are all victims of experience and context, often believing that personal experience is superior to evidence. While students have learned to scoff at medieval superstitions and to value the testing of hypotheses, prevailing discussions in education often remain stubbornly focused on experience rather than evidence.
Casual assertions have a way of becoming accepted with insufficient challenge. Some readers might recall futurists of the 1980s predicting that by the year 2000 schools would be paperless and student writing would give way to dictation into voice-recognition systems. As we know, neither prediction is close to reality. Educators still endure similar assertions about their profession and about grading policies. Rhetorical certitude, however, is not a substitute for evidence. When considering how to improve grading policies, one of the most important agreements that teachers, parents, students, and school leaders must reach is that evidence should guide their conclusions.
Try an experiment with your colleagues by asking them the following questions.
• What enduring principles have you learned in your career? What, in brief, do you know for sure about teaching, learning, and student achievement?
• What beliefs did you have ten years ago that you now know are no longer true?
Compare the quantity of responses to the first question to the quantity of responses to the second question. I rarely have difficulty eliciting a conclusion to the first question: “The primary causes of student achievement are …” or “The most important components of good teaching are …” However, the responses to the second question require some effort. Admitting that what we knew a decade ago in education was imprecise, uncertain, or downright wrong appears to require a rare degree of candor.
Now, pose the same questions to an ophthalmologist, climatologist, marine biologist, cardiologist, orthopedic surgeon, or international aid worker. These professionals have little difficulty acknowledging that what they know today surpasses what they knew in previous decades. They accept the fact that today’s evidence trumps yesterday’s experience. For example, a cardiac surgeon knows that twelve years spent in a surgical residency taught her very little about the powerful effects of behavioral modification on heart patients today. That doesn’t undermine the value of her surgical training but rather amplifies the value. Each time we know—as parents, professionals, craftsmen, musicians, or students—a little bit more about how our work improves and the results we expect, the better our results will be.
Thankfully, the use of evidence in medicine and many other fields has led to meaningful and life-saving reforms (McAfee, 2009). The elevation of personal preference over evidence is not unique to education but appears to be part of human nature. It seems people prefer the comfort of the familiar over the discomfort of the new, even if evidence supports the latter. That is why the most rational and reasonable people can do irrational and unreasonable things in resisting change (Deutschman, 2007). However clear the evidence, personal experience remains triumphant in too many discussions of education policy.
Education in particular—a profession that prides itself on progress—is rooted deeply in past convictions. We lay claim to 21st century learning by placing an electronic board at the front of the class, but we lecture as if electricity has not yet been invented. We praise collaboration yet often assess our students in a manner that punishes and berates peer assistance.
How can we distinguish experience from evidence? The most effective way I know is to use the following six levels of evidence.
1. Opinion: “This is what I believe, and I believe it sincerely.”
2. Experience: “This is what I have learned based on my personal observation.”
3. Local evidence: “This is what I have learned based on the evidence, which not only includes my own experience but also my friends’ and colleagues’ experiences.”
4. Systematic observation: “I have compared twelve schools that fully implemented my proposed intervention with twelve schools that did not implement it. Here are the results that show the difference between these twenty-four schools …”
5. Preponderance of evidence: “This is what we know as a profession based on many of our colleagues’ systematic observations in many different circumstances in varied locations and at many different times.”
6. Mathematical certainty: “Two plus two equals four, and we really don’t need to take a vote on whether that statement is agreeable to everyone.”
In a world subject to relativism in every sense—political, moral, and even scientific and mathematical—certainty seems elusive, particularly in regard to controversial topics like education practices. Nevertheless, there is an appropriate place for the definitive language of mathematics in our approach to grading. For example, when teachers use the mean, or average, to calculate a student’s grade, they reach a different mathematical result than when they focus on the student’s final scores. When teachers use a 0 on a one hundred–point scale, they reach a different mathematical result than when they use a 0 on a four-point scale. These are not matters of conjecture but simple calculation.
The first step toward reconciling debate in education, or any other matter of public policy, is for the rhetorical combatants to be intellectually honest about their claims and capable of distinguishing among what they believe, what they see, what they hear from colleagues, and what they have learned from the evidence.
Conversations About Change
There are two ways to begin a conversation with classroom teachers and building administrators about changing practices. The first is characterized by one-sided enthusiasm. Zealous advocates who adopt this method typically have goodwill, good research, and good intentions, but their audiences soon move from boredom to frustration to active opposition. What began as a collegial conversation focused on questions of practical application ultimately becomes entrenched opposition. Yesterday’s reasonable challenge becomes tomorrow’s grievances. Thoughtful dialogue and professional conversation are transformed into rancor. Colleagues become opponents, with each side wondering, “Haven’t we been down this road before?”
The second way to begin the conversation is with a question, not a statement. Rather than telling teachers and administrators what they need to do, we can ask, “What prevents you from being the very best teacher and administrator you can be?” The following are common responses to that question.
• “The kids don’t care.”
• “The parents don’t care.”
• “Many of the students don’t come to school.”
• “Students who do come to school are disengaged, inattentive, preoccupied, and angry.”
• “Administrators don’t support teachers who demand quality student work.”
• “Leaders at the system level tolerate poor teachers and administrators.”
• “Colleagues won’t cooperate and collaborate.”
The list could go on and on. Nevertheless, it is definitely a question worth asking.
This book is not a prescription. Rather, it poses a number of important questions and suggests the creation of boundaries. For example, in athletics, each contest has boundaries. No strategy, no matter how creative, is acceptable if it takes place outside of those boundaries. Officials, coaches, and athletes know the boundaries of their sport well. Within them are the thrill of
