Grading Notes Is Unfair

Teachers Should Not Have the Right To Grade Students’ Notes

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

A common hot topic in the classroom is whether teachers should have the authority to grade their students on required notes rather than simply giving them a completion grade. When teachers grade students on their note taking abilities, it results in inconsistent grading, inequity and fixed mindsets within students. When students feel unappreciated for their hard work, they can be discouraged in the long run, leading to a lack of respect and trust between the student and the teacher.

All teachers have different grading policies, which can make it difficult to dictate how many notes need to be taken and what the notes need to include. For example, say one student has five pages of notes on the entire chapter and earns a B, while another student has three pages of notes but focuses entirely on one topic in the chapter only and earns an A. This can be misleading and unfair to students because all retain information differently. How is it fair for the teacher to decide what is good enough for someone's personal notes?

Many students may demonstrate loads of skill on tests or quizzes but lack effort or information in their notes. This does not necessarily mean the student is struggling to understand. Various upper school students themselves take notes in different formats, whether it is Cornell notes, strictly key terms, definitions or just the summary in the back of the book. The point of note taking is to actively engage with the content being read or lectured, acting as a tool to process new information. This means almost every student's notes will be different. Some students will need to write more notes on one topic than others.

When teachers focus solely on the information in a student's notes, even though the student is doing fantastic in the class, students can easily become discouraged and unmotivated. This can cause fixed mindsets in which students believe their grades define them and cannot be improved. In the long run, if students fail a class because a teacher is being picky with their notes, this will negatively reflect on the teachers and their abilities to teach their students.

Overall, every student is at different levels when it comes to understanding specific topics. It is unfair for teachers to dictate and grade students based on the amount of information written in  their notes. There are various ways to take notes, and while some students may have less than others, that could simply mean they just retain information better with their own strategies.