Canadian Assessment Centre

I used to do all three of these.

1. Aggressive late penalties. 🫣

I took 10% off per day an assignment was late.
After four days? It became a zero.
I honestly chose four days because I had four different overhead projector marker colors. There wasn’t any research behind it.

2. Using zeros as a weapon. 🫣

I truly believed a zero would motivate students to be more responsible.
It didn’t.
It mostly created conflict between me, my students, and their parents.

3. An obsession with Scantron tests. 🫣

I loved getting those bubble sheets marked as quickly as possible.
Some Fridays, I’d race to the office before my colleagues just so I could finish grading first.
Looking back, I wasn’t focused on learning.
I was focused on efficiency.

I don’t share this because I’m ashamed of how I used to teach.

I share it because it’s proof that when we know better, we do better.

How many of these are still common in your school?

Two students.

Same assessment.

Same percentage.

But do they actually have the same understanding?

That’s one of the assumptions we rarely stop to question.

A percentage summarizes performance, but it doesn’t necessarily describe learning. Two students can earn the same score for very different reasons, and those differences matter if our goal is to support learning, not just report it.

We need to ask better questions about percentage grades.

👇 What do you think? Can the same percentage represent two very different learning profiles?

Many assessment conversations fall apart because we’re using the same words to mean different things.

A task can be difficult because it requires lots of time, repetition, or effort.

A task is complex because it requires deeper thinking.
Those aren’t the same thing.

When we confuse difficulty with complexity, we risk creating tasks that demand more work without actually demanding more learning.

That’s an important distinction for anyone designing assessments that truly reflect student understanding.

Some of the most common grading practices are also the hardest to defend when we ask one simple question:

Do they actually improve learning?

That’s why we challenge ideas like giving zeroes to “teach accountability”, grading behavior, and using grades as punishment.

Not because we want to lower standards.

Because we want grades to communicate learning as accurately as possible.

Which one of these grading opinions do you agree with the least? 👇

Most teachers believe a zero creates accountability.

But think about it from the student’s perspective.

If they can still pass the class...

and still keep a B...

then the assignment you gave them just became optional.

The zero didn’t hold them accountable.

It actually let them off the hook.

If we want students to take learning seriously, the question isn’t: “Should we give a zero?”

It’s: “What actually creates accountability for learning?”