Why GOAL Matters to Me

The GOAL framework was born out of lived contradiction: I barely graduated high school — I had to go an extra semester to finally collect a diploma — yet I have gone on to maintain a 4.0 across multiple degrees so far. That GPA is proof of my persistence, but it has never been proof of what I most care about: authentic learning, meaningful feedback, and a sense of belonging. Along the way, I experienced both the promise and the harm of our dominant learning assessment and grading systems.

It was only because I was fortunate enough to have a strong support network of people who encouraged me to persist and get my high school diploma that I was able to do that. After having been in what was called the “gifted program” in elementary school, life thew me a number of curveballs and body blows and I drifted further and further behind. After years of struggling with my school work, I decided I wasn’t cut out for STEM subjects, and that perhaps school wasn’t for me at all. As it turns out, neither is the case. Not everyone is fortunate enough to get the second and third chances that I did.

Back to School

In 2016, the agency where I worked announced a reorganization and I saw the opportunity to make a radical shift. After some soul searching, and with the support of my amazing partner, I left the corporate world and did volunteer work for six months. With time to breathe and reflect, I enrolled in college as a first-generation sophomore transfer student, bringing with me some credits from two different community colleges. A week before classes began my first term, I started working at our disability services office where the team I was on remediated course materials such as textbooks, PDF documents, PowerPoint slides, exam documents, and more. We rarely had an empty queue, because so much of what was assigned in courses was inaccessible on so many levels.

I didn’t know at the time that, according to a 2022 study, only one in three college students nationally (in the U.S.) discloses their disability to their institution and seeks support [1]. So for every student in a course who is receiving accommodations and other supports for their disability, there may be two or more others who aren’t. I learned that these challenges and obstacles invisible to instructors can become daily barriers for students — and grading systems often compound the harm. This later became Pillar 5 in the GOAL Framework: Equity and Flexibility by Design.

I love everything about college… with one important exception

I love every aspect of school — even group projects. But I still don’t love traditional, summative exams. Especially one-and-done, high-stakes midterms and final exams. With a few notable exceptions, they have often felt more like exercises in hazing, ranking, and sometimes even pitting students against one another rather than ways to authentically assess the learning my colleagues and I had worked hard for — and paid good money to pursue.

Also, as with most of the assignments I turned in, we often received little to no meaningful feedback. Our labor and output just vanished into a black hole after submission, and sometime later a grade would manifest. Even if feedback came, it was already too late — the grade was on the books. Given the structure of the course and rubric, the feedback would have been too little too late. This invisibility is what Pillar 2: Process and Labor Visibility seeks to address, and the damaging absence of feedback informs Pillar 3: Iterative Practice and Feedback.

Silent Suffering of Faculty

What I couldn’t have known then was that my instructors were suffering on account of these grading systems, as well. Through professional relationships, friendships, and conversations with department chairs and faculty, I’ve heard the same refrain again and again. The early hope and joy that many faculty once found in facilitating authentic learning has slowly given way to dread: dread of grading itself, vigilance about AI misuse (and before that, cell phones and search engines), and even fraught or antagonistic relationships with students. Too often, faculty are positioned as enforcers and graders rather than as teachers and mentors.

Scars, lessons, and motivation from time on the front lines

It would be hard to read the above and not find my current role highly improbable, if not amusing. Since September 2021, I have been the head of our Academic Testing Services department at the university where I work, leading a team that averages 25 people, the majority of whom are student employees. We proctor exams on behalf of faculty, and 95% of the exams we proctor are for students with testing accommodations through the disability services office where I used to work. During the course of a term, we have had students no-show for important exams, show up in tears, suffer panic attacks, leave in tears, and so much more. Traditional, summative exams are some of the peak points for anxiety and stress in the lives of our students, at a time when students report increasing anxiety, stress, and depression as top barriers to their academic success and holistic wellbeing.

Now is the time to raise our standards and recover our joy

I know from my time as a student, from working in our disability services office, from teaching courses on occasion, and from running an academic testing services department that summative exams are not what this moment needs in terms of equitable, effective learning assessment. The fact is, they never have been, and there are decades of scholarship that make this clear. GOAL is my attempt to respond to these scars and lessons — to imagine an assessment system that sees labor, builds feedback into the process, honors authenticity, and creates equity by design.

This work is not about diminishing rigor or lowering standards. It is about raising them — for ourselves, as educators, and for the institutions we are shaping. GOAL offers an opportunity for instructors to (paraphrasing some of my brilliant SCIENCE Collaborative colleagues) dread grading less, appreciate our students’ work more, and reconnect with the joy of facilitating authentic learning and growth.

I believe we can reclaim learning assessment as a site of connection and care — for students and for faculty — and GOAL is an invitation to join in that work.

Gratitude for the many who have been doing this work

While I’ve been thinking about this work for a long time, the inspiration to finally articulate the GOAL Framework came from two relatively recent experiences.

The first was my involvement with the national SCIENCE Collaborative, which I was invited and encouraged to join by Dr. Shoshana Zeisman-Pereyo at Portland State University in early 2025. Together, we are active members of the Alternative Grading Community of Practice within the Collaborative. This group gathered at Otterbein University in July 2025, and spending that time with dedicated scholars and practitioners from across the country truly put wind in my sails.

The second was our participation in the 2025 Grading Conference, where we heard directly from people on the frontlines of the kind of work I aspire to do with the GOAL Framework. I am grateful to be part of this growing community, and excited for the progress we are making together.

Adam, T., & Warner-Griffin, C. (2022). Use of Supports Among Students With Disabilities and Special Needs in College (Data Point No. NCES 2022-071; p. 2). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2022/2022071.pdf