Ungrading and the Final Grade

What does it mean to “pass” a course?

This post is part of an ongoing series of reflections completed during my Spring 2023 writing course. While the post is being published in August of 2023, it was originally written on April 28, 2023.

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This week and next my students are deep in revisions for their final portfolios and self-assessments. I’m preparing both them and myself for our final grade conferences and, as a consequence, doing some deep reflection about our time together.  

One thing that I really appreciate about ungrading, and that makes it both fascinating and frustrating, is how it forces me to grapple with fundamental questions about teaching and learning, why we’re here and what we’re doing. This week’s question is about what it means to “pass” a class. 

I won’t go into details about the situations that made me ask the question. Suffice it to say that, as a result of a potentially thorny final grade conversation (or two), I find myself wondering what our purpose is when we evaluate students’ work at the end of the semester.  

Does a “passing” grade of A, B, or C mean that students have “mastered” the material? If so, how do we define “mastery”? What does it entail, and how do we account for student differences when assessing it? When we assign final grades, is our purpose to indicate levels of mastery, however we’ve defined it? Is it to determine and certify whether or not students have the knowledge and skills to proceed beyond our course—and if so, how does mastery relate to that? Is it to determine and certify whether and to what extent students learned in the course—and if so, what is the relationship between learning and mastery? How do we even define learning?

And what if none of these things work together? Theoretically, or in an ideal world, if students learned in the course then they should have mastered the material and gained the skills and knowledge to proceed beyond the course. If they didn’t, they should not. But we all know that it doesn’t really work that way. 

Take student A, who comes to our classroom from an under-resourced high school, with fewer advantages than most of their peers. They put in a lot of effort all semester but struggled to produce proficient work according to our pre-determined standards. Nevertheless, they were persistent and they learned something—they learned quite a lot, in fact. But perhaps they didn’t learn enough to say that they have “mastered” the material. 

Take student B, who comes into the classroom ahead of the game. They put in very little effort all semester, for one reason or another. But the work they did produce was proficient. Because they didn’t take advantage of the opportunities of the course, or even complete all the work, they didn’t learn much of anything. But they came in having already “mastered” the material—or at least had enough mastery to continue their educational trajectory. 

I think we’ve all had these students. Both types would have failed, or come close to failing, my traditionally graded courses, but for different reasons. Student A would have failed—despite their effort and learning and my own satisfaction with their improvement—because their work didn’t meet a standard that I believed would satisfy professors in their subsequent courses. Student B would have failed, despite their facility with the course material, because they didn’t comply with my course policies by submitting all their work. 

I appreciate how ungrading has encouraged me to reorient my approach to both of these students. In my ungraded course, Student A can still pass if they complete the work and can successfully prove to me and to themselves that substantive learning and improvement took place. They might not receive an A or a B, but they can at least receive a passing grade. In this way, I can mitigate (though not eliminate) the negative impact of the opportunity gaps they have faced in their education up to this point. After all, I’m not here to rank students: I’m here to help them learn. 

I admit that I’m more troubled by Student B—and that is perhaps counterintuitive given the relative strength of their performance. I’m okay with the fact that Student B has missed a few assignments. I am slowly moving beyond a compliance mindset that evaluates students on how meticulously they followed the rules of the course rather than on their attainment of course goals. If they didn’t complete every activity, but they produced solid work and learned something, why shouldn’t they receive a “good” grade for that? 

But here’s the hang-up for me: what if they produced solid work but didn’t learn anything?

Ungrading, and the general ethos of educational development, has encouraged me to think always in terms of learning, which, to be clear, is a good thing. It has also encouraged me to value things like metacognition, self-assessment, and process (over product) and to reject gatekeeping as a function of education. We are in the business of helping people learn, not sorting them, stamping them, or ranking them against one another. 

All of these mindsets make it difficult for me to accept that sometimes students come into my class, learn nothing or very little, and still “pass.”

I realize that there are a lot of other contextual factors that would inform a final grade determination, made either by myself or by my students. And in most cases, I would pass a student who did solid work but who didn’t really get anything out of the course. In general, I err on the side of humility in these kinds of assessments. But I’m bothered by the idea that students could “successfully complete” my course without demonstrating any growth—even if they have long been doing this in traditionally graded and ungraded courses alike. 

That’s all for now. I’m excited about my students’ final grade conferences next week but feel like I’m dragging myself (and some of my students) over the finish line of the semester. Stay tuned to see if we make it.