Making the grade, assessing our grading

I know there are smarter people than me who have written about both of these subjects, but as the semester winds down I can't resist revisiting in a more colloquial way the two topics that are (likely not) near and dear to most teachers' hearts.

It is the point in the semester when students begin asking about their grades, points, can they be "bumped" up since they're so close to the next highest grade, there was an illness they forgot to bring a note in for, they over slept the final exam period, etc. I know these are valid concerns for students, and I was certainly the sort of student who was hyper-concerned with his grades. So, I can give forgive them the barrage of e-mails here. And I don't blame students for often missing the big picture of whether and what they actually learned in class (this is the assessment part). However, the grades-assessment dynamic is something that's easy to lose sight of for teachers as well as students (if students even think about assessment).

I'm not saying grades and assessment have to be dichotomous; it just all too often seems like they are. Students are concerned with grades. Teachers are concerned with assessment. Students don't care about assessment unless it's tied into their grades. After some students engage in what is commonly called "grade grubbing," many teachers just want to chuck the whole grading system out the office window.

I admit, grading is my least favorite teaching duty. I also admit that assessment is one of my favorite. I think this is because I enjoy the myriad possibilities of assessment. In addition to exams, I use reflective writing, presentations, discussions, and short performances. Of course, I have to assign grades (in my case, points) to each of these activities so students will take them seriously. And I suppose that's a common way grading and assessing are folded into each other.

What I'm more concerned with is where these folds rip and grading and assessment appear if not incommensurable then two patches from a different quilt. As I'm sure many teachers and students can attest, getting a good grade doesn't always mean that one has learned something. And, certainly, one can learn something valuable and not achieve the desired grade.

I'm not necessarily offering answers; most teachers will tell you there are no easy ones. And then they'll digress into a highfalutin discussion about it: "isn't interesting that...," "the pedagogical tensions..." Which is what I suppose I'm doing right now. But teaching is a learning process, so I constantly have to ask myself: Am I making the grade on assessment for my classes?