Ungrading inspects the inequities of schooling, asks hard questions of the structures of our schools, and offers a critique of the labor conditions for teachers at all levels of education.| Jesse Stommel
Ungrading is an equitable practice because grades do harm. And marginalized students are the ones most harmed by grades. Finding ways to reduce that harm is imperative if equity or justice is our goal.| Jesse Stommel
For ungrading to be equitable, we can’t merely ask students to grade themselves, but must work together with students to interrogate and dismantle grades as a system.| Jesse Stommel
The work of ungrading is to ask questions, have hard conversations, point to the fundamental inequities of grades, push for systemic change, and to mitigate or obstruct the harm of grading.| Jesse Stommel
What is Ungrading? Ungrading is a systemic critique, a series of conversations we have about grades, ideally drawing students into those conversations with the goal of engaging them as full agents in their own education.| Jesse Stommel
The biggest cruelty of grades as a system is that they frustrate the already tenuous relationships between students and teachers, and between teachers and their institutions.| Jesse Stommel
Linda Nilson argues that our current grading system is fundamentally broken—it fails to reflect what students actually learn, burdens faculty with time-consuming and subjective decisions, and fuels stress and grade disputes. In Specifications Grading (2014), she proposes a compelling alternative: Specifications (specs) grading, a system built on clear, pass/fail criteria tied directly to learning outcomes. […]| Academic Technology Solutions
As my blog has become more intermittent over the past few years, one topic seems to still get lots of traffic: rethinking grading. I first started experimenting with grading (and writing about it) around five years ago, and I’m proud to say that I have not “graded” an assignment since! But the ways that I’ve […]| Just TV
Grades (and institutional rankings) are currency for a capitalist system that reduces teaching and learning to a mere transaction. Grading is a massive co-ordinated effort to take humans out of the educational process.| Jesse Stommel
Even a system that invites subversiveness, like Domain of One's Own, can't single-handedly dismantle the institutionalized hierarchies of education.| Jesse Stommel
Without much critical examination, teachers accept they have to grade, students accept being graded, and none of us spend enough time thinking about the why, when, and whether of grades.| Jesse Stommel
Ungrading means raising an eyebrow at grades as a systemic practice, distinct from simply “not grading.” The word is a present participle, an ongoing process, not a static set of practices.| Jesse Stommel
There is nothing ideologically neutral about grades, and there is nothing ideologically neutral about the idea that we can neat and tidily do away with grades.| Jesse Stommel
Ungrading is not as simple as just removing grades. The word "ungrading" (an active present participle) suggests that we need to do intentional, critical work to dismantle traditional and standardized approaches to assessment.| Jesse Stommel
Ungrading means raising an eyebrow at grades as a systemic practice, distinct from simply not grading. The word, "ungrading," is a present participle, an ongoing process, not a static set of practices.| Hybrid Pedagogy