NURS 766 Week 6 Personal Philosophy of Grading Paper Example

A Full and Fair Measure: A Nurse Educator's Personal Philosophy of Grading in a Prelicensure Program

A Decision That Tested Me

Two years ago, a student in my adult health course finished the term with a final average of 76.4%. Our program requires 77% to pass a nursing course. She had attended every class, sought help weekly and improved on every exam, and she asked whether I could round her grade. I did not. The decision was right, I think, but it was not easy, and it made me ask what I believe a grade is for. This paper is my answer.

My philosophy in one sentence is this: a grade in a nursing course is a public statement that a student has met the standards patients depend on, so it must report achievement honestly, by standards fixed in advance, while the teaching that surrounds it does everything possible to help students reach those standards.

What a Grade Means in Nursing

McDonald (2018) describes grades as serving several audiences at once: students, who use them to judge their progress; faculty, who use them to make progression decisions; and others outside the course, who read them as evidence of competence. In most disciplines, an inflated grade misleads a future employer. In nursing, it can mislead a patient's safety. A passing grade in adult health says that the student can recognize a patient deteriorating from heart failure and act, and the next course, the licensure exam and eventually a patient will rely on that statement.

Ruegg and Keith (2026) describe grade inflation as an overdue crisis in nursing education with real consequences, and the concern is not only theirs. Guskey (2015) argues more broadly that grading practices often mix achievement with behavior, effort and compliance, so that a single grade can mean very different things from one teacher to the next. Both arguments point to the same conclusion: a grade is useful only if its meaning is clear and stable.

Commitment 1: Grades Report Achievement of Objectives

Every graded element in my course is tied to a course objective, and the weight of each element reflects the importance of what it measures. Exams measure most of the knowledge and clinical judgment objectives; the teaching plan and the case presentation measure the objectives that exams cannot. Nothing in the grade measures attendance, participation for its own sake or punctuality. Those matter, but they are not what the grade claims to report.

Commitment 2: Standards Are Fixed in Advance

The passing standard, the weight of each assignment and the rubric for each written assignment are published on the first day. I do not curve, round or add extra credit at the end of the term, because each of those changes the standard after students have worked toward it. The student who asked me to round her grade deserved the same standard as every student who earned 77% and every student who fell short by a point and did not ask. Fixed standards are also why every rubric in my course is published with its assignment; if I wrote it while grading, my reaction to the first few submissions would become the standard.

Commitment 3: Effort and Professional Behavior Are Reported Separately

Effort is real and deserves recognition. I report it, along with professional behavior, in narrative feedback and in the professional conduct evaluation our program keeps for each student. Keeping it out of the grade does not ignore it; it gives it its own voice. Guskey (2015) recommends exactly this separation, reporting achievement, process and progress as distinct marks, because combining them hides what each says. The student who improved on every exam received a written evaluation that said so, and that evaluation went with her into her repeat of the course.

Commitment 4: Feedback Comes Before Grades Count

A fair grading system gives students chances to learn from mistakes before those mistakes are counted. In my course, each exam is preceded by an ungraded practice case, each written assignment has a draft that receives rubric feedback and each exam is followed by a supervised review. Enslein et al. (2023) piloted a modified definitional grading system in a prelicensure didactic course with 84 students and found improved individual and overall exam scores, though no significant change in final course grades; students described greater motivation and diligence, along with stress and a sharper awareness of their weaknesses. I have not adopted definitional grading, but the study supports the idea behind this commitment: students work harder toward a standard when they know exactly what it is and have chances to reach it.

Commitment 5: Partial Credit Where Knowledge Is Partial

Some items measure a single fact; others measure several related judgments. Scoring a case item all-or-nothing treats a student who recognized four of five warning signs the same as one who recognized none, which misreports what the student knows. I use partial credit on multiple-response and case items. The concern that partial credit inflates grades has been tested: when one program moved its unit exams to partial credit, repeating students scored higher, but not so much higher that they pulled ahead of their peers, which points to finer measurement rather than easier grading (Norton & Yockey, 2026). Partial credit is not leniency; it is more accurate measurement.

The Hardest Case

Fairness also means not penalizing students for circumstances that do not affect what they know. When students miss an exam for documented reasons, they take it within three days with a new item order, and I do not deduct points. Bultas et al. (2024) reviewed 156 exams taken late and saw scores no higher than those same students earned on time or than the class averaged, which removed my worry that make-up exams give students an advantage.

The hardest case remains the student who tries hard and falls just short. My philosophy says the grade must report the shortfall. My faith says the student is more than the grade. These do not conflict as much as they seem to. Honest grading protects the patients that student will one day care for and protects the meaning of the degree that student will one day earn. Kindness belongs in everything around the grade: the early warning at midterm, the tutoring plan, the written evaluation that names the student's progress and the conversation, in person, when the grade is posted.

Where My Philosophy Could Be Wrong

The strongest challenge to my philosophy comes from advocates of mastery and definitional grading, who argue that a fixed passing line on a points average is itself arbitrary: a student at 76.4% and one at 77.1% are not meaningfully different in knowledge, yet one passes and one does not. Enslein et al. (2023) found that a definitional system improved exam performance and gave grades more meaning for students. I accept part of this challenge. A points average is a blunt instrument, and the line at 77% is a program decision rather than a fact about knowledge. My answer is not to round, which only moves the arbitrary line by a few tenths for students who ask, but to make the line mean more: to tie each graded element to an objective, to use partial credit where knowledge is partial and to give students repeated chances to learn before the grade counts. If my program moved to definitional grading, I would support the change, because it would serve the same purpose my philosophy serves, an honest report of what a student can do.

A second challenge is that strict grading may discourage students from groups underrepresented in nursing, who may have had fewer academic advantages before entering the program. That concern is serious, and my response is the same as for every student: support belongs before the grade, in tutoring, early warning and clear expectations, not in changing the grade afterward. A grade that means less for some students than for others would not serve them well when they sit for the licensure exam.

A Biblical Perspective

The law of Moses commands honest measures: "A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Deuteronomy 25:15). A merchant who used one weight for friends and another for strangers was condemned. A grade is a measure, and rounding it for a student I like, or a student who asks, is a second weight in the bag. Fair measure, applied to every student alike, is how I honor both the students in front of me and the patients behind them.

Conclusion

My philosophy of grading can be stated briefly enough for a syllabus. Grades in this course report your achievement of the course objectives, measured by standards published on the first day and applied to every student alike. Your effort and professional growth will be recognized in written feedback, not hidden inside your grade. You will receive feedback before your work is graded, and partial knowledge will earn partial credit. Grades are not changed after the fact, because the people who will one day rely on your grade, your patients, deserve to know it means what it says.

References

Bultas, M. W., Schmuke, A., Armstrong, K., Rubbelke, C., Alnawman, M., Moran, V., Fuller, K., Cole, B., & Lovan-Gold, K. (2024). "Make-up" examinations: Comparison of on-time and late examination student scores. Nurse Educator, 49(2), 80-84. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000001508

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Enslein, T. W., Wiles, B., Acosta, K., & Hoch, A. (2023). Modified definitional grading: A pilot study. Journal of Nursing Education, 62(4), 215-223. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20230208-01

Guskey, T. R. (2015). On your mark: Challenging the conventions of grading and reporting. Solution Tree Press.

McDonald, M. E. (2018). The nurse educator's guide to assessing learning outcomes (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Norton, L. M., & Yockey, J. (2026). Partial credit scoring: A helping hand or a crutch? Journal of Nursing Education, 65(8), 502-504. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20260224-05

Ruegg, T., & Keith, A. (2026). Inflated grades, real consequences: Time to fix nursing education's overdue grade inflation crisis. Nurse Educator. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000002247