Grading to Standards

Recently I have been thinking, is grading to standards fair and equitable?

We talk about standards all of the time. We have set standards from the Common Core Frameworks, standards of performance level, and standards on our rubrics. For the most part, standards make sense. Standards give us common goals for students to provide an equitable education. Of course, it's not fair for one school to have lower standards than another school. This is all common knowledge. But how do standards, our A-F grading system, and intrinsic motivation to learn and grow fit together?

For some of my students, it all makes sense. Grades show how well you are meeting the standards, but your focus is to learn as much as you can and grow as a person. However, is this how most of our students think? Are our students understanding of this dynamic and still intrinsically invested in learning?

If this system worked cohesively, or rather, was executed properly, would we still hear students say "is this graded?" or "how do I get an A?" or "is there extra credit?" in our classes? Or, an even bigger question might be, would the students still complete assignments and participate in class if we were not assigning them an A-F grade? Would students intrinsically want to learn and be inspired to learn more?

As teachers, I know that we all went into this profession thinking the same thing: "I want to make a difference. I want to inspire students and make the world a better place." But how do we actually do that? How do we truly inspire students? How do we develop intrinsically motivated students? How do we instill a genuine sense of inquiry and curiosity within our student? How do foster a safe and meaningful collaborative environment?

These have all been questions on my mind ever since I started thinking about teaching. How do I make my intentions a reality? And I truly think that there is no better profession that speaks to the saying "it's easier said than done" than teaching does. However, what can we start to do or experiment with to foster our students' desire to learn in our classrooms and the outside world?

This video below speaks to this idea, but in the working world. I've been thinking about how I might apply these concepts within the classroom. What do you folks think?

Workplace Motivation