Innovative approaches to assessment and grading can go far to advance equity. Traditional grading is a product of the industrial era, when high schools were designed to sort students into career tracks and reward good behavior—and, most crucially, when schools were not actually attempting to educate all students to the same high standard. Our goals are very different today.

Author and former educator Joe Feldman has found that effective, equity-oriented grading practices have three purposes. First, such practices guard against implicit bias and untested assumptions. Without grading practices that make equity explicit, teachers may end up disproportionately rewarding students who are better prepared. More seriously, teachers may unconsciously apply lower expectations for low-income students or students of color. Students may be rewarded for compliance, or for efforts that mask rather than confront their own learning deficits. This matters because of a second key function of equity-oriented grading practices: they are designed to give students, teachers, and families accurate information about how well students are doing—how thoroughly they have mastered content and developed essential skills. If bias impinges on grading, grades are by definition not accurate. Finally and most important, equitable grading practices focus students’ attention and satisfaction on their own learning. In other words, they cultivate intrinsic motivation, rather than distracting students with the extrinsic motivation of the grade itself.

Equitable grading has three pillars: accuracy, bias-resistance, and intrinsic motivation.

Joe Feldman, author of Grading for Equity

Performance assessments and other authentic demonstrations of learning are a core strategy for nurturing intrinsic motivation. Performance assessments can take many forms, such as exploring a solution to a real problem, creating and exhibiting a product, conducting an experiment, or engaging in debates and oral defense. These activities are evaluative, but they also offer opportunities to expand student voice, build college and career competencies, and incorporate culturally relevant content and learning experiences.

Some high schools ask students to demonstrate learning through capstone projects at key milestones. In California, Envision Learning Partners high schools complement traditional tests with a performance assessment called Defense of Learning grounded in Envision’s graduate profile. Students assemble a portfolio of their best work, which they publicly defend at key benchmarks in their high school careers. Seniors deliver a College Success Portfolio Defense, which they must pass in order to graduate. For performance assessments like these, clear, common rubrics can help ensure that all students are assessed according to the same rigorous standards, another key tactic for equity.