Motivation Matters

Here's a commentary up on edweek.org that once again tackles the question of how grades affect student motivation.

The author, Paul Barnwell, makes the point that grades don't always reflect how much students learn. For example, a student who comes into a class with a broad base of knowledge and ends up with an A may actually have learned less than a student who comes in knowing less and actually studies more, but ultimately earns a lower grade. The emphasis should be on how much a student learns, rather than what grade he or she earns at the end of the year, says Barnwell.

He also contends that such a system has negative effects on student motivation.

Another problem with a heavy reliance on grading is the underlying assumption that grades are a necessary motivator for students. There are several problems with this contention. Psychological research has shown that students, and people in general, are more likely to lose interest in what they’re doing if they are promised carrots or threatened with sticks. Using grades as a threat or reward for completing or not completing schoolwork is extrinsic, or external, motivation. This type of motivation often results in a decreased focus on the learning objective.

While I see Barnwell's point, I do think that it's important to have a way to measure student achievement. Determining whether students actually understand the material is essential in order to figure out where they may need more help or where instruction could be improved.

Perhaps what should be shifted here is how grades are perceived. Maybe parents and school officials should keep in mind that one letter cannot tell the whole story of an entire year's worth of learning. Getting a C in a class that challenges and teaches a student a great deal may be worth more than an A in a class that requires no effort.

Posted by Katie Ash at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There's an AP story posted today that pretty much sums up my frustrations as a high school student in a high-performing, affluent school district. Here's the basic gist of it:

"In most of the [Washington, D.C. area], a score of 90 or higher will earn a student the top mark. But in Fairfax County, (Va.) it takes a score of at least 94."

It's this kind of discrepancy that really irrated me when I was a student. Although I did not attend school in Fairfax County, my school district used the same grading scale as the one described in the article. Even between schools in the same district, it seemed to me that grading scales fluctuated significantly. It didn't seem fair that so much of my grade-point average depended on factors over which I had little control--what school I attended, what classes I took, and which teachers I had.

I wish I could have taken the advice of Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment at Dickinson College, and just "chill[ed] out about grades," but I still feel that's a hard request when you are one of hundreds of hard-working students in a county where almost everyone goes to college, competing for a limited number of spots at a state university.

But there's an interesting take on this in a similar article in the Washington Post, which says that grades are actually a better indicator of success in college than standardized tests. Also, grades are "much less closely correlated with student socioeconomic characteristics than standardized tests," say two researchers. I have to admit, reading that point of view has made me question my stance on grades in school. After all, it's much easier to point a finger at the system than to ask myself whether I should have worked a little harder or studied a little bit more.

What do you think? Do the discrepancies in grading scales between districts put some students at a disadvantage when they're applying for scholarships or vying for spots in colleges? Or is it a good indicator of student effort and achievement? Do the differences in the scales effectively account for varying economic and environmental factors? Or do they simply give some students an unfair advantage?

Posted by Katie Ash at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest contributor Ann Bradley, an assistant managing editor here at Education Week, often talks about the trials and tribulations of motivating her children to do well in school. This past weekend, she witnessed the poignancy of what really motivates kids.

Here's Ann's story:

"My 12-year-old son spent the weekend working on a project for his 7th grade Spanish class. They're studying the names of school-related items, like staplers and pencils, and they have to make a locker and fill it with 10 things, all correctly labeled. They also have to write numerous sentences explaining what is in the locker and what class it's used for.

My son, who desperately wants to do well in school but is still learning that effort equals outcome, was thrilled to get this creative assignment and determined to do his best. He spent hours turning a Nike box into a miniature locker. He spray-painted it blue, made a lock out of tin foil, and filled it with a tiny bulletin board (made by ripping a corner off the one in his room) complete with a tiny note written in Spanish stuck on with a pushpin. He even got our 5-year-old in on the act, who lent him a tiny SpongeBob backpack to hang in the locker.

At one point, he said to me, "Mom, this is so good, it looks like a girl did it!"

I guess that means only girls fuss over their schoolwork, while cool guys pretend that they have more important things, like lacrosse and whether to buzz their heads, to think about!

When I checked the assignment rubric for the project, my heart sank. Turns out the actual locker is worth only 10 points, and the rest of the 70 points will be earned with clear and complete sentences that use the right verb, etc.

Being a Type A Mom, of course, I couldn't help but point out to my son that all of his labors would only yield 10 points, and that he'd better get cracking on his sentences. It was awful to have to "shut down" his creative energies that way, although I do understand that this is a language class, not an art class.

But still, the whole experience left me feeling sad that my son, who attends one of the finest middle schools in the nation, has so few assignments that jazz him up the way the locker has. He was so motivated to make it, and the assignment gave him the opportunity to exercise a little-used part of himself--even at the risk of producing something that a girl could have done."

Does this story sound familiar? What lessons do think this offers about what motivates kids?

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A survey released today by the Josephson Institute of Ethics found that 60 percent of the 36,122 high school students surveyed admitted cheating on a testing once during the past year, 35 percent said they had cheated two or more times, and a third said they had used the Internet to plagiarize a school writing assignment.

The Josephson Institute has released figures on cheating every year since 1992. And, unfortunately, the cynic in me becomes less and less surprised by the seemingly high percentages of high school students who cheat.

That might be, in part, because I examined this topic in significant depth several years ago in a project published in American School Board Journal and sponsored by the Education Writers Association. The research and hundreds of interviews I did with students, teachers, principals, and ethics experts for that project, "Generation of Cheaters", was the spark that lit the cynicism I now have about the ethics of today's high school students.

Just the other day, a teenage boy who lives in my county and is a very good student (and a nice kid) told me that "cheating is a skill. It's something you need to learn how to do well." Undoubtedly, his perspective troubled me. But it did not surprise me. I had heard similar comments from hundreds of students I have interviewed over the years, for the special project on cheating and for other stories.

Students who cheat are motivated to do it for a number of reasons. At the higher end of the student academic ladder, it is to compete with peers for higher class rank or to earn higher grades and, in turn, get into a better college. At the lower end of the ladder, it is to get by without having done the necessary preparation for a test. And in some cases, cheating is motivated by a basic lack of confidence--a student might see that someone else has a different answer and switch his even though his answer might be correct and the one he is copying is wrong.

Whatever the motivation, I think it stinks that more than half of the high school students surveyed had admitted cheating and more than a third had done it more than once. But it troubles me more that those figures no longer surprise me or other adults. As much as they can, teachers, principals, and parents need to discourage and prevent this type of behavior.

One important lesson I learned in doing my research on cheating is that the kids who don't cheat are really ticked off that it is so easy for so many others to get away with it. If we begin to lose the ethics of those kids too, that 60 percent cheating figure might be 75 percent in another five years.

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If schools employ multi-age classrooms, have students play a bigger role in choosing what they study, and get rid of traditional grading and testing (Montessori education approaches), are they likely to see an increase in students' motivation to learn--and, in turn, higher achievement?

A new study published in the journal Science suggests such approaches are likely to have a positive impact on achievement.

Angeline Lillard of the University of Virginia and Nicole Else-Quest of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studied two groups of 5- and 12-year-old students in Milwaukee, Wis., who attended Montessori schools. The resesarchers found that Montessori-educated 5-year-olds performed better on reading and math tests than their peers who did not attend Montessori schools. In addition, the study found that the Montessori 12-year-olds wrote more sophisticated narratives, performed better on a test of social skills, and scored as well or higher on academic assessments than their peers.

I am neither an advocate nor a critic of Montessori education. But in an era marked by an increasing emphasis on top-down mandates for what students should learn and traditional testing of that knowledge, this study is worth some reflection if only to ask: Are there more creative ways, beyond what schools are doing now, to get students more interested in what they are learning? What do you think?

Posted by Kevin Bushweller at 8:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)