Elementary Teachers' Classroom Assessment and Grading Practices

TLDR

The study surveyed more than 900 third‑to‑fifth‑grade teachers across urban, suburban, and rural schools to document how they use various factors, assessment types, and cognitive levels when assigning grades. Teachers emphasized academic performance and effort/improvement, giving little weight to homework or peer comparisons, and used constructed‑response, objective, and teacher‑made exams that distinguished recall from higher‑order skills, yet found little link between assessment type, subject, or grade level and the grades awarded, indicating a hodgepodge of grading factors.

Abstract

Abstract The authors investigated the assessment and grading practices of over 900 Grades 3-5 teachers representing urban, suburban, and rural schools. Teachers indicated the extent to which they used various factors to grade students, the types of assessments used, the cognitive level of assessments, and the grades awarded. Teachers appeared to conceptualize 6 major factors when they graded students; they placed the greatest weight on academic performance and academic-enabling behaviors, such as effort and improvement, and much less emphasis on homework, comparisons with other students, grade distributions of other teachers, and borderline cases. The teachers used 3 types of assessments—constructed-response, objective, and teacher-made major examinations; they differentiated between recall and higher level cognitive skills. However, there were few relationships between assessment and grade level, subject matter assessed, and grades awarded. Results are discussed in light of other research, indicating that teachers use a "hodgepodge" of factors when assessing and grading students.