Putting Grades in Their Place, but Where Do They Go?

Eben is correct: grades are stupid. Perhaps not everyone has yet realized this, but everyone has probably at least felt this to some degree, perhaps very recently. Evaluations, however, are not stupid. As Eben points out, thorough, frequent, sympathetic, and effective evaluations of a student's work are essential in helping the student both learn more and derive more satisfaction from learning. Grades do not further these ends. Eben thinks that grades not only fail to further these ends, but grades actually impede students in their attempt to achieve these ends. I agree. Now, let's explore where it leads. Some questions immediately come to mind. Since grades are a type of evaluation and some forms of evaluations are desirable, precisely why are grades such a stupid and unjust form of evaluation? Is this true of other sorts of evaluations that are not technically “grades”? Finally, can any sort of "grading" system be salvaged and serve some useful end? After some exploration of these questions, I think it is possible to conclude that some grading schemes, or at least some grade-like evaluations, can be a useful beginning, in at least some contexts, for an outsider (i.e. not the student) in his quest for a qualified applicant, for whatever that may be.

First, let us attempt to air some different, but related, grievances with grades. One, they purport to measure some particular academic ability that they, in fact, do not accurately reflect for a variety of reasons. Performance on a written examination on tort law, for example, is intended to test one’s knowledge of core tort concepts. Doing well on such a test is only, if anything, sufficient for demonstrating proficiency in torts. It is possible that one was too rushed, too tired, too stressed, too unprepared, etc. Thus, doing well on a torts exam cannot be a necessary condition for being proficient in torts despite often being treated as such. It is more likely that the test determines, well, how well one takes the test. Moreover, it is graded on a curve. The grade assigned cannot be an objective evaluation of how well one knows the material because, by design, the grade reflects how ‘well’ one did solely in comparison to others taking the test. This way of grading is also troubling in that it takes one sample on which one’s entire grade is based. When reasoning inductively, the more data one uses the more solid the foundation that one’s generalization sits upon. It strains credulity near its breaking point to use this one piece of data as a measure of much at all.

Two, evaluations are arbitrary. Evaluations can be arbitrary either because they are not carried out in a systematically uniform way, or because they merely test arbitrarily chosen portions of the tested subject. Idiosyncratic preferences of the evaluator appear in both ways. Undoubtedly, we are all familiar with having an essay grade determined by how much the professor ‘liked’ it, or you, irrespective of the work’s more objective characteristics. This is a common complaint of the humanities or the ‘soft’ sciences, yet this applies to the ‘hard’ sciences as well, albeit in subtler ways. For instance, a math test may appear to be an objective measurement of one’s ability. But, why does the test only include two questions on derivations and not more? Why those derivations? Why is partial credit given for some sorts of partial work rather than others? Etc.

There are, of course, other problems with grades; yet, the good news is that each of the above problems is not inherent to grading, or evaluation, in general. The real problem lies not with the grades, but in what we do with the grades. Grades are intended to help us and others gauge our progress and abilities relative to our peers.

There are two parties concerned with grades: employers (or future admission committees) and ourselves. Each ought to realize the particular shortcomings of grades and place the appropriate amount of value on them. For our own purposes, this involves realizing that grades don’t do anything except stand in as a very rough proxy for how well one did compared to one’s peers. That means that one’s letter grades should play little to no role in affecting how one approaches academic improvement. What matters is the student’s response to careful feedback from others. For employers’ purposes, this involves realizing the near meaninglessness of fine-grained distinctions between students and that grades are but one small imperfect piece of a picture of one’s abilities. The problem cannot be that grades are inherently unjust or stupid because complaining about their inaccuracy, arbitrariness, and unfairness assumes that the grades are failing to get ‘it’ right. The ‘it’ that we are after is real and useful. The ‘it’ is one’s knowledge. Jettisoning grades altogether would not help us know who has more or less of ‘it.’ We need to make sure that grades are doing a better job at ranking people by ‘it’ and we need to realize the imperfect relation between grades and ‘it’ reflects teachers’ imperfect abilities as evaluators.

One might think that the problem with grades is one of reduction by thinking that it is a mistake to reduce something qualitative, namely knowledge, to something quantitative, namely grades. This is mistaken. Grades are not actually quantitative despite appearances to the contrary. They serve to rank students relative to their peers (even if the class is not on a curve, the grade will only be useful when the outsider knows roughly where the grade falls amongst other students at the institution, at that time). Ranking students relative to their peers requires no use of quantities. It is a rough ranking of qualities in the same way that we prioritize other non-quantifiable values in our own lives. Upholding a promise to my best friend is clearly more valuable than sleeping in until noon. Precisely how much more valuable? Who knows?

Grades are essential. They are needed to get things done. Imagine I am looking to hire someone and all I have is a pile of fresh graduates. Who am I going to pick? I could spend the time reading detailed evaluations from professors, reading all of the student’s written work, etc. All of this would be relevant information, but it is too time-consuming. I need to parse through the masses, and quickly.

Also nonsense. You don't hire lawyers; I do. Do you really think that when I hire a lawyer I pay any significant attention to grades at all? In the last seven years I have hired more than 36 lawyers for full or part-time jobs. Never once, on any occasion, have I looked at a transcript in the course of hiring, as opposed to teaching, a lawyer. My colleagues and I interview the lawyers I hire. We ascertain their skills by asking questions and listening to the answers, by reading people's writing, and—sometimes—by talking to others with whom they've worked. I rarely extend a long-term offer to someone who hasn't worked with me for a summer, or a term or two, even if they've been my student, let alone if they have not.

Clients don't look at transcripts when they hire lawyers, either. No client of mine has ever seen my transcript, or ever asked to do so. None ever will, you can be sure.

So an argument about "employers" as consumers of grades must restrict itself to the forms of "employment" that aren't retention by clients and aren't the formation of serious work relationships with well-managed existing work teams of knowledgeable lawyers hiring colleagues or trainees. Are there such residual "employers" who do not retain or hire in a rational fashion, for whom a transcript might be important? Certainly. Do they matter? No. Enough to distort good pedagogy for? Hell no.

Should we assuage our obsession with grades? Sure. Should we seek more careful feedback on work? Sure. But, do we need evaluations packaged in small, quickly digestible forms in order to get things done? You bet. Thankfully, we have those. They are called grades.