Engagement and effort are an underused way to evaluate students. Excellence and perfection on final products have traditionally been the key matrix of grades. While it is important to see a student’s understanding of concepts, it is also crucial to see the attempts and effort that they put in. Their engagement can be observed in things like leadership, communication, growth opportunities and feedback.
Grading based on excellence is the most common way to evaluate students in the U.S. since the late 1800’s. Excellence demonstrates a student’s grasp of a subject and prepares them for the real world, but in reality this system of grading–which is primarily based on perfection–can instead have potentially negative impacts.
“The amount of student workload increases as they advance in education,” said Transformations Care Network. “When it becomes unbearable, a student starts to develop stress and depression. Learners get academic anxiety and suffer various mental disorders.”
While excellence can play a partial role in academic success, it is much more harmful than it should be. Rather than grading based on how a student does on a test. Teachers instead should make engagement and signs of understanding during class a larger part of a student’s grade.
Grading by effort shows how motivated a student is and helps encourage skills like persistence and hard work. Grading by effort can also show how motivated a student is to take in and respond to feedback that a teacher gives them.
For example, one class at Northwest Academy quizzes are worth 30% of a grade, exams are 30%, artistic responses/projects are 20% and homework is 20%. Engagement is not seen anywhere in this rubric and this fact can almost be intimidating to a student because they only see their finished products being graded.
Society is obsessed with grades. Students are constantly worrying about them. With this fixation emerges academic pressure, which comes from school, family or society to overachieve and strive for perfection. This can cause anxiety, depression, and sometimes suicidal thoughts.
“Academic stress is directly linked to these health crises, and grades are a major source of this kind of stress,” said Insider Higher ED (IHD).
Some feel that academic pressure can be a good motivator for a student to grow but in the long run it will only put on more pressure making them feel less prompted to keep doing the work.
“While it is common for young students to be motivated by mild academic pressure, many also have negative experiences with such pressure, especially if it is in excess,” said Mental Health Center Kids.
The desire to earn good grades prevails over all else. This can make it harder to have a growth mindset on work. Students are also less prompted to be creative with their work and take educational risks which is a big part of learning.
“I feel like I would be more motivated to be more creative if I knew we were not going to be graded on how good our assignments are,” said Margaret Weir, a freshman.
To lessen pressure, teachers should emphasize that the students take creative risks. Once it is emphasized to the students that the teachers are not going to grade them down for taking these academic risks, students will then feel better about taking them, strengthening their overall final product.
During a class discussion or Socratic seminar teachers should closely observe a students understanding of the concept rather than basing its majority on tests. If a student is putting in the effort during class and it’s not showing on a test this then gives the teacher more to go off of when grading.
“Without effort, it is hard to achieve excellence, and students may not develop the right habits for future success,” said a student in a New York Times article about effort and excellence.
An average teenager is supposed to get between eight and 10 hours of sleep. In reality a teenager is getting six to seven hours a night causing them to be exhausted and less focused during the day. This is because of homework, extracurricular activities and students’ at home commitments.
“I rarely sleep enough normally without the stress of schoolwork,” said Aviva Cohen, a freshman. “Now that we have more homework I value my work over sleep which I know is not a healthy habit but it’s the only way I can get my work done.”
In order for students to be able to develop healthy sleeping habits it would be helpful for teachers to communicate that they think their students should be prioritizing sleep. Teachers can outwardly communicate this to the students or make the homework load lighter. Some teachers choose to take the approach of requesting that the students only make attempts at the homework releasing some of that initial stress. While other teachers only require 10 to 20 minutes of homework and give some class time to work on it.
In contrast to the grading breakdown from earlier, students deserve to be acknowledged for their engagement and effort (35%). Tests and larger projects (40%) based on the class and smaller assignments and homework should be (15%). When a student sees that engagement is worth a similar amount to tests and larger projects they are going to have some pressure lifted off their shoulders. More time will be able to be taken on creative aspects and engaging in class discussions overall creating a more positive work environment for students.
