Homeschooling: What Is the Purpose of Grades?
Grades Are Not the Goal: A Homeschool Parent’s Guide to Effective Assessment
Grades are such a foundational part of education that we seldom stop to think about their purpose, much less how to use them effectively or explain their value to children. This article will discuss the purpose of grades, how to use them to your advantage, and what to avoid.
The Meat Thermometer of Education
In educational jargon, grades are a form of assessment. The purpose of an assessment is to get a real-time snapshot of a student’s comprehension of a given subject matter. They are merely one tool of many that an educator uses to assess student progress.
The grade is, essentially, a form of feedback. Its purpose is to provide information. That means there is nowhere a child’s grade is “supposed” to be. The grade simply reflects the degree to which the child understands the material. Think of grades like sticking a thermometer into a turkey to see how it’s cooking. The reading on the thermometer is feedback that tells you whether the turkey is ready to come out or cook for longer. The purpose of the thermometer is to help you assess what will happen next.
Similarly, the grade’s purpose should be to tell whether a child is ready to move on in a subject or if more work is needed. The grade is the meat thermometer of education, providing you with valuable information about how well the child is processing what you are teaching. If the child seems to get all A’s with little effort, he can move on to more challenging material. If he struggles just to get Cs, you probably want to stay where you are and work on mastering current content before moving ahead.
Understood this way, it’s actually good if your child gets a poor grade because that tells you that help is needed in a given area. This is why the response to a poor grade should never be punitive. Your response to a child’s grade should not be a reaction to something that has already happened. It should be about what you are going to do next.
Good Grades Are Not the Goal
It is important, therefore, to remember that grades are not the end goal of education. The purpose of studying math is not to get a good grade but to understand math. A good grade merely reflects the child’s understanding (or lack thereof). The end goal is comprehension, not grades.
You might think this is a semantic distinction since good grades typically reflect comprehension, but I think it is important. Telling a child they need to study “to get good grades” comes off as arbitrary. It bureaucratizes education, leading the child to think of it as mindless box-checking. This stifles curiosity, turning learning into a routine the child neither understands nor enjoys. We want our children to build excellence in a given discipline, not feel like they have to strive to obtain some arbitrary rating. (See our article “Homeschooling Teens: Excellence, Not Perfection” for more.)
Keeping your attitude about grades grounded in this mindset will stop you from confusing the grade for the end goal and make the feedback you offer your child more constructive. We all know that education is more than “teaching to the test.” Similarly, it’s much more than “getting good grades.”
Grades and Motivation
This leads us to the final consideration—grades and their relation to student motivation. Getting good grades can be a laudable source of intrinsic motivation for students since they know that a good grade means they have reached proficiency. This, in turn, makes them feel a sense of accomplishment. Therefore, it is a fine thing to say, “If you pull an A in biology this semester, we’ll take you to the movies.” This adds another incentive layer on top of the intrinsic motivation they already have to do well. When the thermometer says the turkey is done, the reward is that you get to eat it.
However, the converse does not hold. While it can be helpful to offer incentives for good grades, it is not helpful to punish for bad grades. Unless your child is a punk rock nihilist with “SMASH THE SYSTEM” spray painted on the back of his crusty leather jacket, he is not delberately trying to do poorly. Children get poor grades because something is wrong with their comprehension. They should not be punished for failing to understand what they don’t understand. I always think about this when I hear students say, “My mom is going to kill me for getting a B-” or “I’m afraid to tell my parents I am getting a C in history.”
A child should not fear parental reprisals for struggling with a subject. It’s as pointless as being angry with the turkey for not being fully cooked. This attitude can seriously hinder your child’s educational priorities. They become more focused on “getting a good grade so mom isn’t mad at me” than actually mastering the subject matter.
Conclusion
When appropriately used, grades are a wonderful tool for assessing your students’ progress. However, it is important to remember that they are but one tool in a chest of educational resources. They are not the end goal of education, nor something children should be disciplined about. They are simply feedback, letting you know how your child is doing. Understanding grades in this way can help take a lot of the pressure off your child and reorient his or her mindset back toward where it belongs: mastering the content.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Join me and other homeschooling parents at our Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group to continue the discussion!
