Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms

“Joe Feldman shows us how we can use grading to help students become the leaders of their own learning and lift the veil on how to succeed. . . . This must-have book will help teachers learn to implement improved, equity-focused grading for impact.”

--Zaretta Hammond,

Author of Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain

Crack open the grading conversation

Here at last—and none too soon—is a resource that delivers the research base, tools, and courage to tackle one of the most challenging and emotionally charged conversations in today’s schools: our inconsistent grading practices and the ways they can inadvertently perpetuate the achievement and opportunity gaps among our students.

With Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman cuts to the core of the conversation, revealing how grading practices that are accurate, bias-resistant, and motivational will improve learning, minimize grade inflation, reduce failure rates, and become a lever for creating stronger teacher-student relationships and more caring classrooms. Essential reading for schoolwide and individual book study or for student advocates, Grading for Equity provides

• A critical historical backdrop, describing how our inherited system of grading was originally set up as a sorting mechanism to provide or deny opportunity, control students, and endorse a “fixed mindset” about students’ academic potential—practices that are still in place a century later

• A summary of the research on motivation and equitable teaching and learning, establishing a rock-solid foundation and a “true north” orientation toward equitable grading practices
• Specific grading practices that are more equitable, along with teacher examples, strategies to solve common hiccups and concerns, and evidence of effectiveness
• Reflection tools for facilitating individual or group engagement and understanding

As Joe writes, “Grading practices are a mirror not just for students, but for us as their teachers.” Each one of us should start by asking, “What do my grading practices say about who I am and what I believe?” Then, let’s make the choice to do things differently . . . with Grading for Equity as a dog-eared reference.

Joe Feldman has worked in education at the local and national levels for over 20 years in both charter and district school contexts, as a teacher, principal, and district administrator. He began his career as a high school English and American History teacher in Atlanta Public Schools and was the founding principal of a charter high school in Washington, DC. He has been the Director of Charter Schools for New York City Department of Education, the Director of K-12 Instruction in Union City, California, and was a Fellow to the Chief of Staff for U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Joe is currently CEO of Crescendo Education Group (crescendoedgroup.org), a consulting organization that partners with school and districts to help teachers use improved and more equitable grading and assessment practices. Joe graduated from Stanford, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and NYU Law School. He is the author of several articles on grading and assessment, and the author of Teaching Without Bells: What We Can Learn from Powerful Practice in Small Schools (Paradigm). He lives in Oakland with his wife and two children.