| I'm not a fan of this. There are two theories for why school improves outcomes for students: 1. Human Capital Development Theory: School improves students. 2. Signalling Theory: School ranks students. Both predict that students with higher quality of certain traits (intelligence, self-discipline, social skills) that lead them to all kinds of good outcomes: higher income, donates more, votes more, less likely to experience crime, less likely to commit crime, more likely to marry, less likely to divorce, more friends, etc. My opinion is that's schools ability to achieve the above comes 20% from HCDT and 80% from Signalling. Reading, writing, and arithmetic make up nearly all of HCDT. In our society, it seems you're only supposed to acknowledge HCDT. From the perspective of HCDT, this policy of not grading work makes sense. Other feedback is more valuable, and has more room for nuance. The grade is redundant. But I do acknowledge that Signalling is part of the equation, and believe it provides the majority of the affect. From that perspective, this policy prevents ranking from happening. To make up for that, we will need to extend school even longer just to get the same amount of the long list of good outcomes. |