What Students Say About Classroom Assessment and Grades
October 01, 2026
In a two-state survey, students report anxiety over the lack of clarity about their performance
“Tests are so stressful for me, and they’re not an accurate way to see what I know.”
When a high school student typed those words into an optional survey comment box, she joined 694 others who chose to speak up about classroom assessment and grading. No extra credit was offered, no pressure applied, no grade boost promised. Yet these middle and high school students wrote an average of 36 words each (nearly 25,000 words total) because they had something urgent to say about how we measure their learning.
For school leaders navigating assessment reform, student mental health concerns and college readiness pressures, these student voices offer something we rarely gather: direct insight from the stakeholders for whom the stakes are greatest. As founder of GradingRx® Educational Consulting, a firm that partners with K–12 districts on grading improvements, I administered a survey collaboratively with district leadership across two northeastern U.S. school districts. We expected data. What we got was a masterclass in what students actually experience in our classrooms.
Clarity Students Crave
Walk into any high school counseling office, and you’ll hear the refrain: Students need clear expectations. What our research reveals is that students themselves understand this better than we might assume. When asked about grading systems, students consistently pointed to letter grades not as arbitrary symbols but as sources of clarity and motivation.
“The A, B, C, D, F grading is my favorite grading,” one student explained. “It makes it less confusing and makes me motivated to get work done.” Another student articulated the college connection with striking practicality: “I like the letter grades we have now, and it’s a lot easier to understand. If we get a B, it is still considered a good grade, and if we change to another grading format, I feel colleges won’t understand.”
This finding carries particular weight as school districts experiment with standards-based grading, narrative assessments and alternative reporting systems. Students are telling us that familiarity, universal understanding and alignment with future academic expectations matter deeply to them.
The implications for school leaders are significant. Before implementing wholesale changes to grading systems, consider engaging students in the conversation. The universal language of letter grades, for all its limitations, remains students’ preferred measurement tool.
The Weight Dilemma
No theme emerged more powerfully than students’ acute awareness of how heavily assessments factor into their grades — and their concerns about the fairness of that weight.
“I don’t like how assessments ruin a student’s grade,” one student wrote with clear frustration. “If they are a good student, do all their classwork on time and get 100s on it and then take one test and it brings their grades down a lot. I don’t think this is fair because some people aren’t good at taking tests.” Another echoed this sentiment: “Tests should not be the only thing in the grading system or lower the percent of your grade. It creates a lot of stress because of the monumental impact it has on your grades.”
What students are describing isn’t simply test anxiety. They’re articulating a fundamental question about what we’re measuring and how we’re measuring it. When a single test can dramatically override weeks or months of demonstrated daily learning, students perceive an imbalance that feels both unfair and inaccurate.
For school leaders, this is a chance to examine grading policies with fresh eyes. The research on assessment for learning has long suggested that assessments used primarily for feedback, rather than as high-stakes grade determinations, can enhance student motivation and reduce anxiety while improving learning outcomes.
When They Don’t Align
Students identified another critical issue: the disconnect between what teachers teach and what assessments measure. “Sometimes the things we study don’t match up with the actual test. I took a test and focused on what I was told was going to be on it, but I still got many questions wrong. I think this isn’t only my fault, but this happens more times than you think.”
This misalignment creates a cascade of problems. Students report studying the “wrong” material, not because they’re inattentive but because the instructional emphasis doesn’t match the assessment focus. The result is predictable: assessment errors, lowered grades, increased test anxiety, and mounting school stress. Students feel pressured to avoid even minor mistakes to maintain high grades, which amplifies rather than alleviates their stress.
School leaders can address this through professional learning communities focused on assessment design, peer review of major assessments before administration and shared development of common assessments across sections of the same course.
When students can trust that studying the material emphasized in class will prepare them for assessments, their anxiety decreases and their sense of fairness increases. Alignment between instruction and assessment is among the strongest predictors of students’ sense of fairness — stronger even than the grades themselves.
Prevailing Tension
Students repeatedly expressed a desire for effort, responsibility and work ethic to factor into their grades alongside achievement.
“It shouldn’t only be based off what grades you get on tests. It should be based off the work effort you put in and also how much you learn and improve,” one student argued. Another suggested, “I feel that assessments should only be for the teachers to see students’ progress and shouldn’t go towards their grades, but rather how well the lesson was taught by that particular teacher.”
This creates a complex position for school leaders. Students are asking for recognition of factors beyond pure achievement, yet our research consistently shows that mixing academic and behavioral factors in grades diminishes the very clarity students also prioritized.
Instead of rejecting this student input, the path forward relies on finding creative ways to honor both clarity and comprehensiveness. Some districts, such as the Bethlehem Area Schools in Pennsylvania, have successfully implemented dual-reporting systems that maintain separate marks for academic achievement and work habits. This multiple-grades assessment approach preserves grade clarity while acknowledging the very real student behaviors that contribute to learning success. It is, ultimately, a structural answer to the question this work keeps surfacing: What are we actually measuring, and does it matter?
The answer, it turns out, comes from the students themselves — and for school leaders, it points directly to action. (See sidebar.)
Next Assessments
The students who shared their perspectives weren’t complaining for the sake of complaining. They were offering a gift: their honest experience with measurement systems we design and implement. Students want to succeed. They want grading systems that help them understand their progress and prepare for their futures, and that feel operationally fair. Especially at the secondary level, students are capable of articulating what works and what doesn’t, often with remarkable precision.
By creating space for students to share these insights and by taking their feedback seriously, we don’t diminish our professional expertise. Instead, we enhance it with ground-level intelligence that gets us closer to measuring what actually matters in educating young people. The path to better assessment and grading practices runs directly through the classrooms where students learn. It’s time we asked them what they see along the way.
Laura Link is an associate professor of teaching and leadership and director of the Master of Science in Teaching and Leadership program at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, N.D.
Author
Bethlehem’s Report Card Reform Fueled by Stakeholder Input
By Maureen P. Leeson
When our schools shifted to a pass/fail grading system in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the move prompted deep questions from the community about what grades truly represent and what assessments measure about student performance.
At the recommendation of a team of teacher leaders and in partnership with researcher Laura Link of GradingRx, the Bethlehem Area School District, which serves 12,700 students in the Lehigh Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, launched a comprehensive stakeholder survey of teachers, students, leaders and parents to evaluate perceptions of our districtwide grading policies and practices.
Of 6,984 responses to the September 2021 survey, an impressive 5,317 came from students. Beyond the achievement that determines grades, students said the most valuable purpose of assessment was feedback, which helps them see their progress, catch and correct errors, and spot where they were struggling. Grades, they said, should tell them and their parents how they are doing in school.
The students commented that homework causes “too much stress,” especially because of the large amount being assigned that involved little teacher review.
At the high school level, students equated grading practices with their poor mental health. Multiple students expressed that more intentional content review from teachers and multiple opportunities to assess their learning would bring about a sense of fairness, diminished stress and a better outlook toward school. “The teacher should at least go over what you got wrong,” several students commented. One stated: “School is about learning, not about points.” Many students called for an increased focus on learning rather than tests and quizzes.
A Refined System
Guided by this feedback, the Bethlehem district created a Purpose of Grading statement. During the 2022-23 school year, we piloted a multiple-grades report card system that reported students’ noncognitive skills (work habits) separately from their achievement grades in 6th- and 9th-grade science and social studies courses.
Throughout the pilot, the district collected feedback from stakeholders. In a student focus group, the majority of students stated the pilot made their learning “more personalized.” Students said they now “know what they need to work on to improve,” “have improved study habits” and are “more engaged in class.” Students pointed to teachers “taking feedback more seriously” by offering verbal and written comments.
Other students’ comments guided the district’s refinement of procedures. Some students stated they felt a particular assessment was administered too frequently, which prompted administrators to make adjustments.
After the pilot’s first semester, the district surveyed parents, students and teachers about the multiple-grades report card. The majority of students said the new version provided a more accurate description of their academic performance, a more accurate description of their classroom work habits, greater clarity on their academic knowledge and skills, greater clarity on their noncognitive skills of class engagement and responsibility, and more useful feedback to inform students and parents.
Buoyed by the continuous stakeholder feedback, we felt confident scaling the multiple-grades report card to all courses in grades 6–12 in 2023-24.
We continue to refine grading routines and assessment procedures. Most recently, a student shared he was spending more time reflecting on his noncognitive skills of engagement and responsibility, which is supporting him to strive for the highest grade. Another student pointed to a renewed understanding of the learning process: “I am actively listening and do all my classwork and homework because I know it’s going to help me more on the test.”
Maureen Leeson is assistant superintendent and chief academic officer in the Bethlehem Area School District in Bethlehem, Pa.
From Student Voice to Administrator Action
Action 1: Create regular mechanisms for gathering student voice.
Establish standing committees with student representatives from various grade levels and achievement profiles to review assessment policies quarterly. This isn’t about letting students design grading systems but ensuring their perspectives inform decisions. When students see their feedback translated into tangible changes, they become partners in improving school culture.
A recent study by Ray Mitic, an assistant professor at William & Mary, and I, published in Assessment in Education, demonstrates that when multiple voices, including those of students, contribute to policy development, resulting practices achieve higher perceived fairness and better alignment with diverse needs.
Action 2: Prioritize assessment literacy in professional development.
When teachers understand formative assessment practices and know how to use assessments as feedback tools before grading, students benefit from reduced anxiety and improved learning. Invest in ongoing professional learning that helps teachers develop clear rubrics, communicate expectations transparently, and align assessments with instruction. This might include collaborative sessions where teachers share assessment strategies, peer review of major tests before administration or book studies focused on assessment for learning practices.
The goal is ensuring every teacher views assessment as a tool for enhancing learning, not merely measuring it.
Action 3: Examine grading policies through dual lenses.
Students are telling us that both clarity and fairness matter. Letter grades provide clarity and motivational value, but assessment weights and misalignments can undermine fairness. Work with teacher leaders to audit current grading policies and strike a balance that honors both principles. Are semester exams weighted so heavily that they overshadow months of demonstrated learning? Do grading categories make sense to students and accurately reflect what we value?
These conversations should involve teachers, students and parents to ensure multiple perspectives shape final decisions.
Action 4: Recognize the mental health dimensions of assessment.
Students explicitly connected testing pressure to stress and anxiety. As schools increasingly prioritize student well-being, assessment practices must be part of that conversation. When students report that “tests create a lot of stress because of the monumental impact it has on [our] grades,” they’re describing their lived experience.
Consider how classroom assessment schedules might be coordinated to avoid overwhelming students with multiple high-stakes tests in short periods of time. Explore whether formative assessments can play larger roles in providing feedback while reducing the stakes of any single summative assessment.
Partner with counselors and mental health staff to identify students experiencing assessment-related anxiety and provide appropriate support. Consider implementing “assessment calendars” to limit the number of major tests students face weekly, coordinating project due dates across departments and building buffer days around significant assessments.
— Laura Link
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement