Fair and Equitable Grading for ALL Students in Inclusive Settings

Accuracy

Accurate grades are essential if one of their purposes is to communicate information about student performance. Teachers can ensure accuracy of grades in several ways. It is important to separate behavior and participation scores from academic standards mastery. Keeping these types of scores separate in grading provides a way to measure student learning so that it does not become muddy when multiple considerations are included in one average score. Teachers must work collectively to determine exactly what the grade represents. It is necessary to avoid the practice of general education teachers grading content work and special education teachers grading work on IEP goals (Guskey & Jung, 2009). Effective grading establishes clear standards for how learning is measured for three types of learning criteria: product (cumulative demonstration of learning such as final projects or reports), process (effort, behavior, work habits), and progress (gains in learning such as pre- and post-tests) (Jung & Guskey, 2010). Grades for each type of learning criteria should be separate to eliminate having one grade reflect a combination of the types of evidence (Jung & Guskey). This separation is especially important for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

One consideration in developing a grading approach that provides an accurate representation of student learning is standards-based grading. Standards-based grading practices are recommended for use with all students, including students with significant cognitive disabilities. Standards within standards-based grading are broken down into smaller concepts or learning targets and teachers record student progress on each of the smaller targets. For example, instead of listing a grade in English Language Arts as a single number (i.e., 85%) for the quarter, progress toward each learning target is reported (e.g., identify characters across texts—3; diagram the plot of given texts—2; describe the relationship of events in a text in sequence—4). Standards-based grading requires alignment with grade-level content standards and either grade-level or alternate performance expectations (Guskey & Bailey, 2001, 2010; Muñoz & Guskey, 2015; Wormeli, 2006). This alignment improves accuracy, consistency, and meaningfulness of grades (Jung & Guskey, 2010, 2012) In standards-based grading systems, a 4- or 5-point rubric forms the basis for grading instead of a 100-point scale that produces numerous grade categories (e.g., A+, A, A-, B+, B, B−). Fewer grade categories are generally viewed as more accurate (Guskey, 2015). Standards-based grading helps avoid some pitfalls in traditional grading systems, including interpretation of what the grade actually represents (Guskey & Jung, 2009). Standards-based grading also separates the evaluation of performance on content standards from the evaluation of work habits.

Meaningful

Grades are meaningful when they are based on specific skills aligned with academic standards and when they indicate student strengths and needs in relation to specific skills. Establishing what a grade “means” for a student leads to increased student, parent, and teacher satisfaction in an inclusive classroom (Munk & Bursuck, 2004). Meaningfulness is crucial in terms of fairness because it is interpreted in terms of how appropriate the practice of grading is within the given context. Designing grades that are meaningful is a challenge when grading students with significant cognitive disabilities as it requires schools and teachers to think outside of the traditional grading box. Grades that only represent mastery of grade-level standards may not be appropriate for students who need modifications, but convoluting other factors such as effort and completion within grades only for some students detracts from what a grade means (Guskey & Jung, 2009). The collaboration between teachers within and across classrooms helps establish clarity in what grades represent.

When communication occurs with all stakeholders—parents, guardians, and students—about what the grade or grading system means, the fairness of the grade is more readily established. For example, if a child earns an “A” in math, does it refer to criteria based on the product (e.g., sum of scores on assignments), process (e.g., how student did assignments), or student progress (e.g., change in performance)? Merging these criteria into a single grade can cause confusion for parents or guardians and students because it is difficult to determine which criterion carried more weight in the total grade (Jung & Guskey, 2007). IEP teams, including parents or guardians and students, must have frequent discussions about grades and what they mean for students with significant cognitive disabilities. When the team decides to use different performance standards, those standards must be agreed to and frequently reviewed with parents or guardians and students. These conversations are crucial for clarity about student progress and any changes to the supports and services being provided (Jung & Guskey, 2010; William & Mary Training & Technical Assistance Center, 2015).

Consistent

Equity in grading means the grades are fair and impartial. Equity is truly a challenge when grading practices and systems are not consistent across teachers, a particular issue in middle and high schools. Defining what mastery means can support consistency and help ensure that grades have a clear and stable meaning for all stakeholders, including families. Schools ensure their grading practices are consistent by outlining performance standards for mastery and by having similar mastery expectations for students across teachers. It can be very confusing when teachers within the school use different standards and grading practices for the same student. A grade in one classroom should represent the same expectations and have the same meaning as in another. One consideration for creating consistency in grading is to develop commonly adopted grade adaptations for a student with significant cognitive disabilities. Silva et al. (2005, p. 89) identified five types of grading adaptations that involve basing all or part of a student’s grade on the following criteria:

Adaptations to grading are possible regardless of whether the learning criteria are based on product, process, or progress. They can be applied by multiple teachers across content areas and across time to promote consistency. A rubric that is designed to be standards-based to evaluate student performance could include multiple adaptations. For example, for Progress on IEP objectives, an adaptation might be “Given text or activities and higher order comprehension questions that require comparison, analysis, or summarization, the student will use strategies and supports (e.g., highlighting text, guided notes, graphic organizers) to correctly answer 8 out of 10 questions over three consecutive units.” For Improvement over past performance, the rubric might be applied at various stages within the learning process or across units. For A balanced grading system for processes, an adaptation could involve “applying a learned strategy to novel contexts,” or for effort might be “completion of activities or steps with activities to meet deadlines.”

Munk and Bursuck (2004) outlined how to implement grading adaptations for students with disabilities. We extended their ideas in Table 1 to provide an example for consideration of how their steps could be used by a collaborative team to plan for effective grading of students with significant cognitive disabilities in inclusive settings.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Example of the Grading Adaptation Implementation Process.

Description	Student with significant cognitive disabilities in inclusive classes
1. Meet to clarify purpose of classroom grades (i.e., what the grade means) and whether it is different for students with disabilities	General education and special education teachers discuss the purpose of grading across the inclusive classrooms. They indicate the purpose is to reflect three goals: (a) accuracy of content, (b) work effort, and (c) progress toward standards.
2. Clarify the purposes of grades for parents and students (i.e., what type of information parents and teachers want from grades)	Parents say they prefer grades that reflect their child’s progress toward prioritized standards and their child’s effort. They would like grades in separate grade reports.
3. Teachers come to mutual agreement on the purpose of grades for each student	The team (general and special educators and parents) agrees to measure the student’s progress on prioritized standards, with separate grades for effort.
4. Examine student learning characteristics (e.g., achievement, impact of disability, areas of strength, limitations) and inclusive classroom demands	Classroom activities demand things like navigating labs, following written directions, note-taking, using interactive technology, and physically handling objects. The student uses an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device, needs intensive instruction to learn new information and skills, and benefits when content is presented with supports and in short teaching segments. Student’s limited fine motor skills indicate a need for assistance from peers or adults to complete most fine motor tasks.
5. Review current grading system and determine whether adapted grades would be more meaningful	Team decides grading adaptations are needed. The student’s grade will focus on progress toward the prioritized standards rather than all standards taught.
6. Select an adaptation that meets the agreed to grading purpose	Team decides the student should show an essential understanding of the standards and will use supports, such as a checklist of steps for the science lab. For the inclusive classroom, all students will use the checklist, and a portion of their grade will be for effective use of the checklist. Prioritization of the content for the student with significant cognitive disabilities, for example, will be to complete labs that include vocabulary, and that mastery of vocabulary counts more than assigned homework.
7. Document adaptations in student’s IEP; begin implementation	Team ensures that the IEP reflects the adaptations used for grading as instructional accommodations
8. Monitor the effectiveness of the adaptation (i.e., does it meet the identified purpose?)	Team meets during each unit to discuss adaptations and whether grades assigned are accurate, meaningful, consistent, and supportive of learning.

Source. Adapted from Munk and Bursuck (2004).

Note. IEP = Individualized Education Program; AAC = Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).

Support Learning

The use of grades to support future learning may be one of the most important but overlooked purposes for assigning grades. Grades support learning whenever they include summative measures of student learning across time, weigh current evidence of mastery more heavily than previous measures indicating a lack of proficiency, and involve students in assessing their own learning using clear criteria for mastery. When considering a formative approach to grading, teachers can create a learning culture that pushes students to move from “not yet” meeting a standard to achieving a grade that shows mastery (Venables, 2020). Teachers can collaboratively decide the skills and knowledge that represent the progressive steps within a standard starting where the student may be and ending at the standard. This type of growth mindset could be the most meaningful way to assign grades for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

Standards-based grading focuses on assessing the student’s current level of performance relative to the learning targets within grade-level standard. This not only provides needed information about mastery, but also promotes analysis for how to better support student learning within instruction. For students with significant cognitive disabilities who may not yet demonstrate the performance standard for a particular grade, a vertical alignment of standards across grades allows the team to select the vertically aligned foundational skill closely related to the grade-level standard. Within these vertically aligned content standards, it is possible to deconstruct the standard and focus on a single skill at a time, allowing grading to be more meaningful, accurate, and supportive of future learning. For example, a reading standard for Grade 2 might include four separate skills that could be graded separately (e.g., uses basic reading skills to read fluently, uses key ideas and details to comprehend passages, uses vocabulary and structure to read passages, and uses knowledge and ideas from multiple sources to comprehend reading passages).

Conclusion

The four considerations within grading outlined by William & Mary Training & Technical Assistance Center (2015) provide a basis for developing a fair and equitable grading system that includes all students, including those with significant cognitive disabilities, in inclusive classrooms and schools. This is necessary as more students with disabilities are included in general education classrooms (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021). Educators are challenged to develop and enact a grading system that is accurate, meaningful, consistent, and supports learning, particularly for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Collaboration between these educators to ensure these considerations are included in the grading system is fundamental.