Opinion: A Case for End-of-Term Comments

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL

At the end of each term, students receive grades that are meant to reflect their academic performance, yet these evaluations often lack the explanation necessary to interpret them. Since comments are only provided at the midterm, the end-of-term grades can often seem unjustified. Paired with the intentionally obscure grading systems that prevent students from seeing their class averages before grades are released, term-end grades can often seem like a random ruling rather than a proper assessment. A lack of clarity leads students to see grades as inaccurate rather than understanding the rationale behind them. 

These unexplained discrepancies between midterm and final grades fundamentally undermine a purposeful Deerfield education. Instead of prioritizing the learning process, students are forced to reduce their performance to an arbitrary number, rather than being explicitly told the reason behind changing grades at a crucial checkpoint. This leads to mistrust and misunderstandings, widening the gap between teacher assessment and student performance. 

This issue becomes especially evident when grades or effort marks fluctuate between the midterm and the end of the term. The significance of a grade or effort mark fluctuation is not limited to declines; it’s arguably even more important for a student to understand why or how their grade or effort has improved so that students can be made aware of the conscious changes they can make to replicate improvements in the future. Without that explanation, students are left without a clear sense of what behaviors or strategies led to their progress. In the past two iterations of grade releases, I’ve noticed that my grade in some classes has improved without an explanation since the midterm, and after the initial wave of grace and relief, I’m also met with a sense of uncertainty. What did I improve on after the midterm? Was I more attentive during class discussions, warranting a higher participation grade? Did I do better in graded class discussions? While these behaviors may seem minor, they could warrant a higher effort grade in the eyes of the teacher. However, without explicit feedback detailing the reasons behind improvement, the student never learns what works and what doesn’t.  

This leads to the broader issue of grading transparency within Deerfield’s curriculum. Many of Deerfield’s courses intentionally obscure course grades from students, especially in the humanities. Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Anne Bruder states that this approach “makes students more invested in the risk-taking process that is becoming a better writer,” and helps avoid a “transactional or strategic tendency” in learning. She also notes that “every teacher has a grade book and every teacher should be able to have a conversation with any student about where they stand,” suggesting that conversations can help resolve confusion. 

However, being able to have a conversation with a teacher does not substitute for providing context at the moment grades are released. While it is important for students to have conversations during the term, it is equally important to provide explanations for grade changes when or before students see them. When grades are released during breaks, confusion cannot be immediately addressed, and by the time conversations occur later, that confusion may have already undermined the trust between teacher and student.

The other issue with substituting comments with teacher-student conversations is the staggered nature through which students would be receiving their feedback. Aside from the obvious logistical issues with students each having separate conversations with teachers after any instance of confusion, speaking with teachers after term-end grades contradicts the very reasoning behind a pivotal policy change years ago that moved the release of comments from the term-end to midterms. Regarding midterm grades and comments, Dr. Bruder stated, “We disaggregated them to make students actually attend to the growth-oriented feedback before they think about the grade.” By this logic, students should be given constructive, growth-oriented feedback before numerical grades are released during breaks after the term to ensure that they attend to academic growth before considering numbers. Structured midterm and term-end comments can provide explicit constructive feedback at both junctions, helping students understand reasons for upward or downward trends, allowing students to maintain a healthy relationship with their grades, seeing them as valuable metrics for assessment rather than punitive and arbitrary numbers. 

At the same time, requiring full comments for every student may not be realistic, as it would significantly increase teachers’ workload and potentially reduce the quality of their feedback. A more practical solution would be to require comments only when there are notable changes—such as shifts in participation grades or numerical changes of two and more points. In these cases, brief explanations attributing the change to performances on certain assignments or assessments would provide much more clarity while making the workload manageable for teachers. This approach would also create a stronger foundation for the student-teacher conversations that the school encourages, making those discussions more productive and focused.

Dr. Bruder said, “One of the most important things to learn at Deerfield is that you're driving the bus of your learning.” While student ownership is important, there should be an additional step in between the release of grades and those conversations. Providing students with clearer feedback at the moment would help ensure that grades support, rather than obscure, the learning process.