by ANNA BRUTOCAO
My issue with effort grades began in Middle School when I watched a close friend walk out of her advisor meeting, sobbing. Through tears, she explained the consistently low effort grades that she received from her teachers. She detailed that her lowest effort grades were found in the classes in which she had the lowest letter grades, even though these were the classes that she put the most work into.
Effort grades are the five-point system that Chadwick uses to measure how much effort a student puts into each one of their classes. Teachers provide effort grades twice a semester, four times total.
Effort grades are located next to a student’s letter grade, but they
don’t affect the official transcript. The scale for effort grades is as follows: 1=beginning, 2=developing, 3=low proficient, 4=high-mid proficient, 5=advanced level.
According to Chadwick’s definition, effort grades correlate with skills of responsibility. With the label “effort” grades, however, the numbers have earned a reputation for signaling how hard a student is trying. This simple system, which appears to aid teacher-student communication and exemplify Chadwick’s value of student effort, is actually more harmful than helpful. Before I tackle the inevitable inaccuracies of effort grades, I will address the most prominent systematic errors.
First, effort grades have an inherently warped scale that leads to comparison among students. Every teacher treats effort grades differently. I have had certain teachers who “don’t give 5’s” and other teachers who will treat a 4 as a low-effort grade. It is for this reason that effort grades communicate virtually nothing on their own.
The easiest way to get a true read on an effort grade is to compare with other students who have the same teacher.
The problem is that this only leads to comparison among students that Chadwick should aim to avoid. I do not blame teachers for having contrasting scales; the definitions of effort grades are vague.
What constitutes a low-proficient effort vs. a high-mid-proficient effort? Overall, effort grades do not properly communicate anything remotely educational to students.
Second, unlike a letter grade, effort grades sum up a large chunk of time with little to no explanation.
When using Veracross, students can see each graded assignment that goes into their overall letter grade; there are no surprises or questions when the final grade comes out.
Effort grades, however, are not a collection of individual grades that are averaged out. Instead, teachers must summarize up to three months into one number.
Finally, anything that can be communicated in an effort grade can be more effectively and beneficially communicated in a comment … or even a conversation with a student.
If a teacher believes a student may not be putting proper effort into their homework or other assignments, they have the opportunity to detail this in a comment.
This allows teachers to advise their students, and students the ability to learn from their mistakes without the use of an effort grade.
When discussing this issue with my peers, I have gleaned that most students at Chadwick either enjoy the validation from teachers that effort grades bring, are impartial to effort grades because they don’t count toward their transcript or are discouraged by low effort grades that do not properly reflect their work.
It’s nearly impossible for a teacher to accurately and fairly determine exactly how hard their student is trying. Effort looks different for every person, and it is unreasonable to expect teachers to sum up their students’ effort from a scale of 1-5.
Effort grades cause more harm than good. Let’s leave these pesky numbers in the past.
The Mainsheet 