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The Grading Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley
Grading is an extremely important and largely unexamined piece of the classroom puzzle. In this weekly podcast, Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley, two long time classroom instructors from the K-12 and Higher Ed worlds, explore the nuts and bolts of grading student work. From looking at traditional grading practices to other types of grading such as alternative grading, equitable grading, ungrading, and more, join us as we and our guests provide the research, practices, and details needed to create a more effective grading practice that supports student learning and success.
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- 1 weeks ago53 min
172 - No Grades, No GPA: How Evergreen Does College Differently
What would a college look like if grades had never been part of its educational system? In this episode, Sharona and Boz welcome four guests from The Evergreen State College—Rachel Hastings, JuliA Metzger, Nathalie Yuen, and Julia Zay. They take us on a journey to explore an institution that has operated without traditional grades since its founding more than 50 years ago. At Evergreen, narrative evaluations replace letter grades and GPAs, students write their own self-evaluations, and interdisciplinary, team-taught programs create a very different structure for teaching and learning. But what does this actually look like in practice? How do faculty assess student learning, determine whether students have earned credit, and prepare graduates for a world that still relies heavily on grades and GPAs? The conversation explores the relationships between assessment, student agency, faculty collaboration, and institutional culture, while examining both the opportunities and challenges of building an entire educational experience around learning rather than grades.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!Slides from the Evergreen team's presentation at the 2026 Grading ConferenceThe Evergreen State CollegeResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.MusicCountry Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.</
- 2 weeks ago46 min
171 - Less Grading, More Thinking: Peer Coaching in the Age of AI
What if reducing the emphasis on grades could create more opportunities for students to think deeply, collaborate meaningfully, and develop their own ideas before turning to AI for help? In this episode, Sharona and Boz explore “Talking Is Also Thinking: How Teaching Students to Coach Each Other Before They Write Makes AI Shortcuts Less Tempting,” a guest post by Zia Hassan on the Grading for Growth blog. Drawing on Boz’s experience as an instructional coach, they examine how structured peer coaching can help students develop their thinking through conversation, probing questions, and active listening before they ever begin writing. Along the way, they distinguish peer coaching from more familiar practices such as peer review and editing, consider the practical challenges of teaching students to coach one another, and explore how alternative grading practices can create the time, space, and motivation for these kinds of learning experiences. The conversation raises a larger question: Rather than focusing on preventing students from using AI, what might happen if we redesigned our classrooms to make the learning process itself more valuable to students?LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!Talking is Also Thinking, by Zia Hassan on the Grading for Growth BlogResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.MusicCountry Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 I
- 3 weeks ago59 min
170 - Honors Without Honors Classes: One Year Later
What if students could earn honors recognition without enrolling in a separate honors class—and without simply doing more work? In this episode, Sharona and Boz welcome back Marc Aronson, who oversees faculty and the academic program at Cheshire Academy, for a follow-up to their conversation in Episode 114. A year after introducing a system that allows students to earn honors designations by demonstrating greater depth, sophistication, and quality of learning within mixed-ability classrooms, Marc shares what happened during the first year of implementation. The conversation explores how teachers designed honors expectations, what students and families experienced, and the challenges of creating meaningful opportunities for advanced learning without increasing competition or workload. Along the way, they examine questions of equity, student motivation, faculty buy-in, and the relationship between academic achievement and contributing to a community of learners.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!Ep 114 - Grading What Matters: Leveraging Extrinsic Motivation to Grow Students in Multiple DimensionsResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.MusicCountry Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- 4 weeks ago58 min
169 - Building the Course While Teaching It
What happens when an alternatively graded course moves from the planning stage into an actual classroom? Six weeks into teaching Quantitative Reasoning for Everyday Life for the first time, Sharona goes on the hot seat as Boz asks how the course she spent the summer designing is actually working. They revisit the central idea that finally brought together a seemingly disconnected course in voting, statistics, and finance: the role of human decision-making when multiple mathematically valid approaches are available. Sharona and Boz then dig into the grading architecture built around it. From fourteen learning outcomes and three portfolios to quizzes, investigations, reflection, revision, and reassessment, the conversation looks at how the pieces fit together, what has already needed adjustment, and what it is like to make grading decisions when you can't fall back on points and percentages to create the appearance of certainty.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!ResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.MusicCountry Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Sep 29, 202653 min
168 - What Are We Actually Trying to Measure?
If higher education says its students are learning, how do we actually know? In this episode, Sharona and Boz dig into Doug Lederman’s three-part series on measuring learning in higher education, focusing on his proposed path forward and the questions that have to come before choosing an assessment. What should students actually know and be able to do? Who gets to decide? Should we measure whether students reach a defined level of proficiency, how much they grow from where they started, or some combination of the two? And at what point in a course, program, or degree should that learning be demonstrated? Along the way, they explore university mission statements and institutional learning outcomes, the challenge of defining learning even in long-established courses like Calculus I, and possible approaches to gathering meaningful evidence of learning, from examinations to portfolios.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!Failure to Measure Learning Is Hurting Higher Education, by Doug LedermanWhy We Haven’t Measured College-Level Learning, by Doug LedermanThe Way(s) Forward on Measuring Learning, by Doug LedermanResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.Music<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuEhnFL_D38
- Sep 22, 202655 min
167 - What Students Believe About Grades
What do students believe grades are supposed to do? In this episode, Sharona and Boz explore that question through three recent articles written by student journalists about traditional and alternative grading. Their arguments surface beliefs that are deeply embedded in our educational culture: that letter grades provide objective information about learning, that grades motivate students to work harder, that reassessment may reward students who did not try hard enough the first time, and that alternative grading means abandoning familiar measures like percentages, letter grades, and GPAs. Rather than simply asking whether these students are right or wrong, Sharona and Boz examine what their perspectives reveal about the assumptions students may bring into our classrooms and why understanding those beliefs matters when we ask students to participate in a grading system that works differently from the one they have known for most of their education.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!Science Department Changes All Biology Classes to an Average-Based Grading SystemDueling Column: Going beyond As and Bs: Can alternative grading help students learn more effectively?Dueling Column: Making The Mark – Do Alternative Grading Systems Really Work?ResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the
- Sep 15, 202656 min
166 - How Do We Make Grading Reform Stick? The Five P's
With grading reform receiving increasing attention across both K–12 and higher education, how do we turn growing interest into change that actually lasts? In this episode, Sharona and Boz explore The Five Ps of Starting and Sustaining Grading Reform, a framework developed by Matt Townsley and colleagues for moving grading reform beyond the work of individual educators and toward broader institutional change. Organized around people, purpose, policies, pace, and persistence, the framework provides a starting point for thinking about who needs to be involved, how a community develops a shared reason for changing its grading practices, what kinds of institutional guardrails can support rather than prescribe practice, and how change might unfold over time.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!The Five Ps of Starting and Sustaining Grading ReformWhile other schools weigh grading reforms, Princeton remains silentBananaland UniversityResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.MusicCountry Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Sep 8, 202655 min
165 - Go on Offense: Make It About Learning, An Interview with John Warner
When students can outsource much of their schoolwork to generative AI, is the answer to make assignments harder to cheat on? Or is it to make learning more worth doing? In this episode, Sharona and Boz are joined by writer, educator, and Inside Higher Ed columnist John Warner, author of More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI. Drawing on two decades of teaching writing and his own journey from traditional assessment to ungrading, John explores the tensions between the learning experiences instructors say they value and the grading systems used to evaluate them. The conversation turns to the arrival of what John calls the new “homework machine,” the limitations of retreating entirely to locked-down, in-class assessment, and what it might mean to approach student AI use as a learning and course-design problem rather than primarily as a problem of cheating and academic integrity.LinksPlease note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, by John WarnerThe Real Mission of Higher Education Is Hiding in Plain Sight, on Inside Higher Ed, by John Warner(Some) Starter Questions for Measuring Learning, on Inside Higher Ed, by John WarnerMoral Instruction Will Not Stop Cheating, on Inside Higher Ed, by John WarnerResourcesThe Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:The Grading for Growth BlogThe Grading ConferenceThe Intentional Academia BlogRecommended Books on Alternative Grading:Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David ClarkSpecifications Grading, by Linda NilsenUndoing the Grade, by Jesse StommelFollow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com</a
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About The Grading Podcast
Grading is an extremely important and largely unexamined piece of the classroom puzzle. In this weekly podcast, Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley, two long time classroom instructors from the K-12 and Higher Ed worlds, explore the nuts and bolts of grading student work. From looking at traditional grading practices to other types of grading such as alternative grading, equitable grading, ungrading, and more, join us as we and our guests provide the research, practices, and details needed to create a more effective grading practice that supports student learning and success.
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