How to Remove the A-to-F Grading System

Using Rubrics

• 1

  Create a rubric for each type of assignment students may receive in your class. For example, if you are teaching an English class, your assignment types might be: Summaries, Essays and Reports.

• 2

  Create categories you desire to measure for each assignment type. For example, with essays you might want to measure ideas and content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and mechanics.

• 3

  Create advanced, proficient, partially proficient and unsatisfactory descriptors for each category. For example, in organization your descriptors could be:

  Advanced --- Uses an advanced and thoughtful pattern to express thoughts;

  Proficient --- Uses a purposeful pattern to express thoughts;

  Partially Proficient --- Attempts to employ a thought pattern, but is not consistent; and

  Unsatisfactory --- No thought pattern is evident.

• 4

  Assign point values to the advanced, proficient, partially proficient, and unsatisfactory columns. Most educators find it simplest to assign points as:

  Advanced, 5;

  Proficient, 4;

  Partially Proficient, 3-2; and

  Unsatisfactory, 1-0.

• 5

  Evaluate your students' work using the new rubrics, circling the boxes for each category under which their work falls. Now each of your students understand more expressly where he or she falls in several categories. For example, "Johnny" might be advanced in ideas and content, but only partially proficient in organization, so now he knows where to focus his efforts in his next draft.

Using Checklists

• 6

  Create a list of skills a student must master to obtain credit for your course.

• 7

  Write: "exceeds" and "meets" beside each skill. As each student meets or exceeds each of the skills on the list, circle the appropriate term.

• 8

  Communicate students' progress towards meeting or exceeding the prescribed skills on a regular basis. Once a student at least "meets" all skills, encourage him to obtain "exceeds" on all skills.