Why Feedback Often Doesn’t Help

EDUCATION WEEK September 21, 2022 Why Feedback Often Doesn’t Help By Alfie Kohn [This is an expanded version of the published article, which was given a different title.] A lot of people make a living by offering advice about how teachers should give feedback to students — or how administrators should give feedback to teachers. Unfortunately, a body of compelling … Read More

Foreword to Ungrading

Foreword to Ungrading 2020 Foreword Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum (West Virginia University Press, 2020) By Alfie Kohn Three concepts emerged independently in different fields: quantum leaps (in particle physics), punctuated equilibrium (in evolutionary biology), and paradigm shifts (in the history of science). All converge on the revelation that … Read More

Can Everyone Be Excellent?

NEW YORK TIMES June 16, 2019 Can Everyone Be Excellent? By Alfie Kohn [This is an expanded version of the published article, which was titled “Why Can’t Everyone Get an A?”] I was having dinner with Deborah Meier, the eminent educator, when our conversation turned, as it often does, to school reform. For a generation now, that phrase has come … Read More

The Case for Abolishing Class Rank

December 12, 2016 The Case for Abolishing Class Rank By Alfie Kohn When students are rated with letter or number grades, research shows they’re apt to think in a shallower fashion – and to lose interest in what they’re learning – as compared with students who aren’t graded at all. Alternative methods for reporting student progress are not only less … Read More

Why the Best Teachers Don’t Give Tests (##)

October 30, 2014 Why the Best Teachers Don’t Give Tests By Alfie Kohn Frankly, I’m baffled by the number of educators who are adamantly opposed to standardized testing yet raise no objection to other practices that share important features with such testing. For starters, consider those lists of specific, prescriptive curriculum standards to which the tests are yoked. Here we … Read More

Schooling Beyond Measure (##)

EDUCATION WEEK September 19, 2012 Schooling Beyond Measure By Alfie Kohn [This is a slightly expanded version of the published article.] As we tend to value the results of education for their measurableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to be measured. — Edmond G. A. Holmes, chief inspector of … Read More

The Case Against Grades (##)

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP November 2011 The Case Against Grades By Alfie Kohn [This is a slightly expanded version of the published article.] “I remember the first time that a grading rubric was attached to a piece of my writing….Suddenly all the joy was taken away.  I was writing for a grade — I was no longer exploring for me.  I want … Read More

The Trouble with Rubrics (#)

ENGLISH JOURNAL March 2006 — vol. 95, no. 4 The Trouble with Rubrics By Alfie Kohn Once upon a time I vaguely thought of assessment in dichotomous terms:  The old approach, which consisted mostly of letter grades, was crude and uninformative, while the new approach, which included things like portfolios and rubrics, was detailed and authentic.  Only much later did … Read More

The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation (**)

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION November 8, 2002 The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation By Alfie Kohn Grade inflation got started … in the late ’60s and early ’70s…. The grades that faculty members now give … deserve to be a scandal. –Professor Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University, 2001 Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily — Grade A for work … Read More

The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement (**)

SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR November 1999 The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement By Alfie Kohn Only extraordinary education is concerned with learning; most is concerned with achieving: and for young minds, these two are very nearly opposite.                                                                                                                                                   — Marilyn French I.      Common sense suggests we should figure out what our educational goals are, then check in periodically to see how successful we … Read More