a grade is not feedback

We tend to treat the grade and the feedback as two halves of one act, but they answer different questions. A grade tells you where you landed. Feedback tells you where to put your foot next. Confusing the two is the most common mistake in a classroom, and the most expensive.

A mark is a summary, and summaries are built to be read at a distance — by registrars, by parents, by the next teacher in the chain. That isn’t a flaw; someone has to compare. But a number can’t say which sentence went sideways, or that you’d already solved the harder problem on the previous page. Two students can leave with the same B and completely different needs.

Real feedback is specific, timely, and addressed to the person who can still act on it. It sounds like: the opening is doing two jobs, pick one. Or: you’ve proved the claim, now show the counterexample. It points at the work, not the worker. It’s a note you can use on Tuesday, not a verdict you carry all term.

Teachers know this. What we lack is time and a place to write it. So we let the number stand in for the conversation, and then we’re surprised when students only read the number. Give them the sentence instead, and watch what they do with it. That sentence is the whole job, and it is the part no transcript will ever hold.