I recently had my students spend the first ten minutes of class playing a review game on Quizlet. While they were doing this, I used the time to input grades from a writing assessment I had just finished marking that morning. The goal was to go over my feedback on their work during the next segment of class that day.
Within 60 seconds of inputting the grades into PowerSchool, I had students asking me, “Hey, Mr. Stuart, are we able to rewrite this?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “We haven't even gone over them yet.”
“Yeah, I know, but I just saw on PowerSchool that my grade went down.”
This isn't a post about when to put the grade in on a writing assignment or how to deal with grades. It's a post about enabling technology for our students that sends them a notification every time something happens to their grades.
Grade improved? Bzzzz. New grade entered? Bzzzz. Grade went down? Bzzzz.
To me, this is dystopian.
What would it look like to devise a system that trained students to obsess over every fluctuation of their grade? Imagine I asked you to give me something that calls to mind Pavlov's dinner bell — give me a system like that.
Or do this for me: develop a technology sure to immunize my students against silly messages like “The reward of learning is learning” or “Schools exist to promote the long-term flourishing of young people.”
Could you come up with a technology like that?
Sure you could. All you would need is youngsters walking around with notification-enabled smartphones and notification-enabled PowerSchool apps, dinging and buzzing every time there was any change to any grade.
That would do it.
Lin Nolan says
Or, you input the grade, the parent gets a notification and then texts the student about their grade. The parents are no help.
Dave Stuart Jr. says
No, Lin — and we have to see them as another group that often gets warped by systems like these.
jnolds says
This helps illustrate and explain why some of my students keep saying it’s all about the grades. They become so impatient with process work, reflective thinking, and focused discussions. This time of year eligibility for sports is a similar issue. What a mess! Dystopian, indeed…
Kelly Slaughter says
I just encountered this with my daughter last night. Always checking for the grade.
markvdh2o says
Thank you Dave, really well put!
To me this suggests two strategic goals:
1) Convince school boards, administrators, and parents to adjust Power School settings to minimize the Pavlovian conditioning and maximize the thoughtful assessment of learning. I have not gotten very far with this.
2) Teacher structure their inputs into power school to minimize Pavlovian conditioning and maximize the thoughtful assessment of learning
I would love to hear methods other teachers have found to accomplish #2.
Dave Stuart Jr. (@davestuartjr) says
Mark, these are marvelous ideas! Yes — how might we structure our inputs into Power School to minimize the Pavlrovian conditioning and maximize thoughtful assessment of learning? This is a great great question. Thank you.
Katie says
This is so important! Even my students are starting to recognize this is a problem. I have one girl who is particularly anxious about her grades who has a sticky note on her laptop that says “Don’t check grades”
Dave Stuart Jr. says
What an image, Katie!
Kellie says
From a parent perspective- it is difficult to know where you’re child stands in a class when work isn’t graded for over a week or more. We no longer know when to talk to our kids about “missing assignments” because most of the time, they just haven’t been graded.
Dave Stuart Jr. says
Good point, Kellie. I rarely meet parents who aren’t trying to do their best to support their child in what has got to be the world’s best and scariest job (parenting).