Economics and Grading

So I saw a tweet yesterday that included the following graphic from my long-time Twitterfriend, Paul Munshower.

My first reaction was to laugh, and I did chuckle.

But, almost immediately, I stopped and checked that reaction. Oh, not because this is untrue...it probably is a really accurate way of framing that feeling. (And, yes...as a professional educator, I have had that feeling checking my balance with my bank...which is a comment on the state of compensation for teachers...but not the real point of this post.)

The main reason I checked myself is the idea that this comment conveys: that grades are like money in the bank, deposits from your earnings.

Now I know there are plenty of people who would equate grades as "earnings," as in, "Students earn their grades."

But I do wonder a bit about this metaphor. Are we really comfortable with thinking about grades as compensation? I'm not loving this idea, honestly. I know, I know...we use this language all the time. But what is a grade, really? Is it payment for the work students do? Or...is it meant to be communication about their learning?

I suppose if you're viewing grades as pay for the work students do, there isn't any problem here. Students put in their time, do what they are asked to do, and get their paycheck. Worked hard? You get an A! Not working quite as hard? B+ for you, kiddo. Just coasting and not really doing the work? D- for you. And I guess the idea here is that compensation matches the effort; kids who are really working hard are going to get better "pay," while the kids who are coasting are going to get worse "pay." That's how the "real world" works, after all, right? People who work hard get raises, and lazy people never get ahead...and might even lose their jobs, yeah? Grades viewed this way are really an economic proposition.

But here's what makes me uncomfortable with this: I don't think grades are actually pay. Grades should be communication about what kids have learned, ideally. I don't think they are actually all that great for this purpose, because you lose all the nuance by trying to collapse a whole term's learning into one letter or number. Regardless...if we start trying to turn this communication into payment...are we really communicating learning anymore?

And I don't think that kids who just "work hard" are going to get high marks while lazy students are going to get low scores. I'm not arguing against developing a work ethic; I think everyone agrees that we want kids to learn how to work. But I'm standing here in opposition to the idea that kids who work hard deserve good grades just because they have worked hard. I mean, you can "work really hard" at doing the wrong thing and not end up making any progress. If we're basing kids' grades on whether or not they worked hard, what are we actually assessing? Their work habits? Or their learning?

Grading is not--or at least should not--be an economic transaction. The teacher is not the boss on the jobsite doling out dollars for the day's work to the laborers. If we're serious about grades actually reporting learning, we have to work to purge our vocabulary of this language about "earning."