Michael Zwaagstra: So-called ‘Gradeless Learning’ Fails Both Students and Taxpayers

Commentary

School is back in session, and it won’t be long before students start writing unit tests, which teachers will mark and hand back with a grade.

However, this won’t happen in at least one Hamilton high school because earlier this month parents received a two-page letter informing them that their children’s school was participating in a “gradeless learning” trial. While teachers will still provide verbal feedback to students, teachers won’t put letter grades or percentages on student tests and assignments.

The letter to parents also states that Grade 12 students in the experiment will be “their own assessors” and that they must “discern their own achievement with the guidance of the teacher.”

Calling this experiment with gradeless learning a trial makes it sound like there’s something new and innovative about this approach to assessment. But “gradeless learning” has been around for decades. For example, in 2018 a large Winnipeg high school quietly removed percentages from its report cards and used terms such as “emerging,” “progressing,” “applying” and “mastering” to describe student achievement. Administrators at this school called their approach “ungrading.” However, they ran into a major roadblock five years later when the Manitoba government ordered the school to start using percentage grades again, since provincial policy requires percentages on all high school report cards.

In 2023, the British Columbia government embarked on its own “gradeless learning” experiment when it switched report cards from traditional letter grades to the descriptive terms “emerging,” “developing,” “proficient” and “extending” for kindergarten to Grade 9 students. Far from improving the quality of feedback to students and parents, the new terms confused everyone. According to a 2024 survey conducted by Leger, most B.C. parents did not understand what the new descriptive terms meant. Specifically, the survey found that only 28 percent of parents could correctly identify what “emerging” means while only 26 percent could pick the right definition for “extending.”

In contrast, the same survey also showed that most parents had no trouble correctly interpreting letter grades such as A, B, and C. Since the key purpose of report cards is to provide information to parents about their children’s progress, schools should use terminology parents understand.

Where did this so-called “gradeless learning” come from?

One of its chief proponents is American educational theorist Alfie Kohn, who opposes grading entirely. Kohn’s views on education are so extreme he thinks teachers should never use rewards or punishments of any kind with students. Anyone who works with students—and knows the importance of incentives—knows that this is absurd.

Moreover, providing accurate grades to students is a professional responsibility for all teachers. Expecting students to determine their own grades puts an unreasonable burden on them and makes the grading process far too subjective. Teachers, not students, have been trained in proper assessment methods, and students have every right to receive timely and accurate feedback from their teachers.

The last thing we need in Canada is to import failed educational theories from the United States. In Ontario, it’s particularly unconscionable to do this in public (government-run) schools, since Ontario is the only province outside Atlantic Canada that refuses to help parents pay for enrolment at independent schools. This means that lower- and middle-income parents in Ontario often have no choice but to keep their children in government schools.

Schools should be accountable to parents and taxpayers who foot the bill. Taxpayers need to know that the money they spend on education is having a positive effect on student learning. Grades are not perfect, but they help assure taxpayers that the educational system is working. At a minimum, the Ford government should require all public schools to provide students with traditional letter or percentage grades. This experiment with gradeless learning must come to an end.

Michael Zwaagstra is a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.