Truly Equitable Grading with Tom Guskey

[00:00:00.60] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Corwin's Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast, with hosts Peter DeWitt and Michael Nelson. This podcast, is from education leaders for education leaders. Every week, Peter, Mike, and our guests get together to share ideas, put research into practice, and ensure that every student is learning not by chance, but by design.

[00:00:25.61] PETER DEWITT: Michael Nelson.

[00:00:27.62] MICHAEL NELSON: Peter DeWitt. It's good to see you.

[00:00:29.43] PETER DEWITT: It's good to see you, as well. Here we go, another season of Leaders Coaching Leaders.

[00:00:34.90] MICHAEL NELSON: I know. And we have a great interview today.

[00:00:38.52] PETER DEWITT: We do have a great interview, Tom Guskey.

[00:00:41.60] I feel like I want to say everything I can possibly say about Tom, but I think that would just be another 45 minutes. But Tom is a Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, where he served as department chair, head of the educational psychology area committee, and the President of the Faculty Council. He has been a visiting professor at 10 other universities in the US and a visiting scholar at universities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

[00:01:14.42] But one of the things that I love the most about Tom is just his knowledge base. And I know that people will hear me talk about it in the actual interview, but you can ask him any question and he has a non-judgmental response. I never feel like-- sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm going to ask this question and I feel like it might be silly. Tom never gives an indication that any question is silly. It's just always non-judgmental. And so I'm really glad we're interviewing him about his new book that he co-authored with Doug Fischer and Nancy Frye on grading with integrity. So what are your thoughts?

[00:02:00.77] MICHAEL NELSON: I would agree 100% with exactly what you're saying. I mean, you started by sharing all of this stuff about his resume. And if we were just to grade him on that product, he would receive a good product grade. But the way he processes with us. And the way he shares information in doable chunks and grouping things, it makes you feel like, oh, I can do that, I can do that.

[00:02:26.10] And as you and I know, we both were principals. I moved into the superintendency, Peter, and it's a hot topic. When you begin to have conversations about grading and school systems with staff and then with families and communities, it can go awry really fast. But Tom just gives you the clear soundbites for how to articulate it, what steps to move forward with. Just amazing man.

[00:02:55.04] PETER DEWITT: So you know what? Let's-- actually, I was going to say, what would you like to say that people need to listen to when they go into the interview? But quite honestly, Mike, you just said it. I mean, he just gives these very clear answers and steps and stuff. So here you are. Here we are introducing you to our first interview this season. It's Tom Gorski talking about grading with integrity. Enjoy.

[00:03:24.79] ANNOUNCER: Picture yourself popularly known among staff members as the reliable, go-to person who makes meaningful change happen. This is possible when you equip yourself with robust strategies and tools from Corwin's leadership workshops. Sign up today at Corwin.com.

[00:03:39.31] PETER DEWITT: Tom Guskey, welcome to the Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast.

[00:03:43.10] TOM GUSKEY: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be with you today.

[00:03:45.74] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, it's really good to see you. We haven't seen you since we saw you at AVL a few weeks ago. So that was really good. So how have you been?

[00:03:53.83] TOM GUSKEY: Very good. Very good.

[00:03:56.42] MICHAEL NELSON: It's fantastic to see you, as Peter said, and we are thrilled that you are joining us and talking about your new book, Grading with Integrity, a research-based approach grounded in honesty, transparency, accuracy and equity. And thank you for doing that. But before we get too much into that, I do have to say, Tom, I've been a fan of yours for over-- well, into the three decades, I can tell you that much. I remember first reading your book, your pieces back when I was a principal, moved into district level work.

[00:04:32.84] And in particular, there was a kind of three that clustered together back in the late '90s. I'm going to bring you on a little historical journey of the communicating student learning, the ASCD1, the implementing mastery learning and the comprehensive school reform had a huge impact on me. And that's as I was moving in my trajectory career from principalship to assistant superintendent and then into the superintendency.

[00:04:59.83] And I was honored to have you come to our school district here in Enumclaw, Washington, 25 years ago, if you can believe that. And talking about just some of the things that you share a little bit in your book, but taking them to next steps of how do we move into more standards-based type of grading system? How do we communicate that?

[00:05:24.43] And you were instrumental at that time in Enumclaw, Tom. And I know you can believe this. Because you probably have heard stories after stories of the only way reading grades were communicated to our elementary students, it was just an effort. So here's the effort in K-6. And nowhere-- at that time, we were K-6 in our school district. And nowhere was there any indication that we were communicating to families truly where students were at.

[00:05:52.18] And as Peter knows, in my former district, before I came to Enumclaw, I started more of a standards-based approach and did it without any support. But Enumclaw, we built huge systems. And so as we began to communicate what it looks like to read on grade level, and here's some benchmark books that we could truly share to parents with examples and what that looks like, work with teachers around assessment so they can clearly communicate. You fundamentally came into our system right at that time and built huge credibility for me as a leader.

[00:06:25.66] So I need to let you know that thank you very much for that. It was the right timing for us. And it helped, I think, build the vision that you're talking about in this new book and would love to start off with that historical overview of grading and practices. And then, how has that looked over time with this new book, Tom?

[00:06:53.79] THOMAS GUSKEY: Sure. In fact, it's kind of ironic you mentioned that, Mike. Because my first foray into the whole grading area was an article that I did, gosh, in 1994, '93--

[00:07:07.48] MICHAEL NELSON: Right, yeah.

[00:07:08.70] THOMAS GUSKEY: --leadership about grading issues. And from that, I was invited to serve on the publication committee for ASCD. And one of the things that the publication committee does is serve as a review board, at that time anyway, it reviewed books. We had several books proposed to us on the topic of grading. And I asked what I thought were some pretty basic questions about the whole grading process. And none of the authors, proposed authors were able to answer these.

[00:07:33.97] And so when the committee met later that day, they decided not to publish any of those books. But they said, we probably had a due book on grading. And at least you seem to have thought about it. So we'd like you to do the book. So they asked me to put together what became the 1996 ASCD yearbook. And we entitled it based on what we thought the whole theme of grading should be. And it was communicating, student learning.

[00:07:57.36] MICHAEL NELSON: Exactly.

[00:07:58.36] THOMAS GUSKEY: And I've said that the great advantage I've always had in my professional career is that I'm really not that smart. But I have a lot of really smart friends. So I just called on my really smart friends and posed these sort of intriguing questions to them. And they wrote about it. And we put that together in that book. And it became, I guess, the best selling ASCD book has ever been. And that was from then on we really started that movement.

[00:08:23.89] MICHAEL NELSON: It truly was almost like, I can't put it down, kept coming back to it. So I would agree with you.

[00:08:31.02] THOMAS GUSKEY: And we had another opportunity in 2016, the American Educational Research Association was celebrating its 100th anniversary. As a part of that celebration, they put a call out to the field asking different scholars and researchers that they would take on the task of summarizing all the different research being conducted over that 100 year period on different topics or aspects of education.

[00:08:54.21] So together with, my friend Susan Brookhart, we put together an amazing team of scholars to develop a review of all the research we could find on grading. And what surprised us the most, I guess, in putting all this together was to discover how much we know, how long we've known it, and how little has found its way into our practice today. We became absolutely convinced that there's not another area in education where there's a bigger gap between our knowledge base and our practice than in the area of grading.

[00:09:26.33] So that initial article came out in the review of educational research. We were approached then by ASCD to develop a book based on that review. And we did. We expanded our author list a bit and put together a book called What We Know About Grading. It was just trying to summarize all of this amazing body of research we have on the topic. So little of it is really known among practitioners today.

[00:09:52.16] PETER DEWITT: So, Tom, why is that? Like, I just-- I feel like I was having a conversation with somebody a few weeks ago and they were asking me about grading. And I said, grading is one of those topics that, for a blog or an article, if you put grading in the title, people are just going to gravitate to it. And is that part of the problem that there's so much misinformation out there about grading that it confuses people? Like why is it that there's all this research that's been happening but it hasn't necessarily gotten to the classroom in a more effective way?

[00:10:24.95] THOMAS GUSKEY: Yeah, well, it is true that of all areas in education there's probably not another where there's been a more dramatic growth in the number of new books that are written on the topic, new articles, and new experts on the topic. We did, as you know in the introductory chapter of Grading With Integrity, we did a review looking at the number of books published on grading from 1970 until today.

[00:10:52.87] And we found in that first 20 year period in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, only four books have been published on grading. And three of those four dealt with grading at the college level. The only one that really dealt with it on the elementary or secondary level was a book called What Did You Get? written by Kirshenbaum and Simon. In fact, they just published a-- University of Michigan just published a 50-year anniversary of that issue, which was a tremendous contribution to our field. Then from 1990 to 2000, we had about 14 books published. From 2000 to 2010, we had another, I think, 23 books published. From 2010 to 2020, we had 56 books published on grading. And we've had, I think, another 24 published just since 2020.

[00:11:48.23] So it's been growing. And hence, with the popularity of the topic, the number of books published, the number of new experts on it, and everybody has a really good opinion about it. It's just that oftentimes those opinions are not really well informed based on what evidence we have about what works and doesn't work.

[00:12:07.16] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. So when it comes to this whole idea of grading, some of the things that we talk about are standards-based grading versus competency-based grading. So with us, we're focusing this season on leading with intention. So it's the whole idea of, like, it's grading with intention. It's teaching with intention. So it's this whole idea of being more intentional in what we're doing. And one of the ways to do that is to always make sure that we have a common language and a common understanding.

[00:12:37.32] Because we say grading. And that's just one of the ones that everybody has their own understanding of what grading means. So when we talk about things like standards-based grading and competency-based grading, why do you believe one approach may be more effective than the other in promoting student learning and integrity?

[00:12:55.37] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, one of the things we try to do in putting together the book and Grading With Integrity is to go back and really understand the historical basis of these ideas. And much of it can really be traced back to the work of Ralph Tyler back in the 1940s.

[00:13:12.30] In 1949, Ralph Tyler, who at that time was on the faculty at the University of Chicago. And in fact, he was the mentor and advisor of Benjamin Bloom, of Lee Cronbach, of all these amazing educators who come out at that time. But he published the little tiny book he called Basic Principles of Curriculum Instruction. And in this book, Tyler says, before you can teach anyone anything, there are two fundamental decisions you must make. Number one, you must decide what it is you want them to learn and be able to do. And number two, you must decide what evidence you would accept to verify they learned it.

[00:13:50.09] Tyler also went on to describe what you call those things really doesn't matter. Whether you call them goals, objectives, standards, competencies, outcomes, targets, proficiencies, aspirations, expectations, New Year's resolutions, doesn't matter. All right? What matters is the clarity you bring to the process. Describe clearly what you want students to learn and be able to do.

[00:14:15.90] Now, there are consultants in our field that have built entire careers on describing the difference between competencies and standards. And typically, their argument is the standards are lower level in terms of the cognitive complexity of the mental process required to address them. And competencies tend to be a little bit more advanced, tapping higher level skills. But there are other people that offer counterarguments to that.

[00:14:42.44] So that's why we really go back to what Tyler said in 1949, which is what? 75 years ago. He said, you need to clarify what you want students to learn and be able to do and be very clear about that. And then after you make that decision, then you must make the decision about what evidence you would accept to verify they learned those things. The validity or the authenticity of that evidence depends on how well it matches the learning goals. And so it's not that there's any form of assessment that's better than another. It really depends on how well it matches the evidence that's required to verify whether students have learned those things, regardless of what you call them.

[00:15:30.58] MICHAEL NELSON: So here's what I can tell you already. Peter, we're, what? 10, 12 minutes into this. And what I can tell you, Tom, is, as a superintendent, when you bring up grading or you talk about a new report card, there's an anxiousness that, for me, just immediately runs through the system. And what you've done in the last 10 to 12 minutes is the way in which you speak, the key points in which you make just provides this sense of calm. And yes, we can do this. And it's still uncanny to me that we're still in the conversations where we're at.

[00:16:14.03] But thank you for being that type of leader. You demonstrate that. You model that in everything you say and how you present your work. So thank you for that. So let's keep moving forward with a little bit from the book. You recommend reporting nonacademic learning goals separately from academic achievement. So how can this separation lead to accurate reflection of student performance? And what are some strategies for implementing this in schools?

[00:16:40.40] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, when we look into teachers grading practice, we find that they include a variety of different types of elements when they determine a student's grade. One of the things that we know with great certainty in the grading area is that it is imperative that teachers grade according to criteria, not according to how students compared to each other. We refer to this as criterion-based type of grading versus the norm-based grading.

[00:17:11.99] And we've all had the experience of being in a class where we were norm-based graded. Your grade did not reflect what you learned and were able to do. It reflected where you stood relative to your classmates. And when norm-based grading is used or what we call grading on the curve, it makes learning very competitive. Students need to compete against each other for the few scarce high grades the teachers are going to give out. It destroys any sense of student collaboration because helping out a classmate is detrimental for your chances for success. And it actually destroys the relationship of teachers to students. As soon as the teacher starts helping one student, they're not helping others, so they're interfering in the competition.

[00:17:51.59] When you grade according to criteria, then all that competition is removed. Students don't compete against each other. Now, they compete against the curriculum, which is really good kind of competition. Helping someone else doesn't hurt your chances because it might even help them because you're not graded according to your classmates. You're graded according to what you've learned and are able to do. And it puts teachers and students on the same side. They're out to learn or master the curriculum. So we know we've got to do it in based on criteria. But there are these three different types of criteria that teachers use.

[00:18:25.01] The first, we've labeled product criteria. And product criteria are common in administrations of student learning. The second is what we call process criteria. And process criteria are things that enable the learning process but don't represent learning per se. So for example, homework. Homework is a process criteria. Class participation, effort, all those things become process. And finally, we have what we call progress.

[00:18:54.40] With progress, we worry not so much about where they are but how far they've come. Sometimes referred to as improvement grading or value-added grading, gain grading. It would be possible, for example, for a student to make great progress but still be scoring below grade level. Where another very talented student could come in knowing everything the teacher had to teach and make no progress at all but get a good grade because they were able to demonstrate their mastery.

[00:19:19.03] Now, we know that all three are important. And all three are distinct. So what gets us into trouble is when we combine all three into a single grade because then it makes the grade impossible to interpret. The highly responsible, low achiever gets the same grade as the irresponsible, high achiever and miscommunicates about both.

[00:19:41.44] Now, there are some advocates of different parts of grading reform that suggest we need to pull those things out and just not report them at all. But I keep saying, I started as a middle school teacher. Have you talked to a 14-year-old? Do you understand a 14-year-old mindset? As soon as you say to a 14-year-old, it doesn't count, the 14-year-old says, good, I'm not going to do it.

[00:20:05.91] But the teachers will be implored by saying, well, you need to convince your students this will help them do better in the achievement grade. And once again, I say, talk to a 14-year-old. Understand what this kid is like. And so the idea is you pull them up. But you report them separately. And so we've talked about using multiple grades. We have an achievement grade, which is the product grade. But then you have these process elements you pull out.

[00:20:30.90] Now, there are three different types of process elements that teachers consider. The first are what we call learning enablers. And they are things like homework, and class participation, and effort, and those sorts of things. Then, there's another whole category of social and emotional learning skills. This has to do with grit, and perseverance, growth, mindset, those types of elements. And then, there's a third category we call compliance. And compliance is did you do what I told you had to do? Did you turn it in on time or not?

[00:21:09.32] Now, again, we don't, at this time, have any evidence to show that among those, what's most important for students in their success in school or their career afterwards. What we do know is you can't do it all. And so it's necessary for teachers, when they consider these elements, to go through and really identify the four or five things they think are most important for students. And the four or five nonacademic things they include might be different at the primary level than they are from upper elementary, which could be different from middle school or high school. But to include those on report card and the transcript, but report them separately.

[00:21:49.16] Now, I know that sounds really unusual from the perspective of many of us as educators. But the odd part is if you go to schools in the Scandinavian countries, if you go to places in Asia, if you go to Canada and look at their report cards, they've been doing this for decades. They have always-- for years and years and years, pulled out these nonachievement factors and put them separately. If you go on to the website for the Ministry of Education, the province of Ontario, you can pull up their nonachievement factors that they report, the different criteria they use for reporting them. And you'll see that they're reported every marking period, every time the report card goes home and on the transcript for students that is then sent to college, university or, potential employers later on.

[00:22:43.04] PETER DEWITT: Think of how informative that would be for parents.

[00:22:46.85] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, of course.

[00:22:47.65] MICHAEL NELSON: Be working with their kids in the other 18 hours of the day that they're not in school. Sorry, Peter, I interrupted.

[00:22:54.23] PETER DEWITT: No, that's OK. I feel like, Tom, every time we talk to you or every time I get a chance to talk to you, it's like a master class. And sometimes I forget about the next question I'm supposed to ask because I'm just listening to you. And one of the things that you made me think of, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we talk a lot about learning intentions and success criteria. So a lot of schools that we go into where we're coaching leaders or whatever, they expect their teachers to have success criteria.

[00:23:22.53] So you're really explaining, I would think, unless I'm not correct, you're really explaining that through line between the purpose of having really good success criteria for students to understand and then how grading is tied to that success criteria. Is that true?

[00:23:39.24] THOMAS GUSKEY: Yeah, no, that's very true and very accurate, Peter. And it brings up this other point that we really try to emphasize in the book in Grading With Integrity is that we don't assign grades to students. We assign grades to performance. And that's a real important distinction to make. You want to get away from this idea of kids labeling themselves as based on the grades.

[00:24:02.87] I'm always surprised when I walk into elementary classrooms. And I talk to kids. They can say, well, I'm pretty much a B student or I'm a C student when they're in second and third grade. And those labels tend not to change very much. But if you think of it in terms of performance, and you help kids understand this performance, and because performance is always temporary, grades are always temporary too.

[00:24:26.68] And this is where you are right now. This doesn't mean it's where you're going to be or where you can be or what you can accomplish. It doesn't limit you in any way. It's just that it's helping kids understand that an A, B, C, or D, or F doesn't describe who you are. It's describing where you are in the process of mastering that particular learning goal. And so if I get a C, it doesn't mean that I can't master it. It's just that I'm at step three in a five-step process to mastery.

[00:24:57.61] PETER DEWITT: All right. So now, I'm going to ask you just another question on top of this, which is completely self-serving on my part. So Mike and I do a lot of workshops together. And one of the things that I feel like we've been told, and Mike, you can chime in at any time too, I feel like when we've talked about, because we always start off sessions with success criteria, I feel like we've been given sometimes the direction that we're supposed to be focusing solely on process success criteria as opposed to product or progress.

[00:25:27.97] And when we're working long term with adults, wouldn't the same be true? That all the things you're saying about students, maybe we're not going to be grading the adults, I get that. But everything you're saying about students in the classroom, would you say is similarly true for those of us who are providing professional learning for adults? That when we start off with success criteria, we could be looking at product. We could be looking at process. And we could be looking at progress. Or am I thinking too simplistic about this?

[00:25:59.60] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, no. But you really identify a crucial point, Peter, where this can get confusing. I mean, for example, in many places around the country, and we find especially in some of the Canadian provinces, they define their learning goals based upon content and process. And so content is supposed to be all the stuff you're expected to learn. And then, process is supposed to be the skills of which you apply that content.

[00:26:29.93] But again, if you go back historically to the early work of Benjamin Bloom, when he was developing the taxonomy, and again, Bloom was taught by Ralph Tyler. Tyler was his advisor and his mentor. They said that it's really impossible to separate those two. When they were developing the taxonomy, they said, with any content, you always have to think of what you want students to do with that content.

[00:26:58.55] And so, you can't just know it, which is giving it back to the teacher the same way the teacher gave it to you, repeating or memorizing. And that would be good. That's necessary in a lot of contexts. But that would just be the beginning. That you might want students to be able to explain it in their own words, to be able to recognize examples of it, or see when it's used appropriately or inappropriate, that's more than just knowing it. That's moving up to what they call comprehension.

[00:27:25.69] Do you want them to be able to use it as new and different contexts? Come up with their own examples? To transfer it to other areas? That we refer to as application, more complicated still. Do you want to be able to pick it apart? To look at different components that contributes to the whole? Compare and contrast? That's referred to as analysis. Do you want them to combine it in new and different ways? To see how what we're studying in math is related to science or how science has its basis in math, that refer to a synthesis. And then beyond that, do you want them to think about what this contributes to society? What are the moral implications of these things? Are there implications for what we should be doing to develop as a race of people and as a society overall? That referred to as evaluation.

[00:28:14.98] So those early scholars, this is dating back, again, to the '40s and '50s just said you can't separate those two. You always have to think of content in relation to process. And so similarly, I think when we, as people leading professional learning experiences, we do have some content we want to share with them. But we also want to be able to provide opportunities for these adults to experience the use of that content in new and different ways, to think about its application, to think about its synthesis with other areas, and to go back to those ideas that those brilliant scholars in the '40s and '50s were talking about.

[00:28:57.77] PETER DEWITT: Mike, it's all. I know you have a load of questions.

[00:29:02.21] MICHAEL NELSON: I'm just trying to breathe, Peter, and sink it in. And I know--

[00:29:05.46] PETER DEWITT: I just feel like when I'm talking to Tom, it's a good coaching session for me. So, I know people are going to listen. That's fine. But I just love asking Tom questions that are also a little bit self-serving on my part.

[00:29:17.21] MICHAEL NELSON: You're exactly right because I have gone so self-reflective about my own practice and who I am as a leader of professional learning and as a teacher. And am I really doing that, all of those things, and integrating those pieces into the learners that I have before me? And yes, at this point, they're adults that are before me. But so, Peter, I was doing the exact same thing. As we move through our time together, of course, I love the title, Grading With Integrity.

[00:29:46.14] But core principles that define integrity in grading. So you added words to the subtitle of your book. Honest, transparent, accurate, equitable. How can we ensure that? And I feel like I could pull things out. And I can group them in some of the things you already have said, Tom. But share a little bit more about that title and why those particular words in that title are threaded throughout your book.

[00:30:18.39] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, we really built the book around three different aspects of integrity, three areas of grading where we thought integrity was important. The first being the integrity of the grade itself. And so that's why we emphasize this point of assigning grades to performance, not to students, and that it represents what a student has learned is able to do at this time. It doesn't mean it can't change. And it means that it needs to be flexible in that way and always subject to growth and improvement on the part of students.

[00:30:53.76] The second area was grading in terms of-- grading with integrity in terms of the grading process. And that had to do more with the notion of consistency and clarity. We find, for example, when we do surveys of parents about their aspects of grading, and students, which most of the research we've been doing in the last four or five years has really focused on parent and student perceptions of it. We asked them, where do you find the biggest, sort of, hang up with regard to fairness of grading? Or what are your biggest concerns, grading?

[00:31:29.76] And the number one issue that both parents and students identify is the inconsistency in teachers grading practices within the same school. That every time kids change classes, the rules for grading change. What counts as part of the grade, the purpose of grading, all of that changes. And so the grading process has to be developed around a clear purpose. What is it supposed to do? And what is it supposed to communicate? Who's the audience for that communication. It is the consistency in those elements that become so crucially important. Once you establish that purpose, then you can go to all those policies and practices and see if they align with your purpose.

[00:32:12.75] So, for example, if a school develops a grading policy that it says it wants grades to represent an accurate depiction of what students are currently know or enabled to do. It sounds pretty reasonable, sounds pretty straightforward. But by including that word currently in that grading purpose, you have to eliminate averaging. Wow. Now, if I went into a school and I said, in order to grade with integrity, you got to stop averaging all these numbers. They'd kick me out. All right?

[00:32:44.97] But if I say, start with your purpose. And if you include the phrase like, you want the grade to represent students' performance at this point in time or their current level of performance, include that in your grading purpose. Then go back and see if your policies and they say, wow, our policies aren't aligned with our purpose. We need to change the policies. So the grading for the process had to do with the idea of being clear about your purpose and allowing that to bring the consistency. And finally, it's just grading on the part of the grader, integrity on the part of the grader.

[00:33:23.73] And that means that basically teachers must be able to defend the grades they assign. And they must have evidence to back them up. And it also means that there needs to be consistency among teachers so that if equally knowledgeable, competent, experienced teachers were looking at the same body of evidence, would they come up with the same grade? And use that as a basis for determining whether there's integrity in that process or not. Now, what this brings about, which is another challenging issue, is that the larger the number of grade categories, the harder it is to establish that sense of consistency.

[00:34:05.78] And we find that it is absolutely impossible for any group of teachers, no matter how well educated, experienced, thoughtful, committed they are to be consistent using a grading scale with 101 distinct categories of student performance. To grade with integrity, you got to get rid of percentages. That's the bottom line. You've got to get it done. And what we show in the book, all these studies that indicate that there's consistency among raters, when you get the number of categories down to somewhere between four to seven.

[00:34:41.79] Between four to seven, there's pretty good consistency among equally knowledgeable and experienced teachers in coming up with a grade to represent a particular level of performance. But once you move beyond seven, things start to go down. And so if we can follow into those things and we can be more consistent, we can be more true to our purpose. And we have integrity in the grade, in the grading process, and in the grader.

[00:35:06.59] PETER DEWITT: So, Tom, this is going to be the last question, even though I'm sad to actually say this is going to be the last question. I feel like every time I talk to you, there's just this nonjudgmental-- like I feel like, honestly, I can ask you any question possible. And you're going to have a nonjudgmental response. And that, to me, is just so important because I think grading is one of those things that people do feel judged. And so your answers are just always that way. So that was just something I wanted to say.

[00:35:37.22] THOMAS GUSKEY: Thanks, Peter.

[00:35:37.97] PETER DEWITT: So this is, like, you've written lots of books. You've written many books. You've written hundreds of articles. What are you most excited about with Grading With Integrity coming out? What are you most excited about with this book?

[00:35:53.78] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, I guess I'm most excited about the idea that it will prompt people to start just by clarifying their purpose in the whole grading process. I've really seen amazing results in schools and even school districts where they use that as a foundation for building better policies and better practices throughout. Now, it's not an easy process. Because I find-- one of the things that I always laugh about is that researchers have actually asked educators about what the purpose of grading is.

[00:36:32.30] We find that generally there are six broad categories that educators identify. Number one is to communicate information about student learning to parents and families. A second reason is to communicate information about learning to the students themselves, especially for student evaluation, self-evaluation.

[00:36:51.59] A third area is to identify or select students for the purpose of instructional programs. Grades are the primary criteria we use in determining promotion from one grade level to the next. You have to have high grades to get into honors or advanced classes. And low grades are typically the first indication some additional assessment necessary to determine the student's special needs.

[00:37:11.85] Four is to provide incentives. Now, people do argue about this all the time. But the evidence is pretty clear. I mean, what's the first thing students ask when a teacher announces going to be a quiz or an assessment? Does it count? Is it for a grade? And if a teacher turns to him and says, no, it doesn't count. Well, who studies for a test that doesn't count? All right. So there's clearly some incentive value there.

[00:37:35.25] Five, we always look at grades when we evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs. If the instructional program is working, we'd hope grades are going up. And then finally, to show evidence of appropriate effort or responsibility. Now, lots of evidence shows that those six purposes are legitimate and can be defended. But what I will often do in working with any group of educators is just we go through these six purposes. And I say, given that they're all valid, if you were to rank order them in terms of their importance from most to least important, tell me what the two extremes would be.

[00:38:11.27] And we go through this process. And then, we just go through a raise of hands. And we are all over the place. There's no agreement to it. Now, the irony is that, increasingly, I'm being asked to, in working with districts, to conduct evening sessions for parents and will often bring parents in because we want to give them a background, the history of grading, and what we're trying to do, and what we're trying to accomplish, and what changes are being considered. And I've often take them through exactly the same exercise.

[00:38:42.02] When I ask them about those six different purposes, There is no variation among them at all.

[00:38:48.98] PETER DEWITT: Really?

[00:38:49.73] THOMAS GUSKEY: None. 90% of the parents are going to tell you that report card is for me. That is the primary source of evidence I use to determine how well my kid is doing in school. So while we, as educators, are very diverse in our perspectives. Parents are not. They are extremely consistent in this. And that's why I want to take some of our consultants and shake them and say, pay attention to what the parents are saying here. Because we see so many times where schools are seeing such pushback and resistance from parents. You don't have to. You don't have to extinguish fires. You have to prevent starting them in the first place. And so it's just understanding their perspective and what they bring to this that makes it challenging but very exciting in working with them.

[00:39:36.82] PETER DEWITT: Well, Tom, I can't-- I'm going to speak for myself because I'll give Mike a chance to. But I already bought a copy. So it's coming to the house. It's coming to the house very soon. So thank you for that. I just want to say, I know Mike started off with thanking you. I just always want to thank you because I think knowing you and having your guidance over the years is going to be a highlight for me for a very long time. I am going to look back on my life, especially when I look at my professional life, and look at the relationship I have with you is very much a highlight. You have always been-- I wish people knew that who you are right now in this podcast is exactly who you always are.

[00:40:21.09] And a long time ago, I reached out to you and said, hi, you don't really know me. But I'm probably going to be-- I feel like I'm going to be doing some keynotes. And you came back with, like, the greatest resources for me. And you didn't have to do that. And over the years, just being able to talk to you personally, but also being able to talk to you on a seat at the table, or Leaders Coaching Leaders. I always-- when I am talking about who has a huge influence on me, I'm always talking about you because you've had such a great influence on-- not just your knowledge base because that's just amazing alone. But who you are as a human being is even more important. So I just want to thank you over and over again for that.

[00:41:05.09] THOMAS GUSKEY: Wow. Thanks, Peter. I need to have you come and talk to my kids.

[00:41:08.30] [LAUGHTER]

[00:41:10.99] PETER DEWITT: I will do that. Well, you know what? We'll just do that sound bite right there. And we can send it to the kids.

[00:41:16.34] THOMAS GUSKEY: That's right. No, I really appreciate that. And please know the feeling is quite mutual. You've always been a tremendous resource to me and so helpful in so many different ways. And you've guided me in many ways. And I've always thank-- you and Mike both, I love your work. I love the things you're doing in leadership. And I think it's so well informed and so thoughtful that it's an inspiration for me.

[00:41:39.22] PETER DEWITT: Thank you.

[00:41:40.15] MICHAEL NELSON: Well, Tom, thank you again on behalf of Peter and for joining us. I feel like-- I won't go too deep because Peter did it so eloquently. But I feel like I, in the last 25 years, since you came to Enumclaw, I owe you a dividend for every time I've used your name or cited your research or processed a piece of excerpt from your book with our leadership team meetings. You have fundamentally made a huge difference in my leadership and propelling a school district forward in this area. So very much thank you for doing that. And for our listeners, we encourage you to pick up your own copy of Grading With Integrity because it's one that you want to read.

[00:42:25.72] THOMAS GUSKEY: Thanks, Mike. It's really been a pleasure to talk with you.

[00:42:28.69] PETER DEWITT: Tom, thanks for being on the Leaders Coaching Leaders Podcast.

[00:42:32.14] THOMAS GUSKEY: All right. Take care now.

[00:42:34.21] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:42:37.05] MICHAEL NELSON: Oh, my goodness. Peter, was that not the most amazing interview with Tom Guskey?

[00:42:41.47] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, I said it during the interview. I feel like every time we get the opportunity to talk to Tom, it's a master class. Just when-- I know that we spent this episode talking about grading. But self-efficacy, leadership, it doesn't matter. He's just a master class every time. He makes things so clear to understand. So yeah, I just always value time hearing Tom.