Chapter 4: Rethinking Grading for Social Justice

Grading is a form of power, and this power usually rests with the instructor. In traditional grading approaches, the instructor becomes a judge who marks students on a linear continuum. This approach requires students to follow the same path and reach the same skills at the same time and in the same manner. While grading seems to be an objective way of ranking students this way, studies from as early as 1912 have shown that grades are subjective and unreliable (see Guskey & Brookhart, 2019 for an overview of studies), while also not providing meaningful information about learning (e.g., Blum, 2017, 2020; Kohn, 1999, 2011). In this chapter, we introduce specifications grading as an alternative way of assessing learning. We argue that this approach empowers students, reduces bias, and also increases accountability, responsibility, and motivation for the students. As Rich (1977) wrote in Claiming an Education “Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you” (p. 3). This approach is also in line with the democratic participation in the classroom that bell hooks (1994) advocates in her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.