Against Peer Grading

By John Warner. I never thought my 1970’s elementary classroom was a place of innovation, but I now recognize it as my first experience with peer grading. For us, it was the exchanging of spelling tests, where we would mark each other’s papers as the teacher read off the correct answers. I never minded this kind of peer grading because, at least in grade school, I was a pretty good student and I wasn’t afraid for a classmate to see how I’d done.[1] At the time, I thought it was a method for the teacher to cut down on her work, but I now recognize that the real benefit was to expose us to the correct answers in real time, a chance to reflect on our results and reinforce the correct answers. Read more...