The Grading Podcast

In this episode, Sharona and Boz welcome back Chris Sarkonak to explore his powerful concept of the ungrading spectrum—a framework that maps the evolution of grading mindsets from traditional, compliance-driven systems to collaborative, student-centered approaches. Drawing on his classroom experience and professional journey, Chris unpacks how educators move from “this is how it’s always been done” toward systems that prioritize student agency, reflection, and ownership of learning. The conversation dives into the hidden inconsistencies of grading (including how the same student can receive vastly different results depending on grading structures), the role of student voice in creating more val...

Sharona and Boz are joined by Dr. Adriana Streifer, Associate Professor and Associate Director at the University of Virginia’s Center for Teaching Excellence, to explore how specifications grading, course design, and institutional culture intersect with the broader movement to rethink grading in higher education. Adriana shares how her early experiences teaching writing led her to question the fairness and meaning of traditional grading and ultimately adopt specifications grading as a way to better represent the complex, process-based nature of learning.

The conversation dives into the practical differences between specifications and standards-based grading, lessons learned from facilitating th...

In this episode, Sharona and Boz talk with Dr. Lindsay Masland about how meaningful grading reform starts not with a particular system, but with intentional choices grounded in values, context, and care for students. Lindsay shares her path from questioning her teaching practices through universal design and course redesign work to fully rethinking grades after a powerful experience with a student in crisis. Together, they explore how alternative grading can open the door to deeper conversations about what we actually want students to learn, how we want them to feel in our classes, and whether our current practices align...

In “Too Many A’s,” Sharona and Boz revisit a popular media narrative about “grade inflation,” starting with a Harvard-focused story that treats “too many A’s” as a crisis—while quietly mixing two incompatible purposes of grading: ranking/sorting and communicating learning. They argue that if grades are meant to report mastery, “more A’s” isn’t a scandal—it’s the goal (with the important caveat that the bar still matters). From there, they dissect a recent viral article claiming “easy A’s” harm students’ long-term outcomes, and they do what they teach: go to the original research, separate correlation from ca...

Grade 7 math teacher Gabriel Despatie (Ontario) shares what happened when he tried to “overlay” standards-based grading onto nine years of refined tests—and why he ultimately scrapped his assessments after realizing they were packed with filler that measured rounding, formatting, and test-taking more than the actual learning goals. Gabriel walks through the system that finally clicked: a weekly “Learning Carnival” where students work one standard at a time with three backwards-compatible performance levels (mild/medium/spicy), two questions per level, and unlimited retakes that count as mastery whenever they happen. The conversation dives into practical logistics (tracking sheets, retake flow, mana...

Chris Sarkonak—high school physics and math teacher in Brandon, Manitoba and a PhD student in educational assessment—joins Boz and Sharona to describe his winding journey from traditional grading to standards-based grading, back again, and ultimately toward a student-centered, skills-focused, largely ungraded approach shaped by COVID-era conferencing, Building Thinking Classrooms, and the “ungrading” ecosystem of ideas. Chris shares how removing itemized grades reduced competition and unlocked real collaboration, how he structures learning with labs-first experiences, vertical whiteboards, “note-making” instead of note-taking, and spaced, skills-based check-ins, and how students co-create a “What does a grade look like?” document to anchor end-of-te...

In this episode, Boz and Sharona explore how trauma-informed pedagogy and “teaching with kindness” intersect with alternative grading, especially through the often-overlooked impact of syllabus tone and classroom language. Sparked by Acacia Ackles’ “Teaching Through Trauma” post on the Grading for Growth blog and Cate Denial’s work on kinder syllabus design, they unpack how common “control” policies around devices, academic integrity, and participation can communicate suspicion and unintentionally amplify student anxiety. They connect key trauma-informed principles, such as safety, transparency, support, voice and choice, collaboration, and resilience, to familiar alternative grading practices like feedback loops, multiple opportunities to demonstrate lear...

Due to unexpected technical difficulties we were unable to record a new episode for this week. We will be back with new episodes next week! In the meantime, please enjoy this incredible conversation and deep conversation about alt grading in Physical Education, including the details! Join us as Sharona and Bosley talk about alt grading with Josh Ogilvie, a listener and a 22 year high school PE teacher in Canada. (Originally aired December 10, 2024).

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In this episode of The Grading Podcast, Boz and Sharona dig into a 2025 longitudinal study that tackles a surprisingly practical question: should we show students the numeric grade on an assignment, or give feedback without displaying the score? Using a well-controlled design, the research tracks both academic performance and emotional responses as grades are introduced, removed, and reintroduced alongside written comments. The results complicate a lot of common assumptions while also highlighting how quickly students adapt to whatever grading environment they’re in. Along the way, the conversation connects the findings to feedback quality, Control-Value Theory, and the bigger ta...

A new semester is days away—and Sharona is stepping back into teaching precalculus for the first time in about a decade, this time with today’s alternative grading practices (and one big new twist). Before the “math content” really ramps up, Sharona and Boz make the case for spending serious time up front on what actually makes the semester work: trust, collaboration, and shared understanding of how learning will be evaluated.

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Grading reform has been a decades-long effort—but in this episode, Sharona and Boz argue that it’s now urgent. They explore what’s changed: post-pandemic student disengagement and distrust that grades reflect real learning, the way AI has shifted the conversation from “cheating” to “purpose,” and growing institutional pressure to demonstrate educational value. They frame grading as the linchpin that can either support or sabotage other reforms, then name what’s standing in the way—misconceptions about reform (“no deadlines,” “lower standards”), backlash from top-down policies without training, and the uncomfortable truth that traditional grading can let systems avoid accountability for a...

In this episode, Sharona and Boz discuss the recent grading controversy at the University of Oklahoma and use it as a launching point to focus on why rubrics matter so much to grading integrity, consistency and student learning. They reflect on how loosely defined criteria invite subjectivity, create wildly different grading outcomes for the same work, and leave students guessing about what “counts” as quality.

Rather than debating the specific incident, they dissect the difference between scoring guides and true rubrics, the importance of clearly defined performance levels, and how rubric design shapes whether grades function as feed...

Happy New Year! We are taking a small break this week from releasing new episodes, so please enjoy our most popular episode from 2025. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode!

In this episode, Sharona and Bosley share some of the top line results of a direct comparison between traditional grading and alternative grading. In a tightly coordinated course with many instructors, sections and students, half of the sections used traditional grading and half used alternative grading. This is a fascinating dive into what does "traditional" grading mean, and how do those impacts show up...

Happy Holidays! We're taking the week off from recording, so enjoy this replay about visionary leadership!!

In this episode, Sharona and Boz interview Doug Wilson, principal of Avondale High School in Michigan, about his advice on implementing building-wide grading reform. This discussion touches on ways of being a visionary leader, how to move towards culture change around grades, and advice to administrators (and teachers!) on how to question our practices with an eye towards improving kids' learning. Join us for this fascinating conversation to move forward with grading reform.

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Dr. Stephanie Valentine (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) joins Sharona and Boz to tell the origin story behind TeachFront—a grading-and-feedback platform she and her students built after getting buried in spreadsheets trying to make standards-based / ungrading-style systems work at scale.

They dig into what shifted when grades stopped being “points to litigate” and became feedback for growth, what went wrong (and what finally worked) in those early semesters, and why most LMS gradebooks still force instructors to “hack” systems designed for averages. Stephanie explains how TeachFront supports iterative feedback, reassessments, flexible mastery scales (including specs-style checkboxes), and clearer stud...

What happens to grading when AI can do so much of what we’ve traditionally asked students to do by hand? In this episode, Boz and Sharona talk with educator, author, and podcaster Derek Bruff about his three-stage journey into mastery-based assessment, from early test corrections to coordinated mastery quizzes to rebuilding exams in a cryptography seminar—then zoom out to the upcoming Alternative Grading Institute at UVA, where faculty will redesign courses around specs, standards-based, and collaborative grading in response to pandemic-era lessons, public skepticism about higher ed, and the rise of generative AI.

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In this episode, Boz and Sharona take on a big question: What should we be doing to our courses, right now, in an AI-saturated world—without losing the human relationships that actually keep students in school?

Sharona shares her own urgency as she prepares to return to teaching precalculus for the first time in a decade, while hearing college students (including her own kids) question whether higher ed is “worth it” when AI can do so much of the procedural work. Together, she and Boz lay out five concrete steps instructors can use to rethink their courses immedi...

Happy Thanksgiving! We're on a break this week so enjoy this replay of episode 46!

On this episode we welcome back the "sportscaster" of Alternative Grading, Dr. Matt Townsley, to talk about his new book Extinguishing the Fires within Assessment and Grading Reform. As Alternative Grading practices grow and take shape throughout the United States, efforts to resist these reforms are also growing. This incredible new book offers practical guidance to navigating the complexities of transitioning to alternative grading architectures and how to address the seemingly inevitable pushback that many of us are now experiencing. Based on the...

In this episode, Sharona and Boz dive into a concept new to many educators — Teacher Assessment Identity — and explore how teachers’ beliefs, experiences, and professional contexts shape the way they design, interpret, and use assessments.

Sharona introduces the idea after hearing about new research connecting assessment practices to teacher identity, and then leads Boz through a live, on-air reflective interview designed to help him uncover his own “assessment identity.” Together, they model how teachers can ask deep reflective questions about the why behind their assessment choices — revealing that grading and assessment reform are inseparable parts of the same profess...

In this episode, Sharona and Boz follow up on episode 121 and sit down with Dr. Sharon Stranford, Professor of Biology at Pomona College, to explore her journey from traditional grading toward ungrading and collaborative grading in STEM. Sharon shares how her experiences as a first-generation college student, a long-time practitioner of just-in-time teaching, and a pandemic-era educator led her to reimagine how feedback, mastery, and motivation intersect in the science classroom.

She explains how she replaced numbers and letters with meaningful dialogue, feedback, and self-assessment, helping students shift from “What’s my grade?” to “What have I learned...

In this episode of The Grading Podcast, Sharona Krinsky and Robert “Boz” Bosley dive into what it means to co-create grading practices with students—especially in STEM disciplines where structure and sequence often seem incompatible with collaboration.

Sharona shares her plans to implement a collaborative grading model in her upcoming Precalculus course at Cal State LA, inspired by Sharon Stranford’s research on Fostering Student Agency and Motivation: Co-creation of Rubric and Self-Evaluation in an Ungraded Course. The hosts unpack what it means to let students become genuine partners in assessment while maintaining academic rigor and course coherenc...

In this episode of The Grading Podcast, Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley sit down with Dr. Wendy Smith, Director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Computer Education at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Wendy shares how her journey into alternative grading began long before the term even existed—rooted in her own struggles as a math student who learned deeply, but not always “on time.”

From those early experiences in the 1990s to her current work preparing future math teachers, Wendy reflects on how grading policies shape motivation and equity, and how she helps pre-service teachers design c...

n this episode, Sharona and Boz sit down with returning guest Emily Pitts Donahoe (University of Mississippi) and first-time guest Sarah Silverman (Goodwin University) to explore the complex intersection of neurodiversity and alternative grading. Drawing on their collaborative three-part Substack series, Emily and Sarah unpack how different grading structures—ungrading, specifications grading, labor-based grading, and collaborative grading—interact with the varied needs of neurodivergent students.

The conversation dives deep into the concept of “access friction”—the tension that arises when one group’s access needs conflict with another’s—and challenges the oversimplified idea that flexible grading is automatically...

In this episode of The Grading Podcast, Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley welcome Dr. Michael Palmer, the Barbara Fried Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Teaching Excellence and recipient of the Bob Pierleoni Spirit of POD Award. Together, they dive deep into the origins of the new Alternative Grading Institute being offered by the Center for Grading Reform, the “grading scheme anatomy” framework under development by Michael and his team, and what it really takes to redesign assessment practices that are evidence based and align with our values as instructors.

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In this episode, Boz and Sharona dig into the instant reactions that educators often have when they first hear about alternative grading. Inspired by Dr. David Clark’s recent Grading for Growth blog post titled “Kneejerk Reactions,” Boz and Sharona unpack the most common reflexive objections to grading reform and explore practical, compassionate ways to respond.

From “Retakes aren’t real world!” to “It might work for your students, but not mine,” they share stories and examples while dissecting how these quick defenses often mask deeper fears or misunderstandings about teaching, learning, and assessment. Along the way, they connect the...

What happens when we give students meaningful choices in their learning? In this episode, Sharona and Boz dive deep into the role of student choice, autonomy, and agency in both K–12 and higher education classrooms.

They start with a simple question: if nearly every school and district mission statement includes “lifelong learners,” how do our grading practices actually support—or undermine—that goal? From there, they explore how alternative grading practices can not only give students more options but also build genuine agency that empowers learners to set goals, take action, and connect their education to their lives.

In this episode, Sharona and Boz dive into the essential role of community in grading reform. They reflect on their own journeys—Boz beginning with a supportive colleague and PLCs in K-12, and Sharona starting out largely on her own in higher ed—and how those experiences shaped their perspectives. Together, they explore why building communities of practice is critical not only for getting started and avoiding burnout but also for ensuring sustainability and institutional change.

The conversation highlights:

In this week's episode, Sharona and Boz sit down with Marc Aronson, Dean of Academics at Cheshire Academy in Cheshire, CT. This fascinating conversations begins with grading what matters but goes into innovation ways of approaching honors classes, using authentic assessments in the form of final demonstrations of learning, and finding ways to use the external motivations of grades to grade things beyond discipline content and practices.

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In this episode, Sharona and Boz sit down with Jen Smielewski, a math teacher at Avondale High School. Jen works with Doug Wilson, the principal at Avondale High School who was a guest on episode 101 about visionary leadership. In this episode, Jen shares the "experience first, formalize later" methodology that the entire math department has adopted through the change to standards-based grading and under Doug's leadership.

From the adoption of Building Thinking Classrooms to the methods of daily assessment of common schoolwide standards, Jen provides detailed examples of the changes at Avondale and how they have unlocked...

In this episode, Sharona and Boz welcome Jeff Anderson back to the pod to talk about power, excellence, expertise, and how to work within grading structures that we are no longer comfortable with. This fascinating conversation touches on everything from analyzing the existing power structures within education and how our individual grading policies uphold or challenge those power structures to the difference between excellence and expertise. We discuss what we actually want our students to learn and know in our classes.

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In this episode, Sharona and Boz look at another common area where instructors get stuck when redesigning a course to use alternative grading - the fourth decision of the grading architecture: wrapping up into a final grade. From too many choices to the issues with complexity, Sharona and Boz breaks things down and provide concrete ideas when looking at that final part of the grading architecture.

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In this episode, Sharona and Boz speak with Camp (Dr. John Camp), the head of teaching and Learning at NEIA, the New England Innovation Academy. NEIA is an Independent day and boarding school in Massachusetts. NEIA's mission is to prepare the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams and shape. In this episode, Camp shares with Sharona and Boz how NEIA uses alternative grading practices to break out of the constrictions of traditional grading and support their core principles of innovation and entrepreneurship by constructing authentic learning both inside and outside of the classroom.

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Sharona sits down with MathFest 2025 attendees Drew Lewis, Jennifer Moorehouse, Lipika Deka, Jennifer Narang, and Cory Wilson to discuss what we heard on the ground at this year's conference. From people presenting their experiences to a variety of data and forward looking opportunities, Alt Grading is making the switch to mainstream!

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In this episode of The Grading Podcast, Sharona and Boz talk about some common reasons instructors get stuck during the process of redesigning a course. From looking again at the different parts of the course redesign cycle to exploring ways of breaking through roadblocks, join us as we take another look at the course redesign cycle. In particular, they talk about the importance of clearly defining the purpose of our course, and how that purpose impacts all aspects of your course design.

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In this episode, Sharona and Boz explore a recent article from EdWeek in which a middle school principal shares the motivations behind a switch to standards-based grading as well as the initial failures and eventual successes of that move. Join us as we talk about the tension between short term and long term results, the "why" of the switch to alternative grading practices, and the challenges with proper measurement both inside the classroom and outside of it.

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In this episode, Dr. Robert Talbert returns to the pod to reflect on how his six-week summer course in discrete math went. Robert talked about this course back on episode 87 when discussing changes he was making to this course due to the impact of AI. In this conversation, Sharona and Boz discuss how it went, how the various changes worked (or didn't) and what he might keep or change moving forward.

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In this episode, Sharona and Bosley explore the ideas from Malcolm Gladwell's iconic book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. During the discussion, they explore the key indicators of a tipping point and discuss how we as a community might try to intentionally move towards a tipping point into mass awareness and (hopefully) adoption.

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It's Summertime! And how to teachers and instructors often spend their summers? Why, reworking their courses, correct? In this episode, Sharona and Boz share their thoughts, ideas, and recommendations for working through the course redesign cycle and iteratively examining your course. Whether you are newer to alt grading or have been doing it a long time, this episode contains questions and ideas to work on your course for the upcoming school year!

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In this episode, Sharona and Boz recap some of the incredible things that happened at the 2025 Grading Conference. Highlights from the keynote speakers, student voices, and conversations around the "watercooler". This conference was an incredible capstone to a fantastic year for alternative grading.

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In this episode, Sharona and Bosley sit down for a conversation with Dr. Sean Michael Morris to talk about Critical Digital Pedagogy. What is it? How can we think critically about our grading practices? How do we think critically about AI and it's impact on our grading choices?

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The...