“Our grading system is pretty old. We’ve basically graded things the same way for over a hundred years in this country. That system was created at a time when the education system was prioritizing different things than it is today.” ~ Dan Polifka
Last year, at Seven Hills, Dan Polifka decided to take a step against the traditional grading system where points generally take priority over individual growth. He created a new system, and called it Growth Over Grades. In the system, points do not exist. The goal was to shift student focus away from points and onto learning, self reflection, and growth. At the end of each quarter, students argue for a letter grade based on both their abilities and their growth throughout the quarter and school year. Since its creation, the system has spread to members of the history department including Amaris White and Kyla Young. Nate Gleiner, a member of the English department, has also adopted the system.
Over time, especially in private schools such as Seven Hills, grade inflation has surfaced and impacted participants in the education system. Grade inflation occurs when teachers begin to award higher grades than students deserve, leading to higher general grade averages. “Increasingly, the range of acceptable grades for my ambitious students, which is many of my students, shrunk further and further…down to this narrower…band,” Polifka said. “We’ve got this scale from one to one hundred that drives our life, and increasingly the only usable part of that band is the top 10%.” The amount of points a student can gain in the upper 10% became the leading differentiator between student ability. “It…got absurd, I think, in the way that farce as an artistic form is absurd in order to illustrate some bigger point about something,” Polifka said.
Furthermore, the standardization of a traditional grading system leaves little to no room for individuality. “I’ve always lamented the fact that at the end of every quarter and really throughout the entirety of the school year that I have to quantify human beings in ways that ignore individuality,” English teacher Nate Gleiner said.
The new grading system also emerged to combat student focus on points and transfer that focus to learning and growth. Focus on the amount of points one needs to achieve an “acceptable” grade is common in Seven Hills students, and the system emerged to combat this. “I got frustrated over a long period of time that I was having more and more conversations about points,” Polifka said. “Part of what led to (the switch) was my realization that students were being rational when they were freaked out about points.”
Students agree that the system is effective in shifting student focus from points to growth. “It allows me to not worry so much about how I’m performing in the class, but I get to worry more about how I’m growing,” Senior Erin Pierani said.
Furthermore, stress around points is present throughout Seven Hills, and the elimination of the point system seemed to help decrease stress levels in students. “I thought it was really nice that you didn’t have to worry about the specific amount of points you got and what letter grade that would correlate to,” Junior Audrey Cors said.
Also, many appreciate the individualized aspect of the grading system in comparison to the traditional one. The individualization of the system also contributes to improvements in learning abilities. “(The system) is really centralized on the individual,” Junior Shlok Mehta said. “You can grow as a learner.”
However, some do believe that participating in the grading system takes up more time than being a part of a traditional system. As the system focuses on self reflection, more time is spent reflecting on growth in the Growth Over Grades system. “It takes more time to write out your portfolio,” Sophomore Hannah Olowokure said.
Additionally, students have difficulty assessing their growth, especially when this skill is not a prominent part of the general Seven Hills curriculum. “It can be very difficult to evaluate yourself,” Junior Landon Langhammer said. “It’s kind of a skill you have to develop, but sometimes I don’t know what I did badly.”
Moreover, finding concrete evidence of growth can be difficult. On occasion, some students stress about growth in similar ways to the original stress concerning the grading system. “Sometimes in that class people get so caught up in trying to figure out ways to prove that they’re showing growth and that they’re going to have a good defense that it almost hurts them,” Cors said.
As of now, the grading system has spread to members in both history and English departments, and there is a possibility that the system will continue to spread throughout the coming years. “My big hope is that more of us think more intentionally about how we assess, and…about the system because, you know, we all respond to the systems we live in,” Polifka said.
Hopes of the system spreading are high, but it may not be possible for some to adopt the system. The time commitment for implementing a growth over grade system is high, and the work is difficult. “It required an enormous amount of self reflection on my part, not just about grading, but about the kinds of assignments I’m asking students to do,” Gleiner said. “And I think for some courses, it’s not necessarily adaptable.”
