Grading reformers increasingly emphasize grading equity practices (Feldman, 2019), but a limited understanding remains of how teachers develop their grading strategies with equity in mind. We begin to fill the gap with this qualitative, inductive study, drawing from data gathered from 506 Arkansas teachers. Thematic analyses of survey responses…

School leaders need to understand how to implement change through leadership as shifts in grading reform support student learning. The problem was educational leaders and school districts face many challenges transitioning from traditional report cards and grading systems to standards-based grading and reporting at the middle school level. A gap…

Traditional letter and number grades are inaccurate and harmful to children, while research indicates that standards-based grading is both more accurate and better for all stakeholders. However, despite standards-based report cards (SBRCs) coming in many forms, the best number and arrangement of performance level descriptors (PLDs) remains…

Teachers have aligned their instruction to the Common Core Standards and have developed several essential questions to help drive their instruction. However, grading and reporting practices remain the same. Teachers are still communicating student achievement the traditional way. Traditional grading practices do not communicate what a student is…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many school accountability systems that rely on student-level achievement data. Many states encountered uncertainty about how to meet federal accountability requirements without typical school data. Prior research provides evidence that student achievement is correlated to students' social background, which raises…

Action research was undertaken to better understand teachers' perceptions of grading at a single P-12 school district in a midwestern state. The motivation for measuring teachers' perceptions of grading came from the school district's local data, which suggested a possible disconnect between students' grades and what students know, understand, and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the specific factors teachers consider when assigning students' report card grades. Data were gathered from 943 K-12 teachers from five school districts in a southeastern state in the United States who completed the "Teachers' Grading Practices Survey." Analyses focused on how teachers weigh…

Student grades that appear on assessments and report cards have no universal meaning and therefore require teachers to explicitly define and communicate the meaning in a clear manner to students and parents. Grading experts recommend the meaning to be student learning of academic standards, which requires teachers following this recommendation to…

Grading is one of the most hotly debated topics in education, and grading practices themselves are largely based on tradition, instinct, or personal history or philosophy. But to be effective, grading policies and practices must be based on trustworthy research evidence. Enter this book: a review of 100-plus years of grading research that presents…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the specific factors teachers consider when assigning the grades they record on students' report cards. Data were gathered from 943 K-12 teachers from five school districts in a Southeastern state who completed the "Teachers' Grading Practices Survey." Analyses focused on how teachers weigh…

The purpose of this transcendental, phenomenological study was to understand the impact of online grading and standards-based report cards on elementary teacher instruction at a suburban school system. This research study examined teacher instruction and assessment, sharing obstacles, and resources necessary for the effective use of…

This mixed-methods study applied a decision-making theoretical framework to an investigation of teacher grading in a large urban school district in California. A sample of 251 high school teachers of core subjects were surveyed, and 15 teachers participated in four focus group interviews in order provide data on the influences, rationale, and…

The starting point for this article is changes in the Swedish assessment system which stated that pupils are to receive grade reports in school year 6 (12-13 years old) during the academic year 2012-2013. Since the 1970s, compulsory school pupils have received their first grade reports in grade 7 and/or 8. The issue here is to present pupils'…

Grading and the interpretation of grades are inextricable facets of teachers' work. Nonetheless, teachers find it challenging to explain the inferences they draw from grades and the decisions they make based upon grades. This article explores teachers' thinking about the grades assigned by their peers. This study used a think-aloud task in which…

Grading refers to the symbols assigned to individual pieces of student work or to composite measures of student performance on report cards. This review of over 100 years of research on grading considers five types of studies: (a) early studies of the reliability of grades, (b) quantitative studies of the composition of K-12 report card grades,…