide it feels better in the moment to give up than push themselves. I sort of see it like if you told a super young kid they only had to brush their teeth if they decided they cared about their oral health, and hoped they'd make the right decision. Kids often choose to move away from discomfort, because it feels better, without regard for future consequences. Just food for thought! Again, I am a big fan of your writing :)
It's horrifying and so disturbing to me as a former teacher. Two of my 8th grader's teachers this year repeatedly told him and his classmates, ”We're treating you like you're in 11th grade” and graded them according to high school standards. Needless to say, he's soured on school big-time. I'm bracing myself for what high school will do to him.
I hear you, yet struggle with so much of this. My husband, a product of very educated liberal parents from a wealthy suburban world, would agree with you wholeheartedly. I, on the other hand, am a first generation college graduate with parents who struggled at times to pay the mortgage or afford anything more than McDonalds for a night out. I now work in an urban public school system and I see everyday how NOT holding our children to some kind of standard is harming all kids. Are report cards the best standard? Probably not. The harsh reality is that adults with college degrees still live a more prosperous life than those without. Grades are not the end all be all. BUT they are a reflection of effort for most students. They are a way out of a cycle of poverty for so many kids. For all the rich white kids, maybe grades don't matter. At the very least, they don't matter nearly as much as the cutthroat college admissions world is convincing us they do. On the other hand, when my own children, who attend a school similar to yours, come home with the same sentiments I feel good that their teachers are educating them on the real world. That, for most kids at that school, effort matters. They will have to work within the system at some point in their life. Maybe your husband struggled in high school. But he did just well enough to land him in the place that gave him an opportunity to grow into his best self. So maybe instead of stressing about straight A's or perfect SAT's, we just need to tell kids they need to try and try and try. And try harder. Because life is hard, and if you don't try because "it doesn't matter" you'll either sink because you have no safety boat or you'll be fine because...well...you're privileged.
I hear you, Andrea. I pay A LOT of attention to the test scores at our school through serving on the School Site Council. Even though I know that, too, is an inaccurate measure, at least it's something that is transparent, and we can rally around it and notice racial differences in reading and math and then deploy our never-enough resources towards making sure the kids who need the most 1:1 attention are getting it. That hugely motivates me. My own kids' report cards do not.
Love this! I don’t think you were looking for a literal answer, but tons of kids literature (I.e. Diary of a Whimpy Kid) talks about grades (the main conflict for kid vs adult). My kid loves Timmy Failure and the narrator’s best friend is obsessed with Stanford and the grades he needs to get in. I always tell C grades don’t matter as long as he tries. I’ll let you know how that turns out!
Yes, Linda, I bet they're getting this from so many places, some of which I'm not monitoring particularly well (YouTube, their books, all the things). Love this book rec for something that might be more in alignment with what I'm hoping they'll soak up.
To be clear - I’m not sure Timmy Failure has the message you’re looking for, but he’s a total oddball and I think the books are really fun to read (no Dory Fantasmagory! But entertaining).
Okay, last comment. In discussion with Joel we actually would recommend the Timmy Failure books. Kid who lives in his head, single mom, very funny. Also, I sang Closer To Fine with my best friend at our high school graduation. My mic was off (unbeknownst to me) for the first 2 versus.
I nearly flunked 6th grade. My husband couldn’t get into college until he wrangled a spot at a community college by going there in person and begging the admissions director. Neither of us gave a flash-frozen rat’s ass about report cards for our kids. We did fine. So have they. The competitive crap in school is a soul-sucking, amoral experience that erodes our culture and disheartens our kids. Good for you for sending the right message, even if they don’t always hear it.
Grading is not one of the pleasant parts of teaching. This is why some of my colleagues washed their hands of it by giving everyone As. And then the next year the parents came to me and asked why their kids with their '4-point' averages had gotten rock bottom scores on their standardized tests.
One of the most influential educators of the last half century is the teacher and researcher Lisa Delpit. If you have not read her work about what educators in integrated schools, or majority-minority schools often do wrong in terms of giving feedback, I highly recommend her work.
She would want the teachers in such schools to make sure that kids understand what connects to what for kids starting where they are, which may not be the same as what connects to what for the children of white educated parents.
The first sentence of the last paragraph is such a good description of life. As I’ve mentioned, I raised my kids believing good grades/other conforming behavior can lead to an easy path but I see things so differently now. Interesting though to see how even progressive family values have to butt up against the rhetoric from schools/society. Keep instilling your perspective in them!
Kiddos are literal neuro-sponges absorbing any- and everything. I remember when my nearly 5 year old and I were driving home from the daycare center and Eric announced "I know how babies are made!" To which I replied, "Oh, really. How is that?" He proudly told me, "It's when two birds are outside and then they bump against each other up in the air." Whew, but illustrates that a random comment between two day care teachers in the playground initiated my son's family life education. And so it is.
I had a very strong, complex reaction to this piece. I teach at a Title 1 school in a college readiness program with the goal to help students who are the first in their family to go to college gain the skills they need to do so. I have mixed feelings about the program in some ways, though I do believe that it offers significant benefits to students who have the potential for advanced coursework but need a bit more extra support to access those rigorous courses. We also help students, at the high school level (I teach middle school) navigate the big systems of post-high school life, like FAFSA and scholarship applications and college applications and decisions between college/trade school/etc. I always talk about multiple post-HS options, and focus on wanting students to know they CAN do what they choose to do, that if they decide their senior year that they DO want to go to college, that they CAN.
I feel the tension between not wanting to treat my 6th graders like they're in high school AND wanting to make sure that they know that we believe that they can do anything they want to do and helping THEM believe that. Many of my students come in as "dependent learners" (term from Zaretta Hammond's "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain"), and grades are one way that we help students learn to be more independent, as they can see their growth in certain subjects over time and based on their thinking, problem-solving and effort. We used standards-based grading, which means students are assessed on SKILLS, not assignments, and they can ALWAYS raise their grades by increasing their understanding of specific skills. I hate how much my kids have to test, but I also know that those tests determine their ability to do some of the things they dream of doing. Their grades do matter - to get into high schools in a very choice-based environment, to get into college, to get their driver's licenses, to get scholarships to pay for college if they choose to go.
I think it's true that grades don't matter nearly as much as school communicates that they do, and that they are used as a control device in a lot of contexts. I also think that, for my kids, grades matter more because they don't necessarily come in with some of the advantages that students coming from middle-class backgrounds or homes with college-educated adults do that might cushion their challenges if they do struggle academically. That doesn't mean they aren't wonderful - they are gifted in a thousand ways I'll never be, and that's why I love working with them! I just worry that if we say "grades don't matter," we miss some of the supportive factors that having good grades can have for students who are amazing and have a lot to overcome because of systemic factors and others outside their control.
That said, sometimes I worry that I've been just as brainwashed by the "college-going environment" propaganda and don't know what direction is up. Working in my context has shaped me in ways I couldn't have imagined, and when contexts do that, it's rare that you really take only the good and leave the nonsense. Hence the conflicting feelings!
First and foremost, thanks for your work, Lauren, and the way you approach it with such clear passion, nuance, and humility. What a gift to your students you must be! And they to you, of course.
I think a lot about how to sit within the "tragic gaps" (Parker Palmer) of the world. I think you're so in the middle of one in your role. I am also--being a parent of privileged kids in an unequal world and a segregated school system is a neverending ethical journey for me.
As I mentioned in another comment, I focus my collective efforts on the School Site Council, and being rigorous and loving about the disparate test scores at our school. OUR kids need that energy more than MY kids need that energy, because of all the aforementioned things.
Thanks for sharing the conflicted feelings. There are rarely another kind. haha
Hmm...."grades don't mean s#!t" I think you've taken a blunt force instrument here to something that actually DOES matter and it matters quite a bit both for you as a parent and your girls. First of all, yes, what a privilege to be able to say "grades don't matter." Your girls will be fine no matter what because they have a remarkable support system. I assure you that, when our Trinidadian nanny's BFF (immigrant single mom who also worked as a nanny) got her boy into Sidwell Friends she certainly didn't say "oh, grades don't mean s#!t." The subject of privilege aside, you as a parent do need to have some idea of "what's going on with my kid's learning journey?" I say this in particular in math and reading. Whatever your path, you need both. Okay, maybe not multi-variable calculus, but certainly fractions and a few other things! My kids are at an IB school where there are no grades in elementary school and really no tests to speak of in the way we had them at Steele. This is great on many levels; fostering a love of learning for the sake of learning, getting hyper-attentive parents to chill out; recognizing different learning styles and different interests, etc. That being said, this approach also made it difficult to recognize when kids were really not grasping concepts they needed to (in my daughter's case, maths). It would have been nice to have some "old fashioned grades" to give me SOME sort of indication of what she was clearly struggling with. On the side of the students....no to anxiety and a treadmill mentality towards only one life path. And no to evaluation schemes that only recognize one type of learning (I will say that in Middle School maths, Lucy is evaluated in many ways besides the dreaded test!) But a big YES to showing up, working hard at something, and having your level of effort and performance evaluated. Whether you are a mechanic or a mechanical engineer, we are judged by the level of effort we put in and how well we have mastered whatever "subject" we have chosen. And many careers (whether you deem them to be noble or not), require advanced education (grades!) and tests. This doesn't just apply to the classroom...work ethic, showing up to to sports practice, putting in extra hours to get ready for try outs for the school play. If you don't work at it and achieve, you get cut. Lucy and Emmy are presently preparing for a dance show and they have been practicing outside of class lest they get "cut" from any of the dances. Yes, there are many different life tracks out there; and when you show up, put in the hard work, often you have the gift of choice, rather than having choices made for you. Yes, encourage your kids to think about what they want to do and understand what they have to do to get there (I have no idea what it takes to be a film maker, but there's a Google for that!). Caring about achievement is not elite hogwash (I gotta say that sentence REALLY smacks of privilege). Unfortunately most public schools have limited bandwith to evaluate the full range of ways kids think and perform and are mediocre at best at figuring out how to reward different types of achievement. The answer isn't doing away with "grades" entirely. Encourage your kids to think about what they want for their life path and work backwards. But grades and performance and level of effort DO matter.
Parent of a teenager here, but I am not rolling my eyes at your "naiveté". Even as a high school teacher myself, I recoil from the industrial complex of fear mongering around the good-grades-to- college-to-good-job pipeline. Admittedly, my students are incredibly privileged and my own kid possesses many unearned social identity advantages, so I appreciate your point that my unwillingness to engage that route is a privilege that people of the global majority and working class folks don't have. Ultimately though, I don't want to participate in the ideology that says we have to toughen kids up for "the real world". Prepping our kids for "the real world" will only perpetuate its shittiness and I feel more responsibility to improve its conditions than to toughen mine or anyone else's kids up for it.
Yes, this is such a tension for me. I don't want to toughen them up exactly, but I do want to give them opportunities to build skills for coping in imperfect circumstances, because lordy is the world imperfect. It's sometimes hard to tell how much "imperfection" to ask them to tolerate.
Thank you for validating. My oldest is 9, so I'm hoping to avoid the space-race type mentality of the other parents to get kids tutors, apply to private schools...all to set them up for "success". I've also been worried it is naive to opt out of that mentality. It is certainly privileged to be in a place to do that, I try to maintain that awareness, but I do not see why it is all necessary to push our kids so early to "prepare" them for later in life success. Can't they just be kids?! (This all applies to kids sports as well. Trying to fight the push to competitive sports constantly, can't we just have fun together?)
Right? Kids are so naturally awesome in so many ways and we push them to conform in all kinds of ways once they hit school settings. It bums me out a lot. The best teachers I know seem to really adore the weirdness and wonderfulness of kids and try to protect that in them as long as possible.
Okay, I love this. After I sent my architecture student the link to your husband's 'trash house' I settled in to read the rest of the article. I have an uneasy relationship with grades and the push for the status of a particular college, major, career. And yet...once I oh so helpfully told another parent that college wasn't for everyone and trade school was a FANTASTIC path for many. Several years later my own child whose potential for success I measured far too often by her good grades decided during her first year of engineering school that she would prefer to switch to trade school and be a diesel mechanic. I have supported her relentlessly but it required swallowing a lot of pride and expectations and elitism I did not realize I had. (She is, however, an avowed anarchist so I have that going for us, I guess?) I blame some of this on the unspoken 'mom games.' I think there's often a drive to validate our successfullness and our parenting choices by how our kids turn out, and rather than measure by the intangible "happy' we turn to the things that CAN be measured. Grades. Dean's list. Awards. Marriage. And so on. I suspect it takes years of practice to really let go of those falsely comforting signals that somehow our child will soar above every challenge that life might throw at them and never experience hardship or pain.
Oh my gosh I want to meet your daughter. She sounds AMAZING. As do you. Thanks for this little peek into a potential future.
I’m a teacher, and I could care less about grades. I wouldn’t grade anything numerically if I could get away with it. I can write paragraphs of feedback and all students will read is the number. So why not just get rid of the number?
I actually do think we grade not for students but for parents and for a larger “system” that not enough of us are ready to (or, er, know how to) dismantle.
Thanks for the affirmation! That seems to be how our teachers feel, too.
This growing mentality drives me crazy because it's a never ending cycle. We need college to get good jobs... But don't we remember that's originally what high school was made for? It was high school, then college, then university, and now you need internships after university. It keeps getting pushed further and further out, and the only people winning are debt collectors.
Courtney, I am such a huge fan of your writing! This piece made me pause though. I think it's odd that you end by noting your good grades don't mean shit now. But they do, don't they? Because they helped get you into college? And that ostensibly shaped your trajectory significantly?
I grew up in a household where my parents were not very invested in my academic success. I was "smart enough", and took AP classes and read a ton, but if I got a D on a math test no one pushed me. I wish they had. I did not get into the college I wanted because of my grades, and I think if I had been more encouraged by my parents to dedicate myself more to getting good grades, it would have saved me a lot of pain attending a college I was very unhappy at my freshman year, and from which I transferred. I get the overall sentiment, and of course grades are not a reflection of intelligence or talents, but I do think that given the society we live in, kids benefit from being set up for success by achieving the best grades they can within reason. Kids need so much guidance and scaffolding when it comes to helping prepare for the future they may want for themselves - it's not just about replicating class status or some commitment to elitism through education...it's about helping your kids have the paths and opportunities available if they want to choose them.
Thanks for this complication--it's such an important one. I know someone close to me who feels this same way about her parents' lack of rigor and the way it impacted her journey. I think this is so true: "it's about helping your kids have the paths and opportunities available if they want to choose them." But maybe we think differently about how to get there, given our own contrasting experiences? I think that if I don't push my non-academic kid to get good grades, she will either move towards a non-academic path and that will be great, or she will authentically ask for help doing better because she realizes she wants to do something in the future that requires that of her and I will do everything I can. I guess I just want it to be intrinsic instead of coming from the outside or pushing some outdated idea of how "success" happens.
Barnard shaped my trajectory in certain ways, for sure, but so many other things shaped me WAY more that we rarely talk about in conversations about success, like my mom's creativity and modeling of community-building, my friendships, so many of which shaped me in massive ways, many of which had nothing to do with Barnard, and so much more.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply! In response to your hope that your child will ask for help if she realizes she wants a future which could be made more possible by getting good grades in school...I just think that's expecting a lot of a kid who doesn't have a fully formed adult brain! Kids are so motivated by emotion and pleasure/reward. Kids are less able to accurately assess risk and realistically imagine negative consequences. Your child may not be able to reflect on the significance of grades in their desired life trajectory in the way you as their parent are able to. They may feel uncomfortable and frustrated with academic challenges, and decide it feels better in the moment to give up than push themselves. I sort of see it like if you told a super young kid they only had to brush their teeth if they decided they cared about their oral health, and hoped they'd make the right decision. Kids often choose to move away from discomfort, because it feels better, without regard for future consequences. Just food for thought! Again, I am a big fan of your writing :)
Great points! I'll keep this in mind. So appreciate your perspective.
It's horrifying and so disturbing to me as a former teacher. Two of my 8th grader's teachers this year repeatedly told him and his classmates, ”We're treating you like you're in 11th grade” and graded them according to high school standards. Needless to say, he's soured on school big-time. I'm bracing myself for what high school will do to him.
Ugh, this is so sad - "what high school will do to him" should not be a phrase. How about "what high school can do for him?"
I am more optimistic about HS than my previous down-at-the-mouth comment might convey. Cautiously so!
That’s ridiculous! Let them be eighth-graders!!
I hear you, yet struggle with so much of this. My husband, a product of very educated liberal parents from a wealthy suburban world, would agree with you wholeheartedly. I, on the other hand, am a first generation college graduate with parents who struggled at times to pay the mortgage or afford anything more than McDonalds for a night out. I now work in an urban public school system and I see everyday how NOT holding our children to some kind of standard is harming all kids. Are report cards the best standard? Probably not. The harsh reality is that adults with college degrees still live a more prosperous life than those without. Grades are not the end all be all. BUT they are a reflection of effort for most students. They are a way out of a cycle of poverty for so many kids. For all the rich white kids, maybe grades don't matter. At the very least, they don't matter nearly as much as the cutthroat college admissions world is convincing us they do. On the other hand, when my own children, who attend a school similar to yours, come home with the same sentiments I feel good that their teachers are educating them on the real world. That, for most kids at that school, effort matters. They will have to work within the system at some point in their life. Maybe your husband struggled in high school. But he did just well enough to land him in the place that gave him an opportunity to grow into his best self. So maybe instead of stressing about straight A's or perfect SAT's, we just need to tell kids they need to try and try and try. And try harder. Because life is hard, and if you don't try because "it doesn't matter" you'll either sink because you have no safety boat or you'll be fine because...well...you're privileged.
I hear you, Andrea. I pay A LOT of attention to the test scores at our school through serving on the School Site Council. Even though I know that, too, is an inaccurate measure, at least it's something that is transparent, and we can rally around it and notice racial differences in reading and math and then deploy our never-enough resources towards making sure the kids who need the most 1:1 attention are getting it. That hugely motivates me. My own kids' report cards do not.
Love this! I don’t think you were looking for a literal answer, but tons of kids literature (I.e. Diary of a Whimpy Kid) talks about grades (the main conflict for kid vs adult). My kid loves Timmy Failure and the narrator’s best friend is obsessed with Stanford and the grades he needs to get in. I always tell C grades don’t matter as long as he tries. I’ll let you know how that turns out!
Yes, Linda, I bet they're getting this from so many places, some of which I'm not monitoring particularly well (YouTube, their books, all the things). Love this book rec for something that might be more in alignment with what I'm hoping they'll soak up.
To be clear - I’m not sure Timmy Failure has the message you’re looking for, but he’s a total oddball and I think the books are really fun to read (no Dory Fantasmagory! But entertaining).
Okay, last comment. In discussion with Joel we actually would recommend the Timmy Failure books. Kid who lives in his head, single mom, very funny. Also, I sang Closer To Fine with my best friend at our high school graduation. My mic was off (unbeknownst to me) for the first 2 versus.
Ha! Love it all.
I nearly flunked 6th grade. My husband couldn’t get into college until he wrangled a spot at a community college by going there in person and begging the admissions director. Neither of us gave a flash-frozen rat’s ass about report cards for our kids. We did fine. So have they. The competitive crap in school is a soul-sucking, amoral experience that erodes our culture and disheartens our kids. Good for you for sending the right message, even if they don’t always hear it.
New favorite phrase on earth: "a flash-frozen rat’s ass"
Maura, you're a gem.
Yes.
Grading is not one of the pleasant parts of teaching. This is why some of my colleagues washed their hands of it by giving everyone As. And then the next year the parents came to me and asked why their kids with their '4-point' averages had gotten rock bottom scores on their standardized tests.
One of the most influential educators of the last half century is the teacher and researcher Lisa Delpit. If you have not read her work about what educators in integrated schools, or majority-minority schools often do wrong in terms of giving feedback, I highly recommend her work.
She would want the teachers in such schools to make sure that kids understand what connects to what for kids starting where they are, which may not be the same as what connects to what for the children of white educated parents.
I have read her work and liked it a lot, thanks!
The first sentence of the last paragraph is such a good description of life. As I’ve mentioned, I raised my kids believing good grades/other conforming behavior can lead to an easy path but I see things so differently now. Interesting though to see how even progressive family values have to butt up against the rhetoric from schools/society. Keep instilling your perspective in them!
I so admire people whose perspective evolves over time and they admit it in public. A+ for you Lisa! hahaha
Kiddos are literal neuro-sponges absorbing any- and everything. I remember when my nearly 5 year old and I were driving home from the daycare center and Eric announced "I know how babies are made!" To which I replied, "Oh, really. How is that?" He proudly told me, "It's when two birds are outside and then they bump against each other up in the air." Whew, but illustrates that a random comment between two day care teachers in the playground initiated my son's family life education. And so it is.
That's amazing. I kind of wish that were how babies were made. Haha!
My little 9 year old perfectionist could hang with your girls - slime videos are her jam. And my refusal to measure while cooking drives her crazy 😆
This slime stuff is SO confusing to me. In solidarity...
The sports context is actually making me think of this newsletter post by Anne Helen Peterson. We are professionalizing sports, education, etc. https://annehelen.substack.com/p/against-kids-sports
Yes, so bonkers.
I had a very strong, complex reaction to this piece. I teach at a Title 1 school in a college readiness program with the goal to help students who are the first in their family to go to college gain the skills they need to do so. I have mixed feelings about the program in some ways, though I do believe that it offers significant benefits to students who have the potential for advanced coursework but need a bit more extra support to access those rigorous courses. We also help students, at the high school level (I teach middle school) navigate the big systems of post-high school life, like FAFSA and scholarship applications and college applications and decisions between college/trade school/etc. I always talk about multiple post-HS options, and focus on wanting students to know they CAN do what they choose to do, that if they decide their senior year that they DO want to go to college, that they CAN.
I feel the tension between not wanting to treat my 6th graders like they're in high school AND wanting to make sure that they know that we believe that they can do anything they want to do and helping THEM believe that. Many of my students come in as "dependent learners" (term from Zaretta Hammond's "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain"), and grades are one way that we help students learn to be more independent, as they can see their growth in certain subjects over time and based on their thinking, problem-solving and effort. We used standards-based grading, which means students are assessed on SKILLS, not assignments, and they can ALWAYS raise their grades by increasing their understanding of specific skills. I hate how much my kids have to test, but I also know that those tests determine their ability to do some of the things they dream of doing. Their grades do matter - to get into high schools in a very choice-based environment, to get into college, to get their driver's licenses, to get scholarships to pay for college if they choose to go.
I think it's true that grades don't matter nearly as much as school communicates that they do, and that they are used as a control device in a lot of contexts. I also think that, for my kids, grades matter more because they don't necessarily come in with some of the advantages that students coming from middle-class backgrounds or homes with college-educated adults do that might cushion their challenges if they do struggle academically. That doesn't mean they aren't wonderful - they are gifted in a thousand ways I'll never be, and that's why I love working with them! I just worry that if we say "grades don't matter," we miss some of the supportive factors that having good grades can have for students who are amazing and have a lot to overcome because of systemic factors and others outside their control.
That said, sometimes I worry that I've been just as brainwashed by the "college-going environment" propaganda and don't know what direction is up. Working in my context has shaped me in ways I couldn't have imagined, and when contexts do that, it's rare that you really take only the good and leave the nonsense. Hence the conflicting feelings!
First and foremost, thanks for your work, Lauren, and the way you approach it with such clear passion, nuance, and humility. What a gift to your students you must be! And they to you, of course.
I think a lot about how to sit within the "tragic gaps" (Parker Palmer) of the world. I think you're so in the middle of one in your role. I am also--being a parent of privileged kids in an unequal world and a segregated school system is a neverending ethical journey for me.
As I mentioned in another comment, I focus my collective efforts on the School Site Council, and being rigorous and loving about the disparate test scores at our school. OUR kids need that energy more than MY kids need that energy, because of all the aforementioned things.
Thanks for sharing the conflicted feelings. There are rarely another kind. haha
Hmm...."grades don't mean s#!t" I think you've taken a blunt force instrument here to something that actually DOES matter and it matters quite a bit both for you as a parent and your girls. First of all, yes, what a privilege to be able to say "grades don't matter." Your girls will be fine no matter what because they have a remarkable support system. I assure you that, when our Trinidadian nanny's BFF (immigrant single mom who also worked as a nanny) got her boy into Sidwell Friends she certainly didn't say "oh, grades don't mean s#!t." The subject of privilege aside, you as a parent do need to have some idea of "what's going on with my kid's learning journey?" I say this in particular in math and reading. Whatever your path, you need both. Okay, maybe not multi-variable calculus, but certainly fractions and a few other things! My kids are at an IB school where there are no grades in elementary school and really no tests to speak of in the way we had them at Steele. This is great on many levels; fostering a love of learning for the sake of learning, getting hyper-attentive parents to chill out; recognizing different learning styles and different interests, etc. That being said, this approach also made it difficult to recognize when kids were really not grasping concepts they needed to (in my daughter's case, maths). It would have been nice to have some "old fashioned grades" to give me SOME sort of indication of what she was clearly struggling with. On the side of the students....no to anxiety and a treadmill mentality towards only one life path. And no to evaluation schemes that only recognize one type of learning (I will say that in Middle School maths, Lucy is evaluated in many ways besides the dreaded test!) But a big YES to showing up, working hard at something, and having your level of effort and performance evaluated. Whether you are a mechanic or a mechanical engineer, we are judged by the level of effort we put in and how well we have mastered whatever "subject" we have chosen. And many careers (whether you deem them to be noble or not), require advanced education (grades!) and tests. This doesn't just apply to the classroom...work ethic, showing up to to sports practice, putting in extra hours to get ready for try outs for the school play. If you don't work at it and achieve, you get cut. Lucy and Emmy are presently preparing for a dance show and they have been practicing outside of class lest they get "cut" from any of the dances. Yes, there are many different life tracks out there; and when you show up, put in the hard work, often you have the gift of choice, rather than having choices made for you. Yes, encourage your kids to think about what they want to do and understand what they have to do to get there (I have no idea what it takes to be a film maker, but there's a Google for that!). Caring about achievement is not elite hogwash (I gotta say that sentence REALLY smacks of privilege). Unfortunately most public schools have limited bandwith to evaluate the full range of ways kids think and perform and are mediocre at best at figuring out how to reward different types of achievement. The answer isn't doing away with "grades" entirely. Encourage your kids to think about what they want for their life path and work backwards. But grades and performance and level of effort DO matter.