30 Equitable grading

• To reduce stereotype threat, a phenomenon that occurs when stereotypes concerning gender, race, or social group membership hinder learning (Steele, 2010), develop transparent rubrics that do not discriminate against any identities in your classroom. Consider co-creating rubrics with your students in class. Students who receive transparent assignment rubrics in advance have more chances to meet expectations and succeed in the task and are less likely to perceive their grades as unfair. For written assignments, consider asking your students to use the rubric to assess themselves and to turn in their scores along with the assignment. Here are rubric samples for various disciplines: Rubrics for Essential Learning Outcomes (from the AAC&U’s VALUE: Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education project). You may use these as a starting point, but it is crucial to tailor your rubrics to the purpose, task, and criteria of the assignment.
• Entertain the possibility that unconscious bias exists in your assessment practices. Here are some reflective questions to help you: (1) Do I believe that students with certain identities are inherently better at some forms of assessment (e.g., exams, writing, speaking)? (2) Where do these beliefs come from? By recognizing your biases, you can work to challenge them. You could take the Implicit Association Test and consider anonymous grading (see more strategies in the chapter Reducing the impact of implicit biases in your classroom). After you have graded all the exams or papers, reexamine the first few that you graded. Are the standards you applied at the beginning of the grading process the same as the standards you used at the end? If the instructional team includes multiple graders (TAs, co-instructors), take time to do a calibration with a few sample papers to ensure that your expectations are consistent. More information about this strategy is available in the For TAs section, below.
• Grade summative assessments, not formative assessments such as homework. Exclude participation and effort from grading or offer them in a form of self-assessment.
• For team projects, grade individual achievement, not the group’s.
• Offer alternative (non-grade) consequences for cheating (for example, assigning additional homework).
• If possible, incorporate opportunities for retakes and redos.

For more strategies, consult Joe Feldman’s book Grading for Equity: What It As, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms  (Feldman, 2019).

To motivate your students to achieve academic success, we recommend you nurture a community of feedback and encourage a growth mindset (your own as much as your students):

• Educate your students about growth mindset, a notion that skills can be developed through dedication, hard work, peer support, and effective learning strategies (Dweck, 2006). Introduce assessments as tools to estimate current skills, knowledge, and learning, not innate abilities, paying attention not only to results but also to progress in your assessment methods.
• To help your students develop a growth mindset and to model it yourself, provide them with opportunities to reflect on their learning process and progress through one-minute papers, learning portfolios, or a “letter to self” activity. In this type of activity, students write a brief letter to a struggling student in the future about their experience with this material or a project, or students craft a letter to themselves that reflects on their experience in this course, their goals, challenges, strengths as learners, and the resources they plan to access.
• Account for your own mindset as an instructor, since research shows that “the racial achievement gaps in courses taught by more fixed mindset faculty were twice as large as the achievement gaps in courses taught by more growth mindset faculty. Course evaluations revealed that students were demotivated and had more negative experiences in classes taught by fixed (versus growth) mindset faculty” (Canning et al., 2019).

💡 Describe a strategy that you might use to make your assessments more equitable and develop a brief plan for its implementation.

• How much responsibility do I have for assigning particular or overall grades?
• Will my supervising faculty member provide instructions on grading and a grading schedule?
• Does my department recommend a grading curve that I am supposed to use in the course?
• Does my department or the course faculty instructor employ a rubric for grading particular assignments or exams? If so, when will I provide it to students?
• Will TAs and the course faculty instructor discuss standards and expectations for grading? Will TAs calibrate their grades via a practice grading exercise?
• How will I handle the grading of students for whom English is a second language?
• How will I grade assignments from students with accommodations?
• What is the policy on late work?
• What is the policy on student absences and their effect on overall grades?
• If you give a grade for class participation, how will it be implemented?
• Do your students know how their grades are calculated?
• What is the departmental, course supervisor’s, or my policy on makeup exams and late assignments?

Make sure that you explain to your students all related policies and procedures regarding their grades for assignments, tests, attendance, and participation. It is easy to assume that students “know” these things, but they often don’t.