A rant in support of fudging grades:
I would like to see some administrator who is aware of the truth of the research, the sobering truth that we can only learn a language by focusing on the message and not on the mechanics of the language, which is merely the delivery system, I would like to see that administrator hold me to a system of evaluation and assessment that does not align with the standards. By fudging grades I am able to align my assessment with the communication standard, which is all about the immeasurable qualities of human interaction that are illustrated by the Three Modes of Communication. This is what we should be grading on – communication. Otherwise we let cell phone screens define communication, or dry tests and we become party to the dehumanization of our youth. We are responsible, if the standard is Communication, to teach for it and to assess for it. And when we use CI we are able to align assessment with the standard and so does our instruction align with the standard. And of course we align with the research. When the standard and the research and our instruction and our assessment all mirror each other accurately, which I think is the point, then no administrator can tell me that I’m off base. In fact, if we had a long enough conversation I could convince any administrator, except one of those really pea brained types of administrators, of the folly of their trying to impose a system of evaluation on me that does not work, does not align. So I fudge. I put in all kinds of grades, and they are all based on some kind of rubric, but to make sure that they all came out to be an accurate reflection of what I sense is the child’s actual effort, of how they are really trying to meet the communication standard and especially the interpersonal skill of communication which is the big one, to be able to accurately assess those gray area qualities in the student, I fudge. I find it no accident that the term gray area also describes the brain, something we can’t measure because our assessment tools are insufficient in spite of the fact that millions of traditional teachers still do that, grossly ignoring the research. Those children who are just there for the credit, bless their dried up hearts, get the grade they deserve in my system because I fudge their grades without anybody knowing in favor of communication, whether it be silent (that is just fine) or not. Given the absurd situation that we are in, where acquisition cannot be measured, and yet we have to provide grades, I am proud to say that I fudge.