What Grades Taught Me About Student Risk-Taking
I spent 20 years teaching high school chemistry. It wasn't until my last five or six years in the classroom that I began to realize something that changed the way I thought about assessment, grading, and ultimately, student success.
My students were avoiding risks and challenges because they were so focused on protecting the perfect grade. The goal was often not learning. The goal was 100. And I had to start asking myself an uncomfortable question:
Was my grading system helping students learn—or teaching them that taking a risk wasn't worth it?
It Started With Standards-Based Instruction
My shift began when I started thinking more intentionally about standards-based instruction and assessment. I had to identify what I wanted all students to learn and what I wanted most students to be able to do.
As I began creating assessments tied more directly to those standards, I noticed something about my own tests. I was asking students to demonstrate the same knowledge over and over again. There were repetitive problems. Similar questions. Multiple opportunities for students to prove that they understood the concept.
At first, I told myself that I was giving students more opportunities to demonstrate their learning. But eventually, I had to be more honest. I wasn't necessarily giving them more opportunities to learn. I was asking them to do repetitive work so that I could feel confident validating what they already knew.
And that led me to another question: Why did I need a student to demonstrate the same skill three or four times if they had already demonstrated that they understood it? That was one of the first times I really began examining the why behind my assessments. And honestly, there is a part of me that feels a little embarrassed admitting that it took me so long.
For potentially 15 years, I created assessments without doing enough reflection about why I was asking students to do what I was asking them to do. I'm grateful that I eventually had the opportunity to question my practices before I left the classroom.
I Realized Points Were Not as Objective as I Thought
The next realization was even more uncomfortable. My harder questions were worth more points. That seemed logical to me at the time. Harder question? More points. But as I continued developing standards-based assessments, I realized something important. I didn't actually expect every student to be able to answer those more challenging questions.
So why were those questions carrying so much weight in their grades?
If I had identified the foundational knowledge and skills that I wanted every student to learn, shouldn't demonstrating that knowledge be enough to show that a student had met the standard? That made me question something I had always assumed: Assigning points wasn't nearly as objective as I thought it was.
I was deciding how many points a question was worth. That meant I was making subjective decisions about what knowledge mattered more.
A test that I had once considered an objective measurement of student learning was, in many ways, influenced by my own assumptions. So my assessments began to change. Instead of making the hardest questions worth the most points, I started thinking about levels of understanding. If a student demonstrated the foundational knowledge and skills I expected them to learn, they had met the standard. If they demonstrated a deeper level of understanding, they could move beyond that.
Eventually, I developed a four-point scale. My assessments focused on three levels:
Basic understanding
Standard understanding
Exemplary understanding
Students who demonstrated the standard level of knowledge earned a 3. Students who demonstrated learning beyond that could earn a 4. My assessments became shorter. I removed many of the traditional right-or-wrong questions, including true/false and multiple-choice questions, because they often didn't tell me enough about what a student actually understood. I wanted evidence of thinking. Not just evidence that a student had guessed correctly.
What Does a 4 Really Mean?
As my assessments evolved, I began noticing something else. Students were often working toward a particular grade rather than working toward deeper learning. That observation wasn't new. Educators have known for a long time that grades influence student motivation. But it caused me to start asking different questions. Why were some students comfortable demonstrating only a basic level of understanding? Why were some students determined to earn the highest possible score? And perhaps most importantly: What was the real difference between demonstrating standard knowledge and demonstrating exemplary understanding?
In the standards-based framework I was using, exemplary meant going beyond what had been instructed. For a long time, I thought that simply meant giving students harder questions. But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized that wasn't necessarily true. Many of my "harder" questions were still directly connected to the instruction students had received. I didn't want to create increasingly difficult questions simply to separate students from one another. And I didn't think a 4 should simply mean that a student got every question right.
My Top Students Didn't Always Want the Challenge
I began defining what students needed to demonstrate to show standard-level understanding. If students could demonstrate that understanding through their work in class, activities, and conversations, I gave them a choice. They could take the traditional assessment. Or they could challenge themselves through an advanced activity, exploration, or alternative assessment. Many of my top students chose the paper-and-pencil assessment.
I was surprised and started asking why. One of the alternative assessments I created was a breakout box activity. It required students to apply their knowledge in a completely different way. And something interesting happened. My middle-level students started to excel. Students who weren't always the highest performers on traditional paper-and-pencil assessments were willing to experiment, problem-solve, collaborate, and persist through something unfamiliar. While my highest-achieving students were stepping away from the challenge.
That observation raised even more questions. Why were some students willing to try something unfamiliar while others weren't? Why were students who had consistently earned high grades choosing the safer option? The answer began to make more sense when I learned about the zones of comfort.
The Comfort Zone Looks Different for Every Student
The more I learned about comfort, challenge, and panic, the more I began to see my classroom differently. For many of my highest-achieving students, a paper-and-pencil assessment was firmly inside their comfort zone. They knew how to succeed there. They knew what was expected.
And most importantly, they were confident they could earn the grade they wanted.
For some of my other students, traditional assessments were not comfortable.
The alternative activities, however, gave them opportunities to demonstrate their strengths in ways that traditional tests didn't always allow. I began to realize that challenge is not the same for every student. A difficult chemistry problem might be a challenge for one student and completely comfortable for another. A collaborative breakout activity might feel uncomfortable and risky for a student who excels on traditional tests. And this led me to what may have been the most important realization of my teaching career: My top students weren't necessarily avoiding the challenge because they couldn't do it. They were avoiding it because there was a risk involved. The paper-and-pencil assessment gave them something the alternative assessment couldn't guarantee. A predictable path to a 4.
What Happens When Students Aren't Penalized for Taking a Risk?
So I made a change. I removed the grade penalty for trying. Students could take on an alternative challenge without risking the grade they had already earned by demonstrating standard-level understanding. And slowly, something began to change. More of my highest-achieving students were willing to step outside their comfort zones. Not immediately. They had to learn to trust me.
They had spent years in an education system where grades mattered. GPAs mattered. Class rank mattered. Taking a risk when you have a 100 to protect can feel like a bad decision. Even when I told students they wouldn't be penalized, it took time for them to believe me. But eventually, they began to try. And that was the point. I didn't want students to avoid challenges because the possibility of failure might lower their grade. I wanted them to develop confidence in trying something they hadn't already mastered.
What Grades Taught Me About Student Risk-Taking
Looking back, I believe some of my most meaningful teaching happened during those final five years. Not because I suddenly became a better chemistry teacher.
But because I started asking why. Why was I assessing students this way? Why were some questions worth more points than others? Why were students so focused on earning a particular grade? Why were some students willing to take risks while others avoided them? And what was my grading system teaching students about success?
I began to see that when students become overly focused on protecting a grade, they can become less willing to try something unfamiliar. They choose what they know they can do. They stay where success feels predictable. And sometimes, the students we call our highest achievers may be the ones most afraid to risk not being perfect. I don't believe we should make learning easier. But I do believe we need to think carefully about what we are asking students to do when we tell them to take risks while simultaneously attaching penalties to failure.
If we want students to become confident problem-solvers, creative thinkers, and people willing to step into the unknown, they need opportunities to practice those skills. That means giving them room to try. Room to struggle. Room to make mistakes. And sometimes, room to discover that they are capable of more than they thought.
For me, that was the biggest lesson grades ever taught me. The goal shouldn't be to create a system where only some students can succeed. The goal should be to create learning environments where students can build knowledge and the confidence to challenge themselves. Because a student who learns to protect a perfect score may get very good at school. But a student who learns that they can take a risk, make a mistake, and keep going? That student may be learning something far more valuable.
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