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The use of grades and the practices that accompany them is a complex, confusing and difficult issue in schools. This article sets forth in what the author believes are the right ways to determine report card grades and for principals to support their faculty in this endeavor.
The use of grades and the practices that accompany them is a complex, confusing, and difficult issue in schools. Guskey (in Willis 1993) states that "grades are not inherently bad. It is their misuse and misinterpretation that is bad" (147). Principals have a critical role in minimizing the misuse and misinterpretation of report card grades. They must ensure that the grading practices used in their schools are based on quality assessment principles, and they should work with their entire faculty to develop a quality assessment environment. Stiggins (2000) makes this concept clear: "It is our ethical and pedagogical responsibility to understand and apply only acceptable grading practices" (409). He continues, "Our challenge is to do the very best job we can [of supporting our teachers in] assigning acculate, interpretable grades" (412). This is a particularly important responsibility of principals of secondary school, because (a) grades become increasingly "high stakes" for students in high school, and (b) many districts have made significant and appropriate changes in grading and reporting practices at elementary levels, but they have not been able or willing to face up to the difficult challenge of making the same desirable changes at the middle level, and especially, high school level.
What is needed to bring about changes in grading practices is ongoing faculty discussion of the issues surrounding grading and the development and use of practical guidelines use to avoid the misuse and misinterpretation of grades. In the last few years there have been dramatic changes in assessment and evaluation practices, but there has been relatively little change in grading practices. As Stiggins (2000) notes, there has also been a "demand for higher levels of competence for larger proportions of our students [which has] brought about a demand for schools driven by expectations of high achievement, not merely rank order"(413). It is now generally accepted that assessment and evaluation must be more than just measurement used to sort and label students. Educators must move away...