What’s in a Grade? The Multidimensional Nature of What Teacher-Assigned Grades Assess in High School
Item
Title
What’s in a Grade? The Multidimensional Nature of What Teacher-Assigned Grades Assess in High School
Abstract/Description
Historically, teacher-assigned grades have been seen as unreliable subjective measures of academic knowledge, since grades and standardized tests have traditionally correlated at about the 0.5 to 0.6 level, and thus explain about 25–35% of each other. However, emerging literature indicates that grades may be a multidimensional assessment of both student academic knowledge and a student's ability to negotiate the social processes of schooling, such as behavior, participation, and effort. This study analyzed the high school transcript component of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) using multidimensional scaling (MDS) to describe the relationships between core subject grades, non-core subject grades, and standardized test scores in mathematics and reading. The results indicate that when accounting for the academic knowledge component assessed through standardized tests, teacher-assigned grades may be a useful assessment of a student's ability at the non-cognitive aspects of school. Implications for practice, research, and policy are discussed.
Author/creator
Date
In publication
Volume
17
Issue
3
Pages
141-159
Resource type
Research/Scholarly Media
Resource status/form
Published Text
Preprint/Forthcoming Resource
Scholarship genre
Empirical
Keywords
IRE Approach/Concept
Open access/full-text available
Yes
Peer reviewed
Yes
ISSN
1380-3611
URL
Citation
Bowers, A. J. (2011). What’s in a Grade? The Multidimensional Nature of What Teacher-Assigned Grades Assess in High School. Educational Research and Evaluation, 17(3), 141–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2011.597112
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