Grades should measure knowledge

 I saw a Facebook post this week where a parent stated, "Grades are not a measure of knowledge, but a measure of compliance." Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of truth to that in our culture today. My goal with grades is the opposite, though. Grades should be representative of what a kid knows.

Years ago, the math department where I work established test scores as 75% of a student's grade. I cannot speak for other teachers, but this has worked well to help kids LEARN the material, instead of counting on lots of completion-graded homework and classwork points to keep their grades high, even when their knowledge is lacking. 

Take a class with 1000 points possible in a grading period, where students take three 100-point tests. If a teacher grades everything but tests for completion, a student could turn in every paper with every answer wrong and "earn" 70% of all the possible points. In most schools today, 70/100 is a C. Even if this student scored a zero on every test, s/he would still pass with a C. The same student could score 50% on each of the three tests and earn 85% of possible points, which is generally considered a respectable B. If that same student scores an average of 34% on each test, s/he still receives a B on the report card. Here's the real kicker though. The same kid could average 67% on the three tests and receive an A for the grading period. 

Grading homework and classwork for completion can only work to help kids learn if the portion of the grade coming from that work is relatively low. Students must know and understand the bulk of their grade comes not from what they do or do not do, but from what they do or do not know. Otherwise, grades really do become a measure of compliance, just like the parent mentioned above stated, "a measure of compliance" instead of a measure of knowledge.

Weighting may not be the only way to ensure this, but clearly, excessive completion points provide evidence of the parent's claim.