Making the Grade

What if you—for a class—had to grade the record-reviews in this issue of Down Beat? A, B, C, D, or F: how would you do it? What if you were writing one of those reviews for a grade in the class: how would you know on what basis you’d be graded, how it would be evaluated as good or bad? If you didn’t like the grade, would you appeal it? Could the instructor defend that grade successfully?

After all, if writing effectively about improvisation may be an intangible skill defining an amorphous art—how artful would the grading of that writing have to be? And would the grading process then educationally inspire the writer to improve his or her craft in the future?

Stepping Out

How do you grade an English essay? Do you focus on the mechanics—the spelling and syntax—or the meaning behind the words—or both? Which can you teach? What can you quantify? This scenario parallels well what jazz-improvisation instructors face when teaching students of any age for academic credit, whether in a private lesson, an ensemble, or an improv class.

Jazz improv has long been a graded part of the academic scene in hundreds of colleges and universities and in many high schools around the world. Yet over the decades, jazz educators have barely spoken about how to grade improv effectively. Assess? Sure. You and I and our audiences assess our performances every day. But audiences don’t have to grade the work; they are not entrusted with educating the performer to improvise better; they are not subject to grade appeals from the students. Grading improv is such a different matter than assessing it.

Creative Accounting

We’ve been fairly creative, out of necessity, in inventing improv-grading policies. But as the saying goes, creative accounting will land you in jail. Our grading may focus on attendance, or completing assignments, or mastery of certain chord/scale relationships, or on the holistic artistry of the student soloist. But not being clear about what you’re seeking from a student leads the student not to know what to work on the most. If your grading system doesn’t emphasize the elements you actually believe to be the most important, then your students may allocate their practice time out of balance with your belief system.

Dr. David Coogan teaches Rhetorical Theory & Criticism at my university. What he says about grading creative writing certainly parallels the issues found in grading jazz improv, or painting, or so many other pursuits: “Grading creative writing is hard because creativity, itself, can't be taught. The essence of that drive to create with words and make beautiful and even terrifying meaning, can be coaxed out of a student. Techniques of writing can be broken down, analyzed, taught, assigned as homework in longer compositions, and graded. Students with natural talent can then develop, reach a new level, if they can take the time to learn, say, how to write a metaphor. Even students of lesser ability can achieve piecemeal the appearance of creative writing ability by following classroom instructions. They might even earn an A. But it might be for mediocre writing. Their performance might say more about their ability to follow classroom instructions than their ability to write creatively.”

Do our students’ improv performances sometimes say more about their ability to follow classroom instructions than to play creatively? Sometimes. Are we doing everything we can to lead our students to their most expressive improvisations? Perhaps yes, yet with one frequent exception: how we grade—and thus how in this significant way we communicate with and inspire our students.

Snapshot

Across the globe, I’ve observed instructors’ policies for grading improv. I’ve closely examined many, and I’ve spoken with hundreds of jazz educators about their priorities in teaching. I don’t believe there is one right answer.

But this much I know. So many jazz educators have a student who entered the semester as a hot-shot player, never did the real work required by the course, yet received a high grade. Many teachers have vocalists, drummers, and horn-players—or jazz majors and non-jazz majors—in the same classroom with no policy as to how they might be graded differently; and yet sometimes they are being graded differently. Many mentors are conflicted about grading any creative element of a student’s improv yet strongly want their students to exit soloing creatively. Many instructors know what elements of novices’ improv annoy them the most in a performance but haven’t found the means to use a grading system to represent the course requirements as a path that would best prompt those students to grow in a healthier direction. As Coogan would say, “Their performance might say more about their ability to follow classroom instructions than their ability to write creatively.” And clearly a good number of educators have found out the hard way that their stated grading process—if there is a stated grading process—doesn’t hold up to a student grade-appeal.

The Charge

I believe it’s time jazz educators dialogue about their grading policies. Most jazz educators come from one or a mix of three streams: music education graduates, “street” jazz musicians, and jazz program graduates. The first lot rarely encounters a jazz improv class within in the music ed curriculum, much less explores how to grade it. The second lot “lives” jazz improv but very often prefers the grade of “bandstand hard knocks” to forming a clear academic policy. And the third lot often reflexively re-creates the policies of those with whom they’d studied.

It’s time. We stand on the shoulders of educators who won decades-long battles to make jazz an extracurricular activity in the schools, then a co-curricular one, and finally a curricular pursuit. That now accomplished, the elephant in the room is trumpeting a call to be recognized: let’s be sure to talk about how we can effectively grade jazz improvisation, thus strongly encouraging our students to grow in the paths that we model in our instruction and in our grading. When we grade jazz improvisation according to our educational priorities, we create additional opportunities to inspire our students towards greater knowledge, understanding, and performance of the art form.

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