The A–F grading scale has long been the cornerstone of measuring success in K-12 schools, but educators and researchers continue to question whether those letters truly reflect what students know, and what they can do.
A recent Education Week special report, “Grading and Assessment: How to Best Measure Student Success,” examines how districts are rethinking everything from extra credit to class rank, and how some teachers are navigating sensitive conversations around grade changes.
As districts nationwide seek to better serve all students and examine the limitations of traditional grading systems, this report explores the challenges and innovations surrounding the quest for a more accurate and equitable assessment of student learning.
You can read the full special report here or begin to explore the stories below.
What are grades really for? What research says about 4 common answers
When Laura Link works with districts to review their grading policies, she starts by asking a simple question: What are grades for?
Are grades meant to motivate students? To help teachers determine who needs more support? To inform parents of their children’s progress?
Link, an associate professor of education at the University of North Dakota, studies how K-12 schools formulate grades and how those decisions affect student learning. She also consults with school systems about their practices, starting with surveys and focus groups with families, caregivers, teachers, students, and administrators.
Those findings often expose misalignments in expectations about what grades and homework are supposed to accomplish.
Those differing priorities—and the tensions between them—cut to the heart of the grading debate. Grades can’t be all things to all people, assessment experts say. Districts must weigh tradeoffs and communicate clearly when revising grading policies.
Grades “can affect students’ trajectories—not just academic trajectories but life trajectories,” Link said. “We use that symbol to make day-to-day decisions, as teachers and as families, that affect students’ futures.”
Inside one district’s big policy shift on grading for equity
Educators at the San Leandro Unified school district in Northern California had a grading and assessment dilemma.
In 2013, some students getting D and F letter grades were meeting content standards on state and local assessments. Some students getting A’s were struggling on state tests and Advanced Placement coursework. Some students, who educators thought would need an intervention course, didn’t actually need it based on various measures other than grades.
Even after the district shifted in 2014 to allow for project-based learning—for which students demonstrate their content knowledge in a variety of ways—the mismatch between letter grades and test scores persisted, said Sonal Patel, an assistant superintendent of the district. Students taking the same course but switching teachers saw their grades vary depending on which teacher they had.
This prompted district leaders to invest in teacher training and reimagine grading so that each letter grade carries equal weight, an F is not overweighted, and grades are based solely on students’ knowledge of required academic content—excluding factors like extra credit or classroom behavior.
- Read more about this approach, known as “equitable grading.” 🔎
- See a guide for key differences between this approach and traditional grading policies. 🔎
Why some schools are ditching class rank and weighted GPAs
Superintendent Alison Villanueva was about a month into leading Connecticut’s Watertown school district when she suddenly found herself facing a “catastrophe, PR nightmare.”
A high school principal published the names of that year’s valedictorian and salutatorian in a press release and on social media. Then, the district got a call from a parent arguing that the information was wrong and that their own child had, in fact, come in second in the graduating class.
The student whose name the district had publicized actually ranked third.
Though this may seem like a minor mishap to someone who doesn’t work in K-12 education, Villanueva “was in a frenzy,” she recalled four years later. “If you have something like this that’s so monumentally incorrect, it puts doubt in people’s minds about everything you’ve done.”
What should teachers do when students—or parents—ask for a better grade?
What’s in a grade?
On its surface, a letter or number grade would appear to be a fixed measure of a student’s performance on a given assessment: a test, essay, project, or other tangible piece of work.
Ideally, a grade should “accurately reflect a student’s current understanding of the course content, free from biases,” according to Joe Feldman, an educational consultant, former teacher, principal, and author of the book Grading for Equity. But what about when students or parents ask, and are granted requests to change grades?
This practice, unflatteringly referred to as “grade grubbing,” has become increasingly common.
How teachers approach grading, in charts
Grades are a well-established part of the K-12 education system that, in most school districts, play a decisive role in students’ academic standing.
But what goes into the single letter or number that a grade represents? Just how malleable is a grade after it’s been issued? And what effect does grading work have on students’ performance?
In December 2024, the EdWeek Research Center conducted a national survey of 759 K-12 teachers to glean answers to these and related questions.
A strengths-based guide to assessing student progress
Teachers use rubrics to ensure consistency and clarity in grading student assignments by carefully detailing what a successful project looks like.
But the seeming simplicity of these assessment tools masks complicated questions about how to measure student progress and how to encourage continued learning, said Kevin Perks, the senior director of Quality Schools and Districts at WestEd, a nonpartisan education research organization.
“You have to determine what constructs to measure; how to measure those accurately, with validity; and then how to develop instruments that can be used consistently,” he said. “Assessment literacy is one of the largest knowledge gaps teachers have. It’s an area where they aren’t really trained.”
When designed effectively, rubrics can clarify expectations, minimize subjectivity, and standardize grading criteria across multiple teachers, said Perks, who leads training sessions for teachers about classroom assessment.
There are many schools of thought about how to properly design these grading tools.
