Grading Philosophy

Sometimes I question the reliability, validity, and purpose of grading. As a personal agenda, I believe that learning should be accomplished through a desire to acquire knowledge and improve ones skills. If you are good at something, do you not want to become better at it? Sadly, because of academic standards and laws placed upon our society, learning has become a chore. A chore that is associated with walking the dog or cleaning ones room. Since there has been a loss of inner desire and motivation to increase ones intellect or skills, extrinsic motivators must be implemented to create a false sense of this missing desire, i.e. Grades. Without grades, students cannot know how well there are doing or know how to improve their efforts to “master” the required skill. Teachers benefit from grades as well. Teachers can see the improvement of their students or the lack of improvement as a means to adapt and better their instruction. The main reason I struggle with conventional ways of grading is directly correlated to my discipline.

As a music educator who specializes in performance assessment, I question why assessment experts recommend against using achievement, improvement, or effort as a frame of reference for assigning grades. I must use achievement, improvement, and effort methods of assigning grades to students. Fortunately, I can focus on achievement and improvement grading to out weigh the effort method of grading. If there is effort, there will be improvement.

When playing a musical instrument, one must become proficient at specific skills at key years of the students instrumental development. With these instrumental skills, students need vast knowledge of other skills that dramatically improve a students ability to play their instrument like: aural skills, vocal skills, and dictation skills. All of these are acquired through years and years of practice and exposure to the musical world. Already, an assessment expert can see an issue with his bias against achievement and improvement frameworks for grading.

Because music education is not a academic subject, students choose to be in my class. Already, their inner desire has been kindled and as a teacher it will be my job feed and nurture the kindling to allow my students too erupt into a fury of self betterment and desire for improvement.

Within in my classroom, students will have written and performance based tests and homework. Homework will consist of daily practice to prepare for monthly playing tests and individual class recitals. Student expectations of playing tests will include demonstrations of all of the scales, shifts, and excerpts of the pieces being performed in class. Student will be assessed upon their rhythm and pitch accuracy, tone quality, bowing, articulation, tempo, fluency, technique, and preparation.

The most beneficial type of assessment for music education is formative assessment. What simplifies formative assessment for music education is its direct correlation and similarity between the assessment and the instruction. How I assess as a teacher is exactly the same as the instruction. If I wish to teach rhythm dictation, the students must hear specific examples and become proficient at writing them down. To test them, I would play varying examples of different rhythms. The students would then dictate what they hear and I would proceed to correct and grade accordingly.

My discipline is based strictly upon achievement and improvement grading frameworks. Without this frameworks, I would not be able to adequately grade and assess my students or my instruction.