The Grading Podcast

162 – UM pass_no pass

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Boz: And that’s where I wanna kinda disagree with you.

Sharona: Okay.

Boz: Because like you said, you do think it might have some impact on students’, um, wellbeing, especially their mental wellbeing. I think that has an indirect impact on the rest of a student’s experience in learning that would be hard to measure. But I truly believe that relieving some of that pressure, even if it’s only for a semester, even if it’s only covered up and not a true pass/fail, I, I don’t think that should be undersold.

Welcome to The Grading Podcast, where we’ll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students’ learning, from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We’ll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students’ success. I’m Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I’m Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach, and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K-12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week, you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello, and welcome back to The Grading Podcast. I’m Robert Bosley, one of your two co-hosts, and with me, as always, Sharona Krinsky. How are you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am doing shockingly well, given that we had a show last night and I didn’t get much sleep. But I’m having a good day so far. Getting ready for the semester to start, though. Oof. Yikes.

Boz: All right. So last time we recorded, I actually asked, “Where are you?” So are you actually back at home at, in LA, or are you still out traveling?

Sharona: So I am currently recording from LA as of this recording date, but I will be leaving for Chicago later this week because I’m gonna be giving a intro on the alt-grading stuff at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. So if you’re at UIUC and you wanna say hello, let me know.

Boz: All right. So what else has been going on? You said you had a show and I know for a fact that our semester for Cal State LA is just around the corner, so what else is going on with you?

Sharona: I am teaching a new course. I am teaching a different flavor of the quantitative reasoning pathway, which is the Quantitative Reasoning for Everyday Life is the official title. In theory, it’s got three buckets of content: voting, statistics, and finance, but I think what the course is really about is how we take mathematics from individual data to aggregate data, and this is the first time I’ve ever taught anything like this. So I’m stealing some hubcaps, shout out to Mariah Bergen, because I’m taking a lot of her Mathematics for Democracy course, but I’m definitely putting my own spin on it and my own flavor of grading.

Boz: And speaking of your own flavor of grading, ’cause not only is the material, the titles for that class and for the class that you and I taught together, that you coordinated for so many years, sounds really similar. But not only is the material different, the situation is different. In that class that the statistics that we did together, you were coordinating it amongst, dozen or more sometimes instructors. So even though you redesigned it with alternative grading, you also were a little bit on the conservative side with some things. So this class, this is just yours, so you’ve got free reign to explore some of the alternative grading things that you maybe weren’t able to explore in the quantitative reasoning with statistics class, correct?

So I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself to make a course that’s incredibly valuable to the students because of the impact of AI. I want them to want to learn this material, and what material they need to learn is really important. And I have a lot of freedom, yeah. So I’m just a different person than 10 years ago when I did the last one.

Boz: We will definitely be coming back to this subject a, a few times throughout the semester to see where you end up, how it goes what changes or iterations you might make in future terms if you get this class again. So it’ll be interesting to see the progress through the semester

Sharona: I hope it stays interesting. I might be so head down in the weeds that I don’t even notice. I’m a little frightened. We’ll see.

Boz: But you let’s be honest. Couple years ago, you had a similar in nature, not material class, with that history of math, where it didn’t necessarily, wasn’t a pre-rigged anything, didn’t have a lot of, set curriculum. You had a lot of freedom, and you struggled very much at the beginning, and it ended up, I would say, being one of the classes you really enjoyed doing and had some really interesting experiences with, correct?

Sharona: That’s true, but a lot of those experiences were good despite what was going in the class, not because of, and I really wanted to teach that class again so that I could get a more full enjoyment once I was through the initial learning curve for myself as an instructor. So I do hope that with this course, I will get to teach it at least one more time so that I can get a… I- it takes me one time through a course, especially a course that I never took, to really understand the course.

Boz: Yeah. A- and we’ve always talked about, our first experiences at attempting to redesign a course with alternative grading, having so many huge mistakes and roadblocks and pitfalls. I don’t expect you’ll have as big of ones, but it’s still a new course. It’s still, this might sound great on paper and you think you have it well designed, and when it, comes to actual practice, you get hiccups, and that’s true with any time any of us, you know, redesign a course for the first time. And you’re right. I could see why doing all that work and then going, “Okay, I was close. I know where a few places I missed,” but then don’t get the chance to actually correct those

Sharona: Yeah, definitely. So you asked about me. Should I ask about you? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you had a pretty big event this last couple weeks.

Boz: Yeah. We were talking about the fact that Cal State, at the time of this recording, we’re about to start the semester. But my full-time job with LAUSD, started a little while ago, but our students are now back. So, this last week teachers came back and on Tuesday and Wednesday students came back. So I am at two new schools supporting them with my instructional coaching roles. So being at two completely different sites getting to meet, a lot of new staff and still got a lot of new staff to meet. And one of those schools is also a middle school, which-

Sharona: You have never… i’ve actually taught more of than you have. I just realized that.

Boz: Yeah. My only experience actually teaching middle school was when I was doing my credentialing program. We had to do several observations, extended observations before we could even do student teaching. And one of mine was at a middle school, and because of some situations with that middle school, even though I wasn’t supposed to be, I ended up teaching for part of that time.

Sharona: Just for once, I have five years of teaching at a not public school, but it’s an afterschool program, but five years teaching sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. So for once, I have more experience than you do in that level of classroom. Yeah. It’ll be really fun to see how it goes.

Boz: And it’s also funny ’cause my youngest daughter just started middle school this year, even though she’s in seventh grade. Their middle school here is only seventh and eighth, but she’s been in school about a week longer. So- I’m helping her with her homework and working with her, and then, the next week I’m seeing it in the classes. So yes, her first lesson, ’cause they’re using the same curriculum, her first lesson, I just saw a, a teacher starting to do on Friday. I just- Oh, that’s funny … that kind of made me laugh that, “Oh yeah, I know exactly what you’re doing ’cause I just did this with my daughter.”

Boz: Yeah. And a couple years ago, or actually not a couple years ago, a year ago, we had to do this also ’cause we had a we wanted to expand the organizing committee. And when we did that, we really tried to get non-math people just because of the makeup of the committee. We’re not necessarily doing that this time. We’re not looking exclusively for math, but we’re definitely not excluding math either. Because we’re not expanding, we actually had a couple of our members who have served on the committee for, one person a couple of years and one several years. Done a great job, and they were like, “You know what? I just want a little bit of a break. I wanna tag out for a little bit, let someone else step in.” So yeah, we’re really opening this to, not just math or STEM, but any subject.

Boz: Yeah. A- and we also hopefully that Northeast one w- ’cause that will be a in-person conference, not a virtual one. We are hoping to maybe expand that to a few other regions. So yes, get signed up stay up to date on all the things that are going on, and participate with ones that you can.

Sharona: All right. So I think we’re ready to get to the topic, and I wanna turn the tables on you.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: I’m gonna ask you what we’re talking about today, ’cause usually you ask me, but I’m gonna ask you the following: What is going on in the world that triggered this particular topic today?

Boz: So, we’ve all talked and heard a lot about the Harvard grading policy, the cap on A’s. We did several episodes on that. But recently, in recent news, another university has made a policy change to their grading in very much a different direction as, than Harvard. So, University of Michigan recently came out with a policy change that’s going to take effect in fall of ’27.

Sharona: One clarification, it’s a specific college at the University of Michigan. It’s not all of it.

Boz: Okay. So w- which college at the University of Michigan are we talking about?

Sharona: It’s the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Which is- So I didn’t wanna make it too big, but-

Boz: Yes, but that is the biggest college at- Yes … the University of Michigan. So you’re right. It’s not the whole one, my mistake, but it is the single biggest college at the university. So we wanted to take a little bit of time. First, let’s kinda dive into the details of the policy, and then, look at why they’re doing it and what we think about this new policy.

Sharona: And not just what we think, but we have seen quite a few articles come out from some very interesting parts of the political spectrum, shall we say, and we’re gonna mention some of those.

Boz: Oh, absolutely.

Sharona: So this thing is called the First Semester Grade Covering Pilot Program. So Boz, what is grade covering?

Boz: So basically-

Sharona: And we do a lot of grading here, and I’ve never heard of grade covering.

Boz: Yeah. That’s a, a new term. I had not heard that before either. But basically what they’re going to be doing with their first semester incoming freshmen, is they’re going to make all the grades pass/fail. They’re not going to be giving individual letter grades that are recorded on the transcripts. And- It’s not gonna affect their GPAs, so but this is just first semester freshmen. Now, I made that distinction about the transcripts. It’s not just that everything’s going pass-fail though, right?

Sharona: That’s the thing about the covering. The word cover is essentially they are overlaying a pass-fail designation on the regular course grades. So they’re actually internally keeping records of all those internal course grades. They’re just not revealing them basically to the students or other instructors or the public. So if you got whatever would be considered a passing grade in this internal system you would get the pass on the transcript, and that’s what would be shown to other instructors. But they have to keep it internally, so they will have a record of whether you got an A or a B or a C or a B+ or whatever, in part, and I was thinking about this, because they need it for financial aid eligibility. They need it for athletic eligibility. There’s a lot of impacts that they need to think about that they can’t just cover it up.

Boz: Yeah. Or they can’t just do away with it. They are covering- … it up. They can’t just simply say, “Okay, we’re gonna make everything pass-fail.” Now, why are they doing this? What’s the, one of the main reasons that they’re saying that they’re making this very different adjustment than what Harvard ended up doing?

Sharona: So it’s pretty well known that the transition to college is rough. It’s rough because you get a jump in potentially in academic rigor, but you also have a completely different environment that you’re navigating as a first semester freshman. Everything from navigating university bureaucracies to living on your own potentially, to not being in a mandatory attendance environment. There’s a ton of things. And early success in college has been recognized as one of the most important elements to eventual success of students.

Boz: It’s not just the success of the students, it’s also linked to healthy student, Emotional wellness

Sharona: Yeah. Mental health and wellness- Mental health … has been a big part of it. And so they want to do a couple things. They wanna give them space and time to acclimate, but then they also want to give space and time to, for exploration, for taking chances. And if those chances take you from an A to a C in a competitive major you’re not as likely to take those chances.

Boz: Yeah. There’s a lot of other things that it could be impacting when it comes to, student collaboration and being willing to work together. ‘Cause, if I’m competing against you in a class, how much, necessarily how much help do I wanna give you if that’s gonna mean my GPA now is under yours? So there’s lots of benefits and a lot of things that they’re hoping this is going to do. What, I think one of the biggest ones is that, that mental wellness the pressure that any freshman but I think really in this day and age that our students have coming in. And I would be curious to know if there’s studies out there, and there very well might be, but if that pressure is even heightened at different kinds of institutions? A- at a premier R1 institution, is it different than, a smaller or less prestigious institution?

Sharona: Yeah that we’ve really been, as we do this work in grading we keep coming smack dab against the fact that context matters. And there are times when I will be talking about fail rates, because that’s super important at Cal State LA and I’ll be talking to someone who’s like, “We don’t care about fail rates because we have three students fail out of 500 in a semester.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s a different situation than what I’m with.” Yeah. So I’m curious, has anybody else done this? Or is this like brand new, unique- shattering changing?

Boz: This is what I found interesting, because th- there’s been all kinds … like I said, it’s not quite blown up like the Harvard did yet. It very well might. But I’ve seen all kinds of comments on social media, on … There’s been all kinds of articles. In fact, we’ll probably talk about a couple of them as we go in this episode. But there’s all kinds of things both for and against. Like this has been very dividing. Some people absolutely in favor of it, others saying, how it’s gonna lower rigor and do all this other stuff What I found really interesting is this is not the first university to try this.

Sharona: Okay.

Sharona: And are you aware that there are similar programs at Caltech, Swarthmore, and Wellesley College?

Boz: I knew about Caltech. I did not know about the other two. So we’re not just talking about one or two. There’s a handful of universities, and like I said, we’re talking University of Michigan. We’re talking MIT. These are…

Sharona: Prestigious R1 institutions definitely top tier. Absolutely. I started seeing about this policy more from people I follow commenting on it, but then we went and did a little bit of digging. And I don’t know, where do you wanna start with some of the reactions that we’ve been seeing? Do you wanna start with our reactions? Yeah. Other people’s reactions?

Boz: I kinda wanna get your reactions. What, like pros and cons, what do you think about this policy of pass-fail for freshmen? And it’s just first semester too, right? It’s not spring semester. This is just fall.

Sharona: It’s just first semester. And specifically I wanna address the fact that it’s covering, because to me there’s a difference between a cover grade of pass-fail and actual pass-fail grading for this first semester in, in terms of what I think.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: And I’m very conflicted about this. On the one hand, anything that you can do to improve students’ health and wellbeing and take the damage of grades out, I’m in favor. I am just wholeheartedly in favor I’m not super convinced that this is gonna have the impact on learning that we get from some of the other alternative grading stuff we propose. I suspect it might help a lot with the first semester mental health transition and taking a little bit of that do or die pressure off from a first semester, so in that sense I feel like I’m in favor. But the students are still gonna be receiving, like the individual student will know their grade that they’re getting, from what I can tell. Other students won’t, other instructors won’t necessarily know, but I as a student will be told I would’ve gotten a C+ or whatever that is. So there’s none of the internal structure of grade changes that we promote here. So for if the purpose is learning, I don’t know that it’s gonna work or have any impact at all.

Boz: And see, and that’s where I wanna kinda disagree with you.

Sharona: Okay.

Boz: Because like you said, you do think it might have some impact on students’ wellbeing, especially their mental wellbeing. I think that has an indirect impact on the rest of a student’s experience in learning that would be hard to measure. But I truly believe that relieving some of that pressure, even if it’s only for a semester, even if it’s only covered up and not, a true pass/fail I don’t think that should be undersold.

Sharona: I’m just not if it does it, I will be all for it. I’m just st- really not convinced because of all the work that is not being done. So it’s not just the grade, right? But it’s all of the lack of clarity on your learning outcomes. It’s all of the AI cheating stuff. It’s all of the merging of weighted average stuff and not knowing what a student has actually learned. That’s all still there, and so it might help the student’s internal state enough that they can wade through this game of points better maybe, but I don’t think it’s gonna have the tremendous gains that we’ve seen in some other places with doing grading reform. Again, I’m not trying to knock it. I’m not trying to say don’t do it. I’m just curious to see if it really has a huge impact o- on learning, and I don’t know that they’re gonna measure learning. That’s the other thing. None of the stuff that is written about it it talks about them getting to try different things and enjoy discovering different paths, but it doesn’t necessarily say they’re going to learn better in the classes that they do take.

Sharona: Yeah, and like I said, I’m not at all opposed to it. I’m in favor of them doing it. I guess my biggest concern, and this actually in part came out of one of the articles we read, but I was already thinking that, is that where you’re gonna get resistance potentially is let’s say I’m a Calc 2 instructor, and I’m saying, “Oh, this policy’s supposed to be so great. Then all the students coming out of Calc 1 should actually know Calc 1,” or I… if those expectations get set, that’s not necessarily gonna happen. It’s not necessarily that students are gonna be better calculus students coming out of Calc 1. They might get higher grades, and they might know a little bit more, but I’m worried that people who will want to attack this policy will use that lever of they’re not actually learning more,” or, as was written in one of the criticisms, it’s a, lowering of standards and swaddling students and, instead we should ratchet up the rigor. So one of the people who wrote about this, there’s a, opinion piece or a, I guess this one’s an article of Inside Higher Ed- … by John Warner, and he summed up some of the different responses. And I loved one of the things that he said, because he quoted four people, two of them from outside think tanks who believe that the purpose of education is to rank and sort.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: He said separate the worthy from the wanting, and then two other people that we know very well from inside educational institutions that think that universities should be about learning- Yeah … which is Robert Talbert and Susan Blum.

Boz: Yeah. Okay, so you’re talking about one of these articles. Now, we actually might mention more than one of these from the same author. So, what article specifically are you talking and referring to?

Sharona: So this one came out August 14th, and it’s University of Michigan attempts to disrupt the transactional system. Making space for self-regulation is good, actually, is the subheader So this person John Warner, who I think we’re gonna have to invite to come on the pod-

Boz: Absolutely

Sharona: is very much in favor of making learning central to the university’s mission. And so he looked at this policy and then looked at all the reactions. And this is definitely a bit of an opinion piece. John has some adjectives in here. He says, like one of his quotes says, “Walter Kim, once a perceptive and singular novelist who’s, who has turned into a conspiracist crank, believes that such a move will lead to students not attending classes or turning in work.” So gotta give John props for not pulling any punches there. But later on, one of the quotes from that article that really hit home for me is he said, “It is not surprising that the divide between the critics and the supporters essentially falls between outside think tankers who view education as a kind of gauntlet by which we shall sort the worthy from the wanting, and people who work inside educational institutions who are trying to foster a culture of learning.”

Boz: Yeah, that’s a bold statement. I love that statement. I’m sure some-

Sharona: I wish it were true …

Boz: i’m sure there would be some disagreement with that, but yeah. And you’re right. There’s several in this article and in other articles that he’s not holding back. He’s not pulling his punches. We’ve gotta get him on here ’cause I think he would be fun to talk with.

Sharona: Yeah. But I think for me, my feelings about this are summed up by his last one of his paragraphs in the middle. “Going to pass no credit for a semester is hardly a solution to this challenge, but at least for a short while, students will be confronted with the challenge of deciding what matters to them, what they want to learn, what they desire from their experiences of college.” So in that way, I do think this is a good way to go.

Boz: Yeah. Do I think that this is going far enough? Obviously not. Look at what we do. We look at what we promote. Obviously not. Do I think it’s a step in the right direction and a hell of a lot better of a step than what Harvard did? Oh, yeah. Oh my God, yes. I, I think- Yeah … I applaud them for this. I think this is a great first step that maybe will open up some conversation about more grading reform. But even if this isn’t, even if this is the only step they end up doing, and- 40 years later they’re still doing it and people have basically forgot that they do it ’cause it’s just natural, that’s what they do, like MIT then, hey, it, it’s a great first step. It’s in the right direction and their students will be better for it.

Sharona: And in the words of Josh Eyler, who’s one of the people we first saw this from, he has a post. I’m gonna read two things from it. One of it, it says, “As an institution, if you are faced with the choice to go in the direction Harvard has chosen,” grade caps, “or the one Michigan is carving out for itself,” grading reform, “choose Michigan’s approach every time.”

Boz: Absolutely.

Sharona: Now, he also points out one other thing that I knew, but Michigan is also the lead institution on a project called The Seismic Project, which is a multi-institution collaboration studying the effectiveness and viability of alternative grading and assessment. So we are starting to get some of the big research projects going in this field, and I’m excited to see what comes out of Seismic.

Boz: Oh, that, that is very interesting. I heard a little bit about Seismic. I was not aware of their involvement.

Sharona: So if it’s okay with you, I kinda wanted to go down the John Warner rabbit hole for a minute. So I was introduced to him with this University of Michigan opinion piece, but in there he linked to a couple of the other things he wrote recently. So if it’s okay, I wanna go down to a piece that he wrote in June. So this is not exactly really old.

Boz: No. It’s a month and a half two months old, and it actually addresses what you were saying a few minutes ago, that this conversations about Harvard’s grading policy, the conversation about d- Michigan’s change. There’s one key thing missing in all of these conversations, and what is that key thing?

Sharona: Student learning.

Boz: Exactly. So you’re right. Linked with this article is another article that was written by Jeff Warner.

Sharona: John.

Boz: Or John, sorry. I apologize. What is the title of this article?

Sharona: So this one is called The Real Mission of Higher Education is Hiding in Plain Sight. And the very first line says, “Call me crazy, but I always thought that learning should be at the center of educational institutions.”

Boz: I laughed so hard the first time I, I linked on this article and read that, ’cause I was reading, the, the Michigan article a- and looking at that, and then just clicked on this just out of curiosity. I read that first line, almost fell out of my chair laughing. I love this guy already.

Sharona: Yeah, now to be clear, I believe that John Warner has his own column on, this is all on Inside Higher Ed. And so this actually, this post is a guest post, but this was how he introduced it, and he in particular was interested introducing a new book, Getting Learning Right: The Promise of Higher Education. And so the rest of this article is really about the authors of that book getting to do some explaining. And they did th- I highly recommend people read this article. It’ll be linked in the show notes, this post. But one of the things that they called out here is there was a Yale University committee that released a major report on declining public trust in higher education, and this was back in April. And it was really long. It was really long. It’s written very thoughtfully And very much focused on the mission, and the word learning barely appears.

Boz: Yep.

Sharona: So the report talks about teaching, the classroom, the academic mi- mission, knowledge, but it doesn’t talk about learning or about how students actually come to understand stuff. So I have said this for a while now, that I do think that AI is an existential crisis, not a threat, an existential crisis for higher education. Because if we don’t figure out how to put student learning at the center and how to make that learning useful, then the value proposition of college is gonna collapse.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Very quickly.

Boz: You nailed it on the head. It’s brought out several times, both in this article and the one we’re talking about before, that university, especially higher ed, isn’t really focused on learning. Our, and our students that are going to it, they’re going to get a piece of paper. They’re going to get a title that might allow them, future endeavors and future opportunities that they wouldn’t have without that piece of paper.

Sharona: And let’s be clear, the students want to learn. They do. Most of the students want to learn. They don’t necessarily want to learn the stuff that they’re being required to learn, but they do wanna learn what they need to know to achieve their career goals. But they do think that more important, they are willing to sacrifice their learning for that piece of paper, because they are clear that the learning is not enough. They’ve been taught that the learning is not what matters.

Boz: I would disagree with you a little bit on your… I don’t think your comment went far enough.

Sharona: Okay.

Boz: I do think humans as a species, we like to learn. You, you take a, a small child and just watch them interact in their environment and their world, they’re constantly learning. We do, as a species, love to learn. I also think our educational system basically beats that out of us, and by the time they get to college, I don’t know how much real true interest in learning exists, or if it does, it is buried so far down in the end goal of that degree, that piece of paper, that it’s basically non-existent anymore. You, to- I would agree- … actually enjoy learning again, you gotta go and do something completely outside of education.

Sharona: That’s what I said. I would say academic learning has been snuffed out, but so many of my students, like when I talk to them, they’re busy learning how to bake sourdough. They’re busy how they learning how to fix a car. They’re busy learning how to dance. The students that I teach at the theater company, man, the stuff I can get them to learn at the theater company that you couldn’t get them to learn in a classroom to save their lives. But I have students who are learning how to build things, fix things, do video mapping, sew costumes, learn how to perform in front of 1,500 people and be goofy while doing it. They learn so much, and they are thrilled to do it. They do it voluntarily. But then you- minute you put it in school, it’s gone.

Boz: And let’s be clear, we’re not saying this is something new.

Sharona: No.

Boz: This has been the thing for a very long time. We’re not saying this is new. What we are saying is that in today’s environment, and in the environment of AI that if we keep doing the same thing, yeah, higher ed is going to fall apart. That single drive of, having that degree isn’t going to be enough to sustain higher ed without it drastically changing.

Sharona: And that’s the thing, is that the question becomes, as an individual, are you fighting for higher ed to stay alive? If you have a job in higher ed, you probably need to be doing that. If you believe in higher ed, you need to do that. Which I do believe in higher ed in general, maybe not in the specifics, but there are definitely some people who would f- say it needs to go away and change into something different. So I don’t know.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: And it’s hard to believe that, I’m flabbergasted, like every time I go back to these, these two distinct things, that you’ve got University of Michigan doing one thing that although I have some concerns about its effectiveness, I wholeheartedly support it, and then you have Harvard. And given the outside impact that Harvard has had on education in this country, and particularly math education, I don’t know. It’s really heartbreaking to I don’t wanna go back to the Harvard conversation ’cause it depresses me so much. But I do wanna say that John Warner, the columnist, has an entire article from 12 days ago, Harvard Doesn’t Care About Students, with the subheader, I know, News Flash, right? I think you … I don’t think we need to have him on the podcast.

I think you need to go have a beer with him.

Boz: Hey if you’re listening and that sounds appealing to you, I would love that.

Sharona: But yeah. So there’s a whole article here, and students have been giving testimonies because they laid off as part of all the stuff that’s going on at Harvard, what’s being reported less is they’re doing an administrative co- consolidation of the faculty of arts and sciences, and so they’ve laid off the director of the writing center, who is very beloved.

And so there’s been dozens of testimonies about the value of the writing center and its director, and the students are describing the decision as flabbergasting, shocking, sad, painful, baffling, deeply disturbing, tremendously disturbing, heartbreaking, horrifying, shortsighted, dismaying, jaw-dropping, and apparently absolute bullshit.

So I don’t know. It’s just, it’s really hard to look at these two extremes. So I wanna say go Michigan, and I hope it goes well for them. I think it will in the short term. I just have concerns about the long term and I would like more institutions to try it.

Boz: So when you say short-term and long-term, are you talking about short and long term of the policy or of the student success?

Sharona: The policy.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: Because I have concerns that as with many reform attempts, that without really good communication and really good expectation setting, people who don’t like this policy, m- many of them of the sort, the worthy from the wanting we get a year or two in, and you start seeing those students in their junior and senior years, and they’re not wildly different from the students you saw before, or even potentially worse if AI continues to have an impact, that people will attack this policy and that it will be short-lived.

Boz: Okay. So that kind of brings me up to another topic or another point. Okay. What would you Sharona personally if Michigan calls you up tomorrow and goes, “What should we do to help this policy, this experiment, work to the best of its ability?” What are you telling them?

Sharona: I would say keep the cover, and then run all of your first year, first semester course instructors through a full alt-grading redesign of all their courses. So use the cover as time to buy time to get through those transitional periods, ’cause our first alt-gradings are usually pretty bad, and look at really redesigning for clear and measurable learning outcomes, and make your learning outcomes what you truly value. We’ve been fighting in math education for 30, 40 years to get away from can they do symbolic algebra into can they model, can they argue, and we still have those fights today. So take advantage of this cover semester and really redesign those courses that are being covered.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: That’s what I would say.

Boz: Interesting. Okay I would lean in heavy to the training of, how and why. That is one of the things, especially in the K-12 world that I live in, that I see a lot and probably is the most damaging to actual grading reform. And it’s the same thing with PLCs, and I’m gonna use the phrase that the late, great Defours coined when they said, a school would kinda halfway but not really train and put in some aspects of PLCs. They called it PLC light. And we’ve seen the same thing with alternative grading or grading reform. When it’s grading reform light, when it’s, alternative grading light, you leave it open for too many things to get blamed, too many things to go wrong, or to use, like you were saying, as an excuse to stop doing it. Training being one of those big ones, understanding why this policy is in place, what is the goal of this policy, and just as important, what are the goals not of this policy? ‘Cause this w- Yeah … this policy really is about easing the transition and increasing students’ mental wellbeing. That’s the goals of this policy. It’s- Well.

Sharona: And they want students to be a little more experimental in their choices.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So they’re trying to give some agency to students.

Boz: Yeah. The, which in my mind, and maybe it’s not correct, but I’m putting that in kind of that transition area that-

Sharona: Yeah. No, I’m- … you, you- I’m saying that’s, but that’s one of the goals of that transitional semester-

Boz: Yeah …

Sharona: is to give them that freedom. But I do wanna go back to what you said about PLC light and grading reform light. We were just at MathFest. We had eight and a half hours of contributed paper talks, and one of the things that came out that really does bother me is people who wanna dip their toe into grading reform will often do something like they’ll pick one section of their course and be, “I’m gonna do that using the four pillars. So I’m going to s- pick my mastery quizzes, and so I’m gonna do that. They’re gonna be aligned to learning outcomes.” They’ll do the full thing on that little piece, and then they’ll say that is 15% of the grade, and they’re gonna do the other 85% using traditional grading. They’ve bought themself all the work of alt-grading, meaning multiple assessments, giving good feedback, scheduling everything.

Which is work. I don’t wanna- Yeah … minimize that.

Boz: Absolutely.

Sharona: But then when it’s only 15% of a weighted average grade, it’s not worth it to students to take advantage of it. often. So they end up with sort of the worst of both worlds.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Because you don’t actually have mastery because you’ve got all this other grading that confuses it, and you’ve bought yourself the extra workload.

Boz: Yeah. Now don’t get us wrong. We’ve had done several episodes a- and talked about, some of the grading for growth blogs, talking about small steps you can make, whether it’s because of your institutional requirements or situation that limits you, or if you’re just not ready to go all the way into the deep end. There are definitely little things that you can try, and you should, and we’re not trying to discourage that. But you are talking about a very specific one that really does add almost all of the work that it takes to redesign a course.

Sharona: And then people come and report out, and they’re like I didn’t really see… I did all these measures and grades didn’t change, and student pers- I did a student survey and perceptions didn’t change.” And I was like, “Yeah, because 85% of your grading system is still traditional.”

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So I do want people to take small steps. I just want them to have smaller expectations to go with those small steps. So I think that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m really saying. And try not to do the ones that buy you all the work.

Boz: Yeah, see, and that’s what I took more away from that is… A- and I’ve said this several times, that I was one of those that did a lot of little Band-Aid things, and, tried them, and it would work to fix one problem, and then I’d find another. And, I did this for a while before I just threw it all out and went completely into, what my district calls EGI, what some people might might call standards-based or mastery-based. But I did a lot of those little things, and it helped. And it did fix some things. It led to other problems, but it wasn’t the heaviest lift that you could do, which if you were completely redesigning your learning targets, you’re basically lifting 90% of the, the weight to redoing the whole course.

Sharona: Yeah. Yeah.

Boz: All right, so we’re coming up, we’re coming up on time. I do I really do hope in i- if anyone knows knows John Warner or if he’s listening, we would love to talk more t- with you about some of these articles. But is there any other last minute thoughts that you had?

Sharona: I just have one that I’d like to give a shout-out to both the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. I have seen an increasing number of articles from both of these news organizations about grading. There’s a series that Beth McMurtry is doing right now over on The Chronicle, where she’s profiling a bunch of different alt-grading people and other things going on, and then John Warner is talking over on Inside Higher Ed, and there’s some other ones. I really want this to become a major part of the conversation, and so I wanna thank those organizations and those journalists for doing that work.

Boz: Yeah. And it’s both encouraging and disheartening for me, because I’m seeing this increase in higher ed. I’m, I don’t know if it’s just where I’m at in LAUSD or the environment I’m at. I’m seeing a decreased emphasis at the same time at the K12, which is disheartening. But you’re right, I love seeing all these articles, and even the ones that are on the other side. The fact that we’re having the conversations, that we’re really looking at grading. I’ve said this before, if you can really take a deep dive and explore and look at the decisions you make, why you make them, and make them intentionally and still come up with a lot of traditional practices, hey, I’m gonna disagree with you all day long, but all the power to you. So yeah. Yeah. Whether it’s on one side or the other, you’re right. I’m loving seeing so much coming out.

Sharona: Exactly. So the only other thing I would say is if you’ve made it this far and you would like to be interviewed on the podcast, please reach out to us through our Contact Us form. Or if you have a suggestion for a guest or an author that you would like us to interview, we would love those suggestions. Send them our way.

Boz: All right. And for our listeners, this has been The Grading Podcast with Boz and Sharona, and we’ll see you next week.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode’s page on our website, http://www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact Us form on our website. The Grading Podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State system or by the Los Angeles Unified School District