Good Afternoon

This week's WGO has a strong focus on our upcoming Mid-Semester Progress Reports (February 25) & Parent-Teacher Conferences (PTCs), as we truly believe in the importance of reaching out to your child's teacher for a better understanding of their learning progress. While PTCs are a great opportunity for this, these conversations don’t need to be limited to conference days!

In that spirit, I want to re-share (from last October) a paraphrased message from Alfie Kohn’s book The Schools Our Children Deserve, which feels particularly timely as you begin seeing various pieces of evidence in PowerSchool, Google Classroom, and your child’s workbooks.

Here’s something to try at home: The next time your child shows you a grade on their latest test, project, or paper, pretend for a moment that the grade is the most important thing on the page or screen. (Spoiler: It’s not, but bear with me for this exercise.) Ask your child if they think their grade reflects one of the following:

Effort – Did they study hard for this test, and does their grade reflect that effort?

Ability – Do they believe their success is due to their natural talents or abilities?

Luck – Was it simply a fortunate day where the questions aligned with what they happened to study?

Difficulty – Was the task easy, and did many other students receive high grades too?

These four reasons cover most explanations your child might give for their grade. If it was a good grade, they might credit effort, ability, luck, or the task’s simplicity. If the grade was low, they might say they didn’t work hard enough, the test was too hard, the teacher asked unfair questions, or even, “I’ll never learn this, it’s too difficult.”

When educators are asked which explanation they prefer, nearly all advocate for effort. Regardless of educational philosophy, most educators strongly believe that success should come from preparation and hard work, not external factors. This belief is rooted in the idea of a growth mindset (Dweck, 2007). Similarly, when students don’t perform well, we like to think it’s due to a lack of preparation—something that can be addressed with time and effort.

The problem comes when the grade itself, rather than the learning process, is given priority. When grades are emphasized, children often start to attribute their results to how "smart" they are, rather than how hard they tried. As Kohn (1999) states, “The more emphasis teachers put on getting good grades, avoiding mistakes, and keeping up with others, the more students attribute poor performance to lack of ability.” When students feel they’ve failed because they’re not smart enough, they can begin a downward spiral, losing confidence and motivation.

That’s why it’s so important to focus on learning rather than grades. In real learning, the grade is not the goal. What students believe about their own abilities matters deeply. Both parents and educators play a vital role in keeping the focus on growth and understanding, rather than a number or letter on a page. So next time your child brings home a test or assignment, make sure to ask about more than just the grade.