A C is average!

I remember when I was in middle school I had a math teacher who, when returning our tests, would always say "a C is average." However, as I went to a competitive prep school we all, a, considered ourselves significantly above average despite the mathematical impossibility, and b, experienced at least some pressure at home to get the illustrious straight A’s. As a middle schooler I found Mr. S's repetition of this phrase both annoying and completely lacking in understanding of what "it's like." Didn't he know what would happen if I came home with a C in math?!?

Now I, as a teacher myself, have actually said this phrase in a parent teacher conference. Because it's true! A C is average. However, in many of the schools in which I have spent my career both as a student and a teacher, C's are unacceptable to students and families. I even worked in one school where I actually was not allowed to give a child a C without first consulting the principal.

This leads me to think about what grades actually represent. To me, an A means deep understanding that enables a student to actually use their knowledge. But I'm caught between this belief and the reality that grades have to function in a system that treats them as simple rankings. The whole grading structure feels misaligned with how I actually think about learning.

In "The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture," Shepard (2000) explored the idea of whether learning is the process or the product of education. I firmly fall into the category that learning is a process. However this creates issues when we want to impose grades onto this understanding of learning. Grades date back to a time when culturally, we believed in a behaviorist version of education where school was intended to deliver bits of information to students, and students were then tested on how well they *remembered* the information. However, in more recent years, our understanding of education has evolved; our understanding of assessment has not (Shepard, 2000, p. 4). Selwyn (2011) argues that we must consider not just technological tools but the social contexts and practices surrounding them. This applies perfectly to assessment: we've added digital tools like online testing platforms, but we haven't changed the underlying social expectations or institutional structures that still demand quick, comparable grades.

So I find myself in this weird position where I'm handing out C's that genuinely represent solid, meaningful learning, knowing full well that students and families will interpret them as failure. The very grade that represents "you're doing fine, you're learning, you're average in the best sense of the word" instead becomes a source of shame and anxiety. Every time I say "a C is average," I'm not just stating a mathematical fact, I'm pushing back against a culture that has made average unacceptable, even though most of us, by definition, are average at most things most of the time.

References

Selwyn, N. (2011). What do we mean by 'education' and 'technology'? In Education and technology: Key issues and debates (pp. 1-19). Bloomsbury Publishing.

Shepard, L. A. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.