Where the Grades of Wrath Are Stored

Dilemmas inherent in the pragmatism of letter grades crop up predictably in teaching practices and in the lives of students, especially gnarly in preK12 schools. Grades are like icebergs. The top of the letter grade iceberg sticks out of the ocean for all to see on transcripts, but the bulk of the cold reality hides beneath the waves.

Schools ask way too much of teachers and their grades. One can conceive of a student athlete struggling with calculus who works harder than anyone; a letter grade stands between them and the basketball court. Why is the teacher put in this position?

Hypothetically, another student might fail assignments early in an introductory biology course but ace them later, including an almost perfect score on a cumulative exam weighted a paltry 10% of the final grade. What do you do as a teacher?

And AI. Whoa. How do we grade students with AI in the picture?

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FICTION: Teaching a Civil War unit, the teacher assigns a final analytical essay. Two students submit sophisticated analyses comparing Southern secession documents to Brexit rhetoric. Their essays differ wording-wise but, oddly, share insights.

One student used ChatGPT—case closed. Is there anything further I can do for you? Well, the student didn’t bother to delete it. There it is, in the concluding paragraph.

The other student is genuinely intrigued by the topic and the writing is in the student's authentic speaking voice chiming, climbing, pleasantly rhyming in class conversations. Still, the analysis is sharper, more punchy than usual.

How could two students independently reach a very similar comparison and contrast of two complex events with semi-similar support? AI detection tools—don’t get Nick P. started!—say both essays are possibly AI-assisted. Possibly? Assisted? What does that even mean?

Neither essay contains factual Civil War errors or anachronisms. Actual secession documents carefully buried the slavery issue within states' rights arguments—Nikki Haley had a point—using terms like "domestic institutions" and "property rights."

Even the Confederate Constitution avoided using the word "slavery." AI might slip those terms in beyond detection and the student writer might not notice.

Sovereignty and self -determination sat at the core of both rhetorics. Brexit advocates talked about "taking back control" from Brussels, focusing on British parliamentary sovereignty. Confederate secession demanded states' rights and self-governance, claiming federal overreach threatened state sovereignty

England and the American South both argued for economic independence, though the contexts were very different. Arguments about EU regulations stifling British trade and economic potential and promises of better independent trade deals motivated Brexit. Claims that Northern economic policies, especially tariffs, unfairly disadvantaged Southern economies were persuasive.

A heavy emphasis on British exceptionalism and protecting British culture from European influence mirrored the strong focus on defending the "Southern way of life" and distinct cultural traditions.

Using the term “civil rights” as a feature of Civil War discourse would have been indicative of sloppy reading at a minimum, seriously sloppy thinking if more than an inadvertent slip or, perhaps, an AI hallucination.

Civil rights wouldn’t be a thing for several more years. Southern leaders would not have discussed “White supremacy,” at least not openly, in 1859, preferring terms like “natural order.” Neither paper talks obvious inaccuracies from the perspective of historical validity.

Both demonstrate course learning objectives. Higher-order thinking is evident in both arguments, strong analysis of slogans, smart interpretations of symbols.

Does using AI to reach deeper historical insights invalidate the learning? If one student used AI for brainstorming and another for writing, is that different? What if a strong student used AI to check the coherence of their work?

AP U.S. History Law Suit

FACT: In October 2024, a family in Hingham, Massachusetts, sued their high school to change their child's AP U.S. History grade after he was penalized for using AI in a class project. The core argument: Since the school had no explicit AI policy in its handbook, using AI for research and outlining shouldn't be considered cheating. The school counters that existing plagiarism policies and in-class guidelines prohibited such use.

Prohibit students?

Does prohibiting AI create inequity between students who think like AI and those who don't?

Are students who think like AI more affluent?

If human thinking agrees with the conclusion from AI output after discussion on an issue, in the end, where did the thinking take place?

Which conclusion is provisional, which actionable, if they disagree?

AI output is indeed derived from human-generated content—writings, code, conversations used in AIntraining. Isn’t human thinking also inherently derivative from other humans?

As a derivative of past human thinking, is synthetic output recycled or rearranged thought? Isn’t that true of human thinking? How does AI output become human insight? The distinction may not be whether something is recycled, but how that recycling occurs—through conscious, experiential integration versus statistical pattern matching and cut’n’paste?

Does AI enhance or replace historical thinking? Can AI think historically? What is the relationship between emotional apprehension and historical comprehension? Should we care? Why?

How can we assess and encourage thoughts original to the student, lightbulb moments, which are already old news among experts, already vectored in AI transformers?

What makes any synthesis original? Even groundbreaking human insights build on previous knowledge and second-hand experience. Do we diminish opportunities to develop human creativity when we ask AI to help us explore and reframe ideas? Why do we send learners to the library?

How do we tell a run-of-the-mill lightbulb moment for a high school sophomore from plagiarism? Is sophistication itself becoming suspect? Shakespeare borrowed plots and characters like a puppet master.

Digital Surveillance

Imagine this scenario.

A student notices the LMS shows 88/100 for their essay. Opening the feedback, the student notices the rubric actually totals 78. The teacher must have mistakenly entered the wrong total; rubric numbers are entered manually as the teacher reads each paper and are always correct.

The system’s grade book has already calculated a midterm grade. The student is attending a private college preparatory school on a partial scholarship which requires maintenance of a B average. The LMS keeps track of every view and interaction. The teacher can see the student has opened both total and rubric scores.

As grades accumulate in the registrar’s office, they merge in academic alchemy to distill their essence into a point, a grade point. Physically, this point in part determines whether and where a child will unpack a few bowls, a laptop, a suitcase or two, and blankets in a dorm room.

Back to the Future

Temporally, grades locate each learner in an equilibrated mindset reifying self-appropriate expectations (cf: Bowles and Gintis, 1976). We wind up with either A, B, C, and failure that communicates durable appropriate self-perceptions and predictable receptions by admitting committees. For too many learners, GPA is worthless, even harmful, in terms of academic capital.

How many children do we teach to embrace a mindset of academic failure?

Why do we cling to this system as a profession? How do we break free—Brexit!—to a better system that begins with a level playing field and then fosters the amazing diversity of human learning instead of seeking to make learning a cookie-cutter affair of compliance and just “doing” or “not doing” the assignments according to specs?

The answers are within reach, but the field of education right now has no rallying point beyond survival. I sense a pulling inward, a desire to fix my classroom, my school—but not school writ large as a promise of advocating for learners. Frustrated and demoralized, teachers have targets on their backs just for assigning thoughtful readings.

In the upcoming battle for the survival of a public school system, the vast majority of Americans want to build upon what we have, but piecemeal efforts and isolated teachers working alone to do right by students in their classrooms will not break through the system. Pushback against the conservative plan to disassemble public education must be radical, organized, and communicated to the public, which has been and continues to be sold a story.