how much time do teachers spend grading homework

Every teacher grades differently, which isn’t fair

Assistant Professor of Teaching and Leadership, University of North Dakota

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Laura Link consults with school districts through GradingRx.

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Students and parents have begun suing school districts over grading policies and practices they say are unfair.

As a scholar of education who studies grading practices, I’ve seen how important grades are to schools, students and their families.

Grades are the primary basis for making important decisions about students. They determine whether students are promoted from one grade level to the next. They also determine honor roll status and enrollment in advanced or remedial classes, and they factor into special education services and college or university admissions.

More than 1,800 colleges and universities now allow applicants to choose whether they want to take the ACT or SAT. That means grades are more important in admissions decisions and scholarship awards – and students and their parents know it.

In early 2022, a local political figure and his wife sued Baltimore Public Schools , claiming the city’s entire education system was not serving the public. They said unfair grading practices limited students’ academic access.

Later that year, a parent in Kentucky sued the local school district, alleging unfair grading practices had tainted remote learning classes that had been established during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those cases are still pending, but even as far back as 2007 , parents sued a West Virginia school district because their daughter got a lower grade than expected on a biology project she turned in late. The lawsuit argued that the bad grade was unfair and hurt the student’s grade-point average, valedictorian status, scholarship potential and chances of getting into a good college.

These lawsuits show how important grades are to students and their parents.

Teachers spend lots of time grading

Teachers know how important grades are, too. In fact, teachers spend over one-third of their professional work time assessing and evaluating student learning.

But most university teacher-education programs focus on curriculum and instruction, with less attention given to assessment. My research has found that these programs do not talk about how to actually grade student work.

In keeping with a long-held tradition in education , teachers also have, and like, the autonomy to set their own practices. That results in inconsistency, inequity and even unreliability in teachers’ grading practices.

For example, teachers decide if grades will be based on tests, quizzes, homework, participation, behavior, effort, extra credit or other evidence. When surveying over 15,000 teachers, administrators, support educators, parents and students, I found teachers use a wide range of evidence in grades. While they primarily use tests, quizzes, projects, and homework to assign grades, teachers at all grade levels also include nonacademic evidence, like behavior and effort, in their grading equations.

Teachers also decide whether students will get a second chance to take tests if they fail on the first attempt, or be allowed to turn in work late, sometimes reducing their maximum possible grade.

Once teachers decide what to include in their grades, they decide how much weight to assign to each grade category. One teacher may weigh homework as 20% of the final course grade, while another teacher in the same grade level may choose a different weight or not grade homework at all.

In my work, I have talked to teachers who curve grades, especially at the end of a course when they discover lots of students did poorly. To curve, these teachers adjust grades by adding points to all students’ scores to bring the highest score up to 100%. Other teachers in the same school told me they do not grade on a curve. Instead, they add extra credit points to students’ final course grades if they attend a school event, such as a play. Some teachers told me they also add grade points if a student was never tardy to class or never missed an assignment deadline.

Traditional grading is confusing and inaccurate

Schools do often have a common grade system all teachers must use, such as a scale from zero to 100. But my research has found that it’s very rare that all teachers in a district, or even a school or a grade level, use the same grading policies and procedures.

The variation among teachers’ grading policies and practices causes confusion for students and their parents. High school students, for instance, typically have seven different teachers each semester. That means they have to keep up with seven different grading policies and procedures – and cope with the obvious differences.

My research indicates that the effort to keep up with multiple teachers’ different grading expectations causes students chronic stress and anxiety , especially for those students with poor organizational, time-management and self-regulation skills. This is also the case for students competing for high grade-point averages and class rank. Still, students rarely question teachers’ grading or the grading differences between teachers.

It might seem unfair, for example, that one algebra teacher allows for extra credit to boost final course grades and another does not. But students have accepted these differences because this is how it’s always been . And parents often pass these grading differences off as what they experienced in school themselves.

Three ways to improve grading

Grading consistency and effectiveness could be improved if universities’ teacher-training programs included specific training on grading practices in their educator preparation programs, but not any training will do. Evidence-based research on grading conducted over the past century identifies ways grades can be effective, fair and accurate .

First, grades are accurate and meaningful when they are based on reliable and valid evidence from classroom assessments. This information allows teachers to provide students and parents with feedback on learning progress, and to guide teachers’ own efforts to improve their teaching. For instance, an assessment strategy called Mastery Learning has been shown to improve student achievement and deliver reliable evidence upon which teachers can base grades.

Second, grading works best when students, parents, teachers, administrators and others in the school are clear on the purpose of grades . These groups have different beliefs and expectations, but clarity in grades can be achieved when they agree on grading intentions to then anchor policies and practices.

Third, grade reports that include three to five categories of performance more meaningfully communicate students’ actual academic proficiency . Reducing a grade to a single letter or number that incorporates many aspects of learning, including behavior and effort, does not inform anyone as clearly about what a student has achieved, needs or is ready for.

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Teacher Digital Feedback Tools Can Reduce Grading Time And Improve Instruction

• September 29, 2021
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We surveyed 200 teachers and found widespread support for this sector of ed tech.

In December 2020, the Learning Agency Lab (the Lab) and Georgia State University (GSU) launched The Feedback Prize, to develop new, open source digital tools that can help students improve their writing and support teachers in their writing instruction. 

Why? Well, there is strong evidence that assisted writing feedback tools (AWFT) can help students become better writers. Student achievement has dramatically outperformed state averages in districts that use Revision Assistant. And studies on the program Criterion have shown a positive impact for English Language Learners. 

As a part of this work, my colleague and I surveyed 200 teachers across the nation to gain insights on how AWFT can support writing instruction. The survey was focused on AWFT and teaching context (ie: subjects taught, student population, etc.) as well as opinions on and concerns with AWFT and its potential impact in the classroom. 

Our findings suggest that there are tremendous opportunities to support teachers with new tools. Consider that 90 percent of teachers surveyed believe that writing tools can help students to improve on their writing. Additionally, 95 percent of teachers are willing to try these tools. The responses suggest that teachers are open to using software and recognize the value of these tools, specifically when it comes to writing and writing instruction. 

As technology becomes more ubiquitous in the classroom it is important to understand the needs and concerns of educators, especially in the writing classroom.

Teacher Practice

We surveyed teachers on their current writing instruction. We found that the most common writing approach taught was informative or explanatory writing. This suggests that students do not spend enough time practicing argumentative writing, although it is critical for college and career. These results align with survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which revealed that only 13 percent of eighth-grade teachers ask their students to write persuasively weekly.

Additionally we found that only 16 percent of teachers reported that students write more than a paragraph in class every day. Around 50 percent of teachers reported that their students only write more than a paragraph in class once a week or less. This means many students are not getting enough writing practice which would help them become more confident writers.

Time Spent Grading

When it comes to grading, more than 50 percent of teachers reported spending more than four hours grading student work a week. Of these teachers, only 16 percent report that most of their grading is focused on evaluating student writing.

While this seems like a small percentage, this is likely due to the low frequency at which teachers are assigning writing. Nearly 70 percent of teachers reported that they only ask students to write a paragraph or more for homework on a weekly basis or less. Considering the amount of time teachers already spend grading, asking students to write more would place more burden on teachers who are already overwhelmed with the amount of work they have to grade.

Use of AWFT

Our findings suggest that teachers are largely unaware of the current tools that are on the market, especially those that provide formative feedback. Only 28 percent of teachers reported using AWFT in their classroom. Of the teachers that did report using tools, Grammarly and CorrectEnglish were the most popular, even though both of these tools mainly focus on grammar and mechanics. While grammar skills are important for writing, students need more feedback on richer aspects of writing.

For example, only four teachers reported using Revision Assistant, which goes past grammar and spell check by providing students with instant and actionable feedback. This could be due to a number of factors, like accessibility and price points.

Tools like Grammarly and Correct English offer free versions of their product in addition to premium versions (up to $150/year). Both tools also offer Chrome extensions. 

In comparison, Revision Assistant costs around $700/year. A MI Write subscription requires users to contact the company. Neither tool can be used with programs like Google Docs. This is likely a barrier to teachers who are willing to adopt new tools in their classrooms. While AWFT can support teachers and amplify their instruction, the ability to seamlessly integrate tools into existing platforms would likely lead to wider adoption.

Opinions of AWFT

While reported usage of AWFT was low, teachers are still very willing to try out AWFT in their classrooms. A whopping 95 percent of teachers are at least moderately willing to try these tools.

Additionally 90 percent of teachers believe that writing tools can help some or all students to improve on their writing. Even with limited awareness of AWFT, these findings suggest that teachers view these tools positively.

Concerns with AWFT

Of course, teachers still have concerns about integrating writing tools into their classrooms.  The most popular of them being that students will use writing tools as a crutch. Teachers seem most worried that students using AWFT will allow the software to “do the work for them.”

This is understandable as many of the more common tools, like Grammarly, allow users to click on errors and replace them. While Grammarly provides an explanation of the error, it is likely that many students do not read these and do not have a solid understanding of the error made. 

Tools that provide actionable and formative feedback can give students the clear next step. This would encourage students to think through the writing process and support them in working through revisions instead of providing them with the right answer.

Teachers are less concerned about tools replacing them, and seem to understand that these tools would be used in a support capacity. Other concerns that teachers have around AWFT are about navigating technology and the quality of feedback that software could provide. Tools that require a large amount of training will likely deter teachers and students from using them. Additionally, teachers were concerned that low quality or unclear feedback could be a problem with the tools.

Equity in the Classroom

At the Lab, one of our major goals with this work is to support equity in the classroom by producing high-quality, accessible tools. Teachers were optimistic about the potential for AWFT to support equity in the classroom. Over 90% of teachers surveyed believe that AWFT can be moderately helpful when working on writing with marginalized students. There are a number of ways teachers believe these tools can do this.

Teachers surveyed believe that AWFT could provide writing support to students outside of the classroom. Students in better resourced schools have more access to collaborative learning experiences and meaningful writing instruction. Students in lower resourced schools, however, tend to have larger classroom sizes meaning teachers have less time to provide feedback in class. AWFT can help increase the amount of meaningful writing instruction students receive by removing the burden on teachers to give feedback and giving students more opportunities to practice their writing. 

Another way that these tools could support equity in the classroom is by providing content, prompts and features that support more relevant and personalized learning. For many students, especially struggling students, writing can be a frustrating task. Students can lose motivation if they are uninterested in the topics or have trouble understanding prompts. Tools that can be adjusted to fit with individual student needs can help teachers to ensure that students are receiving the instruction that they need to become better writers. 

Finally, teachers believe that AWFT can provide support to English Language Learners (ELLs) who may struggle with basic writing skills by scaffolding their writing and providing actionable suggestions. ELLs often spend more time than their peers trying to find the right word or constructing sentences in English. Providing examples to ELLs, like sentence starters or predictive text can help students navigate the writing process while learning the English language. 

Methods and Participant Information

Participants were recruited using Prime Panels, a participant recruitment platform that was developed by CloudResearch.

While Prime Panel participants are not exactly nationally representative, the distribution is broadly representative of the racial and ethnic diversity of the teaching workforce in the U.S. Consider:

• 90.5 percent of participants teach at public schools.
• 74.4 percent of participants have more than 5 years of teaching experience.
• 54.3 percent of participants teach at schools where most students are low-income. 
• 32.7 percent of participants teach at schools with a high population of English language learners.

Overall, this survey suggests that there is huge potential for AWFT to impact writing instruction as we know it. These tools can be used to support teachers with their writing instruction by cutting down on the administrative burden of grading, as well as giving teachers more time to focus on high-level feedback. These tools can also provide students with more opportunities to practice writing and receive feedback outside of the classroom which would help them to become better writers. While these tools can have a large impact on writing instruction, it is imperative that developers keep teachers in the loop and that new tools address the needs of teachers and their students. Tools that are developed with a rich, contextual understanding of the writing classroom can greatly benefit teachers and students.

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How Much Time Do Teachers Spend Grading & 12 Amazing Tools to Save Time

How much time do teachers spend grading? Are there tools for teachers that can help them to manage their time better. In this blog post, we'll dive into different strategies and techniques teachers can use to improve the grading process. Let's explore how efficient grading tools for teachers provide timely feedback and focus on improving student performance.

Why Is Grading Important for Students?

Grades serve multiple functions in the educational process. They evaluate student work, communicate performance to various stakeholders, motivate students , and organize the educational journey. Grading provides feedback on learning progress, helping students identify areas of strength and improvement. It also guides instructors in refining teaching methods based on student performance feedback.

Grading Challenges

Grading presents challenges due to the need for accuracy and fairness, which can be time-consuming for instructors. Students may dispute grades, creating additional stress. Some instructors may find grading impedes the learning process because of the focus on assigning numbers to work rather than promoting learning.

Strategies to Simplify Grading

Incorporating effective grading strategies can alleviate stress for instructors and students. Strategies include providing clear grading criteria, using rubrics, providing timely feedback, and fostering a positive learning environment. By implementing these strategies, grading can become a more manageable and less arbitrary process.

How Much Time Do Teachers Spend Grading?

The average time teachers spend grading is 5 hours per week. This amounts to 140 hours for a 28-week school year. This average does not include the time spent on generating report cards, which can add even more hours to this already time-consuming task. Grading fatigue is contributing to teachers leaving the profession earlier than planned, with 55% of educators considering an early exit due to increasing work obligations.

Factors Affecting Time Spent on Grading

1. grade level and course-specific differences.

Schools with a larger range of grade levels often use different grading methods. Different grading methods make the grading process more time-consuming for teachers. Elementary students may need narrative, skillset, or standards-based feedback, while high school students may receive letter grades. Specific courses may have different grading criteria, making the grading process more complex.

2. Reporting Requirements

Governments, districts, and dioceses often require schools to report on student achievement in a specific way. Gathering information from various sources and formatting it according to requirements is manual work that adds steps to the grading process. Teachers must meet strict deadlines for this collating and formatting of data.

Efficiency Boost with EssayGrader

EssayGrader is the most accurate AI grading platform trusted by 30,000+ educators worldwide. On average it takes a teacher 10 minutes to grade a single essay, with EssayGrader that time is cut down to 30 seconds That's a 95% reduction in the time it takes to grade an essay, with the same results.  With EssayGrader , teachers can:

• Replicate their grading rubrics (so AI doesn't have to do the guesswork to set the grading criteria)
• Setup fully custom rubrics
• Grade essays by class
• Bulk upload of essays
• Use our AI detector to catch essays written by AI
• Summarize essays with our Essay summarizer 

Primary school, high school, and even college professors grade their students' essays with the help of our AI tool. Over half a million essays were graded by 30,000+ teachers on our platform. Save 95% of your time for grading school work with our tool to get high-quality, specific and accurate writing feedback for essays in seconds. 

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7 Ways to Save Time When Grading Student Work

1. Utilize Technology to Streamline Grading

By taking advantage of digital tools, such as online quiz makers, digital portfolio platforms, and online gradebooks, teachers can significantly reduce the time spent grading. These resources automate grading processes, allowing educators to focus on providing personalized feedback and other important tasks. Online gradebooks, for example, can calculate grades automatically and even weigh assignments, making the grading process more efficient.

2. Engage Students in the Grading Process

Involving students in the grading process , especially for objective assignments like multiple-choice quizzes, can save teachers time. By teaching students how to assess their own work or their peers' work, teachers can lighten their grading load. This practice also helps students develop skills in self-assessment and providing constructive feedback.

3. Prioritize Assignments

It's essential for teachers to understand that they don't need to grade every single assignment. By focusing on tasks that provide valuable insights into student understanding and progress, educators can spend their grading time more effectively. For instance, grading major tests that assess key learning outcomes is essential, while providing feedback on every homework item may not be necessary.

4. Create Multidisciplinary Assignments

To save time on grading, teachers can design assignments that cover multiple subjects. By combining subjects into a single assignment, educators can assess students' skills in different areas simultaneously. For example, an essay on a social sciences topic can be graded for writing skills and social sciences content knowledge, streamlining the grading process.

5. Implement Rubrics

Rubrics are valuable tools that break down assignments into specific criteria, making it easier for teachers to assess and provide feedback on student work. These tools also help students understand the expectations and requirements for each assignment, improving the quality of their submissions.

6. Emphasize Assignment Quality Over Quantity

Focusing on creating engaging and effective assignments is more important than assigning a high quantity of tasks. Teachers should design assignments that cover material effectively and stimulate student interest, ensuring that students grasp concepts without unnecessary repetition.

7. Conduct Real-Time Spot Checks

One strategy to save time on grading is to check students' work during class activities. By conducting in-class spot checks, educators can quickly assess student understanding, offer instant feedback, and address any questions students may have. This ongoing assessment approach can reduce the amount of grading required at the end of the semester.

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12 Amazing Grading Tools That Help Teachers Save Time

1. EssayGrader: Revolutionizing Essay Grading with AI

EssayGrader is an innovative AI platform designed to revolutionize the essay grading process for educators worldwide. This tool has been embraced by over 30,000 teachers who trust its accuracy and efficiency. With EssayGrader, the time needed to grade a single essay is dramatically reduced, from an average of 10 minutes to just 30 seconds. This remarkable time-saving amounts to a 95% reduction in grading time, without compromising the quality of the results.  With EssayGrader, teachers can:

• Replicate their grading rubrics
• Customize them fully
• Perform bulk uploads of essays
• Utilize an AI detector to identify essays written by AI
• Summarize essays using the Essay summarizer. 

Teachers at all levels, from primary school to college, have leveraged this AI tool to grade over half a million essays collectively. By using EssayGrader , educators can save an incredible 95% of their time grading schoolwork while obtaining high-quality, specific, and accurate writing feedback in seconds.

2. Showbie: Elevating Grading Efficiency with Audio Feedback

Showbie is a comprehensive platform that integrates essential tools for assignments, communication, and feedback, offering educators an effective gradebook alongside other features. This tool enables teachers to mark and grade students' work seamlessly within the  Shared Folder class listing and enter grades as values, along with meaningful text feedback. What truly sets Showbie apart is its capability to provide audio feedback—simply hit record! Besides text comments, teachers can rapidly view student grades by assignment, class, or on an individual basis. Showbie also facilitates the export of grades in various formats like CVS, HTML, and email templates with attached CVS files for easy access and sharing.

3. Viper: Combating Plagiarism and Ensuring Academic Integrity

Viper is a specialized anti-plagiarism scanner that scans uploaded documents for plagiarism, a serious concern in academic, business, and publishing environments. Targeted mainly at students, Viper aids in reducing the occurrence of copied and plagiarized term papers and essays. This tool excels at identifying plagiarized passages, detecting potentially similar segments, misattributed or misidentified quotes, and other questionable sentences.

4. ZipGrade: Streamlining Multiple Choice Test Grading with Technology

ZipGrade is an indispensable grading app that expedites the grading of multiple-choice tests within minutes. By scanning tests using a smartphone, teachers can significantly reduce the time spent grading. While ZipGrade focuses on providing grades, educators have the responsibility of identifying areas where students require support and explaining questions that may have been challenging. Offering swift feedback and analysis, ZipGrade aids educators in enhancing student learning outcomes.

5. BookWidgets: Enhancing Engagement and Interactivity in Grading

BookWidgets is a versatile learning platform that empowers teachers to create engaging and interactive lessons for tablets and computers. With over 40 activities like quizzes, crosswords, and worksheets, this tool enables educators to customize assignments and receive instant feedback from students. Through the grading dashboard, teachers can track progress, provide constructive feedback, and access student analytics, auto-grading features, and more.

6. Itunes U: Transforming Classroom Organization and Efficiency

Itunes U serves as a centralized platform for organizing classroom activities, including homework submission, an integrated grade book, and private discussions. Educators can deliver lessons, grade assignments, and stay connected with students using this tool. The integrated grade book offers insights into individual student performance, allowing teachers to track assignment views, completion status, and intervene when necessary.

7. Thinkwave: Simplifying Administrative Tasks with Comprehensive Features

Thinkwave is an all-encompassing app that simplifies administrative duties and offers valuable insights into student performance. Educators can take advantage of features like messaging systems and custom reports to manage classroom activities efficiently.

8. Alma: Streamlining Grade Recording and Tracking

Alma facilitates the recording and tracking of grades, calculation of weighted averages, and generation of progress reports.Teachers can provide input comments and feedback for each assignment, streamlining the grading process and encouraging student growth.

9. GradeBook Pro: Maximizing Classroom Management Efficiency

GradeBook Pro is a robust classroom management tool equipped with numerous features for categorizing assignments, viewing grades by category, using weighted or standard grade scales, awarding extra credit, calculating average scores, evaluating overall class performance, generating progress reports, and emailing grade, attendance, or status reports to students. This tool also enables the creation of PDF reports for class grades, rosters, and attendance records.

10. Flubaroo: Enhancing Google Forms with Grading and Analysis Capabilities

Flubaroo is a free add-on to Google Forms/Sheets that streamlines the grading and analysis of online assignments and assessments. Educators can identify students in need of additional support, view average scores, and obtain a histogram of scores, along with pinpointing questions that students struggled with. With Flubaroo, teachers can provide scores to students and gain deeper insights into student performance.

11. Formative: Enabling Real-Time Assessments and Feedback

Formative empowers educators to distribute assignments to students, who can complete and submit them, with teachers receiving live results. This tool allows teachers to monitor students' learning progress, provide instant grades and feedback, and conduct formative assessments effectively.

12. Edubirdie Plagiarism Checker: Safeguarding Academic Integrity with Uniqueness Checks

Edubirdie's Plagiarism Checker enables teachers and students to determine the degree of uniqueness in their writings or papers. By uploading a file or pasting text, this tool provides a percentage that reflects the text's uniqueness, safeguarding academic integrity and promoting originality in academic work.

4 Key Features to Consider in a Grading Tool for Teachers

1. Report Customizability

The first feature to consider is report customizability. A good student information system will offer you the ability to customize reports to meet government, district, and diocese reporting requirements. By being able to save these settings and run these reports year after year, you will significantly cut down on administrative time.

2. Grade- and Class-Specific Grading

The next critical feature is grade- and class-specific grading. Teachers handle many different grades and courses with various grading methods. Look for gradebook software that allows you to create default settings for each grade level, even down to individual courses. This capability allows grading to be uniform across specific classes or grade levels and eliminates the need for teachers to create a foundation for each of their gradebooks.

3. LMS Integrations

Another valuable feature to look for in a grading tool is LMS integrations. If your school uses a learning management system (LMS) such as Google Classroom, Canvas, or FACTS LMS, make sure your gradebook solution can seamlessly integrate and sync with it. This integration eliminates the need to double enter data into separate systems.

4. Offers Big Picture Data

Consider a grading tool that offers big picture data. A comprehensive student information system (SIS) and gradebook make it easier for educators to identify at-risk learners more quickly. With the ability to quickly see trends and access reports on declining test scores, absences, behavior events, and more, schools can identify and combat learning loss efficiently.

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Save Time While Grading Schoolwork — Join 30,000+ Educators Worldwide & Use EssayGrader AI, The Original AI Essay Grader

EssayGrader is a game-changer. In the field of grading, I've seen teachers spending hours meticulously reviewing each student's essay. It's a time-consuming process that can be draining. That's where EssayGrader steps in, offering a more efficient and effective way to grade essays. The AI grading platform is trusted by over 30,000 educators worldwide.  Traditional essay grading can take an average of 10 minutes per essay. With EssayGrader, that time is slashed down to a mere 30 seconds - a jaw-dropping 95% reduction in grading time.

Replicating Grading Rubrics with AI

One of the key features of EssayGrader is the ability for teachers to replicate their grading rubrics. This means that AI doesn't have to guess the grading criteria. By setting up fully custom rubrics, teachers can ensure that the grading process is aligned with their standards and expectations. This level of customization ensures that every essay is graded accurately and fairly.

Bulk Upload of Essays and Class Grading

Another time-saving feature of EssayGrader is the ability to grade essays by class. Teachers can upload multiple essays at once, streamlining the grading process for larger classes. This bulk upload feature ensures that you can grade all your students' essays in one go, saving you valuable time that can be better spent on other tasks.

AI Detection for Authentic Writing

In today's digital age, students have access to a wealth of online resources that can help them craft their essays. Unfortunately, this also means that some students may resort to using AI to generate their essays. EssayGrader's AI detector can catch essays that have been written by AI, ensuring that all essays are authentic and original. This feature helps maintain the integrity of the grading process and ensures that students are being assessed on their own work.

Summarizing Essays with Essay Summarizer

EssayGrader goes above and beyond traditional grading tools by offering an essay summarizer. This feature provides a concise summary of each essay, highlighting the key points and arguments. This summary can help teachers quickly grasp the content of each essay and provide more targeted feedback to students. The essay summarizer is yet another time-saving tool that can make the grading process more efficient and effective.

The Bottom Line: 95% Time Savings with EssayGrader

EssayGrader is a powerful tool that can revolutionize the way teachers grade essays. With a 95% reduction in grading time, teachers can save hours every week and focus on other important aspects of teaching. By utilizing features such as replicating grading rubrics, bulk upload of essays, AI detection, and essay summarizer, teachers can provide high-quality feedback to students in a fraction of the time.  ‍ Save your time and effort with EssayGrader and join the thousands of educators worldwide who have already benefited from this groundbreaking tool.

Save hours by grading essays in 30 seconds or less.

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7 Ways Savvy Teachers Save Time Grading Assignments

Published on: 12/19/2023

By Scott Winstead

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A recent report found that teachers spend about 5 hours each week grading assignments. And that’s time outside of regular school hours. Add in all of the other things teachers have to do outside of school hours, like lesson planning, meetings, and extra-curricular activities, and it can become overwhelming.

As a teacher, you’re already overworked (and likely underpaid) as it is. So, finding ways to save time grading can help you regain some of your valuable time so you can enjoy a life outside of school. The good news is, there are ways you can grade assignments more efficiently without sacrificing quality.

As someone who’s worked in eLearning for nearly 20 years and has numerous teachers in my network, I’ve put together a collection of highly effective tips for saving time on grading.

How to Save Time When Grading Student Work

Now that we’ve talked about why grades are important, let’s discuss some ways you can save time when grading student work.

1. Use technology to your advantage

Taking your classroom digital can help you significantly slash your grading time. In my opinion, it’s the single best way teachers can cut their grading time down significantly.

There are a number of digital resources available that can help you grade assignments more quickly and efficiently.

For example, online quiz makers and assessment tools can be a super easy and efficient way to administer tests as these tools grade tests and quizzes automatically. This frees up your time so you can focus on other tasks, like writing personalized feedback for students.

Another time-saving tech tool is a digital portfolio platform. These platforms allow students to submit their work electronically, which cuts down on paper waste and makes it easy for you to keep track of all assignments in one place. And, many of these platforms include features that make it easy to provide feedback directly on student work.

You can even use online gradebooks to keep track of student grades and provide feedback rather than doing it all by hand. These gradebooks often include features that automate the grading process, such as weighting assignments and calculating grades automatically.

The result is less work for you and better feedback for your students.

2. Get students involved in the grading process

Another great way to save time when grading is to get students involved in the process.

You can do this by teaching them how to grade their own or each other’s work. This can be especially helpful for assignments that are mostly objective, such as multiple-choice quizzes.

Of course, you’ll still need to check their work and ensure they’re being honest, but this can help cut down on your grading time.

Involving students actively in the grading process can also benefit them academically. They can learn how to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to give and receive instant feedback that’s constructive and insightful.

3. Don’t grade everything

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen new teachers in particular make is thinking that they have to grade every single piece of work their students do.

This simply isn’t true.

In fact, grading every assignment can actually do more harm than good as it takes up a lot of time and can overwhelm students (and you!).

Instead of grading everything, focus on assessing the assignments that are most important. For example, you obviously want to grade major tests but not maybe every single homework item.

If an assignment doesn’t need to be graded in order to provide feedback, then don’t grade it.

For example, if you’re having students do a quick in-class writing exercise, there’s no need to grade every single one. You can simply read through them quickly and provide general feedback on what they did well and what needs improvement.

The key is to focus on the assignments that will give you the most information about student understanding and progress.

4. Create assignments that combine multiple subjects

Another way to save time when grading is to group subjects together into a single assignment for multiple grading opportunities.

For example, you could combine reading and writing skills with social sciences assignments. An essay on a social sciences topic could then be graded both as a writing assignment and as a social sciences assignment.

This can be an efficient way to grade as you’re able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Just be sure that the entire assignment is actually assessing what you want it to. You don’t want to overburden students or create an assignment that’s too difficult to complete.

5. Use rubrics

Rubrics are a grading tool that can be used for any type of assignment.

They break down an entire assignment into its various parts and detail the criteria for each part. This makes it easy to assess student work and provide feedback.

Rubrics can also be helpful for students as they can see exactly what is expected of them and what they need to do to earn a good grade.

When using rubrics, you can either create your own or find ones that have already been created. There are rubrics available for almost any type of assignment you can think of.

6. Focus on quality of assignments, not quantity

Does a math assignment really need to have 40 repetitive questions covering the same concept over and over in order to be effective?

Probably not.

Sure, repetition can be helpful for some things, but it’s not always necessary. In fact, it can often be counterproductive as it can lead to students getting bored and feeling like they’re just going through the motions.

It’s important to focus on quality over quantity when creating assignments.

A shorter assignment with 10-15 questions can be plenty if it’s well-designed and covers the material in an effective way.

The key is to focus on creating assignments that are engaging and cover the material in a way that’s most likely to lead to students understanding it.

7. Do spot checks in real-time with in-class work

One easy way to cut down on time spent grading is to spot check your students’ work during class as you go through your lessons.

For example, if you’re working through some math problems, you can have students solve them on their own and then randomly choose a few to come up and solve on the board. Or they can hold up their answers for you to quickly check.

This will help you quickly assess who’s understanding the material and who needs more help.

It also allows you to provide immediate feedback and answer any questions students may have.

Doing spot checks like this throughout the semester can save you a lot of time in the long run as you won’t have to grade as much material at the end.

Final Thoughts

If you’re spending hours and hours grading assignments every week, you really need to make it a priority to find ways to save time. Otherwise, you’ll quickly become bogged down and burned out.

By following the tips in this article, you can make grading more efficient and less time-consuming without sacrificing quality.

So take the opportunity to implement a few of these time saving tips and see how they work for you. You may just find that your grading load becomes a lot more manageable.

How much time do you spend grading assignments each week? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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7 things you might not realize teachers have to do after the school day ends

• Teaching can be an extremely time-consuming career. 
• Though the average American school day is only six and a half hours, teachers often spend additional hours grading, prepping school lessons, and giving students individualized help. 
• Here are seven things teachers have to do long after the end-of-day school bell rings. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

Some people think that, as far as work hours go, teachers have it easy.

On paper, it's easy to see why one might believe this. The average American school day is only six and a half hours long , and teachers, like students, technically get summers off .

However, the amount of time students spend in school doesn't reflect the amount of work being a teacher actually entails.

Aside from planning lessons and grading them, two tasks which take up hours of time, there are other things teachers need to do outside of class every day in order to ensure their students are getting the most effective education.

Related: 10 alarming facts about teacher pay in the United States

We spoke to six teachers and asked them how much time they spent on their jobs outside of the classroom. Answers varied, but on average most said that they take home two to three hours of work a day. Additionally, nearly all of the teachers we spoke to said they come into school early, and stay around an hour late.

We also asked them what things take up the most of their non-teaching time. Their responses illustrated exactly how much work teachers do outside of school.

Here are seven things teachers have to do on their own time.

Teachers can spend hours grading their students' homework and tests.

When teachers give kids an assignment, they are also essentially giving themselves that assignment several times over. While they may not have to do the work itself, grading is not as simple as just writing a number or a letter on a paper.

Julia Van Ness, an eighth-grade special-education teacher from New Jersey, explained why this is. 

"I like to go through and add comments to students' writing instead of just reading it and slapping a grade on it," Van Ness said.

"Plus, it takes more time when you have to weigh the papers against one another to ensure that your grading is universal," she said. "If Student A made one mistake and Student B made a similar but slightly different mistake, I often find myself deliberating for a few extra minutes on how their grades should reflect their work while being fair to both of them."

Stephen Van Ness, a seventh- and eighth-grade language arts teacher and Julia's husband, said it only takes him a few minutes to come up with weekly journal questions for his students, but it could take three hours or more to grade them for each student.

"Coming up with fun assignments for your classroom is enjoyable and exciting, but the stack of papers to grade in the aftermath? Much less so," he said.

Teacher prep periods can't always be used for prep.

Most schools give teachers what is called a prep period during the school day. This is a period of time, often around 45 minutes, that teachers are meant to use to prepare for their lessons, grade, and do other non-teaching tasks during the work day.

However, teachers might not always be able to use this period for its intended purpose.

One reason why is a simple lack of resources, Tori Van Horn, a second grade special education teacher from Pennsylvania, told Business Insider.

"There are other teachers that have prep at the same time as me, so sometimes making copies can be tough," she said. "I have my own laminator at home because my school's has been broken forever."

A bigger issue, though, is that her prep period doesn't allow her enough time to really focus.

"I'm interpreting a lot of data and coming up with specific goals for my students to work towards," she said. "I find it difficult to jump into a big legal document for only 40 minutes at a time. I need to sit and focus to make sure I'm doing my best work."

And other times, teachers simply need a break.

"Sometimes I just want to sit during my lunch," Julia Van Ness said. "After teaching for four hours straight and then covering lunch duty, I know I need to take a few minutes and just sit there to let myself recharge. I would rather finish something at home than let myself burn out by 3 o'clock."

Many teachers spend time on other school-related commitments like coaching sports teams, advising student clubs, or attending teacher meetings.

Even though almost all teachers come in to school early and leave late , you can't assume that all of that extra time is going to matters directly related to teaching.

"Teachers face numerous demands that aren't listed in our contracts," Julia Van Ness said. "Student situations, meetings, creating schedules or flyers for school events, and basically handling the day's chaos can leave you feeling like you got nothing done that day. Sometimes that's just how it goes."

Aside from attending departmental and training meetings, many schools have requirements that teachers help with a certain number of school-sponsored activities per year. This can mean chaperoning dances, monitoring lunch periods, or being on bus duty.

Other teachers with special interests may go above and beyond , becoming club advisers, theater directors, or sports coaches when the school day lets out. Music teachers often spend a lot of time outside of school hours on practices or concerts for student groups. Veteran teachers may take extra time to mentor new ones.

Planning lessons can take several hours a week.

For many teachers, planning lessons is one of the most time-consuming aspects of the job.

"I spend most time planning and prepping lessons for each day," Elizabeth Fela, a sixth-grade teacher from Illinois. "Planning for four different lessons a day is a lot of work. I make a lot of instructional materials myself. Not everything is provided to us, so I have to make assignments and games and all that on my own time."

Additionally, for some teachers, lesson planning doesn't always look like you might expect it to. Mary Saydah, who teaches special education in New Jersey, explained how her lesson planning can often involve a few extra elements .

"Most of my students are significantly visually impaired or blind, so for every lesson, I need an element they can explore either through touch or smell that relates to the lesson," Saydah said. "This can mean making a small mop out of popsicle sticks and yarn to represent an object in the story or having to make individualized worksheets for each student that I have to add numbers onto with puffy paint so they can explore it.

"It also means going to the store to buy materials a lot of the time," she continued. "When I lesson plan, I have to keep a running list of everything I need to make and buy for the following week. While I do get reimbursed, it is time-consuming to go to the store and find what I need"

Sometimes students need more individualized help, which means more time and paperwork customizing lesson plans.

For many teachers, especially teachers whose students have IEPs, or Individualized Education Plans, lesson plans need to be tailored specifically to fit each student's needs .

"My students are below grade level in different areas like reading and math," Stephanie Kay, a middle school special education teacher from Pennsylvania, told Business Insider. "I have to individualize different aspects of the curriculum so they can access it to the best of their ability. That involves writing each document (about 30 pages), making multiple attempts to call the parent to schedule the meeting, holding the meetings, and waiting for signed paperwork from parents."

Teaching students with IEPs also involves a lot more paperwork than other teachers normally see.

"I have to write IEPs for my caseload, give input for other students' IEPs, figure out what skills or concepts my kids need to be addressed in," Kay said. "I also have to find, print, and grade progress monitoring based on goals in their IEPs. I teach about 40 kids and have to monitor 27 goals."

Kay also mentioned that she holds IEP meetings with her students' parents on her own time.

Communicating with parents and students is another after-hours responsibility.

Many teachers spend time at home corresponding with teachers and students.

"For any one assignment, you could have a student who can't login to the website, forgot their paper at school, had sports practice all night and is asking you for extra time, doesn't understand the directions, and other sorts of excuses," Van Ness said.

"Responding to student and parent concerns can end up taking around 20 minutes depending on the day. Parent emails take me a while to write because often I reread them several times to ensure I communicated the information clearly in a friendly tone."

"It's something we spend a lot of time thinking about," Van Ness said.

And depending on the circumstances of their students, some teachers act as their caregivers, offering students emotional support and addressing behavioral issues.

When it comes down to it, teachers aren't just there to help students academically. They're also there to help their students grow as people.

Aside from teaching lessons, many teachers find that it is also their job to be a caregiver for their students, addressing behavioral issues, offering emotional support, and giving advice or guidance to students who come to them seeking it.

For some teachers, like Fela, this part of the job can be more time consuming than it is for others.

"My demographic presents a lot of social-emotional issues with students. Things like their parents being on drugs, being removed from their homes, not having a parent there when they get home, or sometimes not even having food at home, are problems my students deal with daily."

"We expect students to come to school ready to learn, when in reality they come to school to be safe and fed."

Fela explained that this part of the job isn't a separate responsibility — it's integral to helping students absorb the information they're being taught.

"Kids aren't ready to learn unless they have their basic needs met first."

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How Much Homework Is Enough? Depends Who You Ask

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Editor’s note: This is an adapted excerpt from You, Your Child, and School: Navigate Your Way to the Best Education ( Viking)—the latest book by author and speaker Sir Ken Robinson (co-authored with Lou Aronica), published in March. For years, Robinson has been known for his radical work on rekindling creativity and passion in schools, including three bestselling books (also with Aronica) on the topic. His TED Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” holds the record for the most-viewed TED talk of all time, with more than 50 million views. While Robinson’s latest book is geared toward parents, it also offers educators a window into the kinds of education concerns parents have for their children, including on the quality and quantity of homework.

The amount of homework young people are given varies a lot from school to school and from grade to grade. In some schools and grades, children have no homework at all. In others, they may have 18 hours or more of homework every week. In the United States, the accepted guideline, which is supported by both the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association, is the 10-minute rule: Children should have no more than 10 minutes of homework each day for each grade reached. In 1st grade, children should have 10 minutes of daily homework; in 2nd grade, 20 minutes; and so on to the 12th grade, when on average they should have 120 minutes of homework each day, which is about 10 hours a week. It doesn’t always work out that way.

In 2013, the University of Phoenix College of Education commissioned a survey of how much homework teachers typically give their students. From kindergarten to 5th grade, it was just under three hours per week; from 6th to 8th grade, it was 3.2 hours; and from 9th to 12th grade, it was 3.5 hours.

There are two points to note. First, these are the amounts given by individual teachers. To estimate the total time children are expected to spend on homework, you need to multiply these hours by the number of teachers they work with. High school students who work with five teachers in different curriculum areas may find themselves with 17.5 hours or more of homework a week, which is the equivalent of a part-time job. The other factor is that these are teachers’ estimates of the time that homework should take. The time that individual children spend on it will be more or less than that, according to their abilities and interests. One child may casually dash off a piece of homework in half the time that another will spend laboring through in a cold sweat.

Do students have more homework these days than previous generations? Given all the variables, it’s difficult to say. Some studies suggest they do. In 2007, a study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that, on average, high school students spent around seven hours a week on homework. A similar study in 1994 put the average at less than five hours a week. Mind you, I [Robinson] was in high school in England in the 1960s and spent a lot more time than that—though maybe that was to do with my own ability. One way of judging this is to look at how much homework your own children are given and compare it to what you had at the same age.

Many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all.

There’s also much debate about the value of homework. Supporters argue that it benefits children, teachers, and parents in several ways:

• Children learn to deepen their understanding of specific content, to cover content at their own pace, to become more independent learners, to develop problem-solving and time-management skills, and to relate what they learn in school to outside activities.
• Teachers can see how well their students understand the lessons; evaluate students’ individual progress, strengths, and weaknesses; and cover more content in class.
• Parents can engage practically in their children’s education, see firsthand what their children are being taught in school, and understand more clearly how they’re getting on—what they find easy and what they struggle with in school.

Want to know more about Sir Ken Robinson? Check out our Q&A with him.

Q&A With Sir Ken Robinson

Ashley Norris is assistant dean at the University of Phoenix College of Education. Commenting on her university’s survey, she says, “Homework helps build confidence, responsibility, and problem-solving skills that can set students up for success in high school, college, and in the workplace.”

That may be so, but many parents find it difficult to help their children with subjects they’ve not studied themselves for a long time, if at all. Families have busy lives, and it can be hard for parents to find time to help with homework alongside everything else they have to cope with. Norris is convinced it’s worth the effort, especially, she says, because in many schools, the nature of homework is changing. One influence is the growing popularity of the so-called flipped classroom.

In the stereotypical classroom, the teacher spends time in class presenting material to the students. Their homework consists of assignments based on that material. In the flipped classroom, the teacher provides the students with presentational materials—videos, slides, lecture notes—which the students review at home and then bring questions and ideas to school where they work on them collaboratively with the teacher and other students. As Norris notes, in this approach, homework extends the boundaries of the classroom and reframes how time in school can be used more productively, allowing students to “collaborate on learning, learn from each other, maybe critique [each other’s work], and share those experiences.”

Even so, many parents and educators are increasingly concerned that homework, in whatever form it takes, is a bridge too far in the pressured lives of children and their families. It takes away from essential time for their children to relax and unwind after school, to play, to be young, and to be together as a family. On top of that, the benefits of homework are often asserted, but they’re not consistent, and they’re certainly not guaranteed.

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Homework Guidelines for Elementary and Middle School Teachers

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Homework; the term elicits a myriad of responses. Students are naturally opposed to the idea of homework. No student ever says, “I wish my teacher would assign me more homework.” Most students begrudge homework and find any opportunity or possible excuse to avoid doing it.

Educators themselves are split on the issue. Many teachers assign daily homework seeing it as a way to further develop and reinforce core academic skills, while also teaching students responsibility. Other educators refrain from assigning daily homework. They view it as unnecessary overkill that often leads to frustration and causes students to resent school and learning altogether. 

Parents are also divided on whether or not they welcome homework. Those who welcome it see it as an opportunity for their children to reinforce critical learning skills. Those who loathe it see it as an infringement of their child’s time. They say it takes away from extra-curricular activities, play time, family time, and also adds unnecessary stress.

Research on the topic is also inconclusive. You can find research that strongly supports the benefits of assigning regular homework, some that denounce it as having zero benefits, with most reporting that assigning homework offers some positive benefits, but also can be detrimental in some areas.

The Effects of Homework

Since opinions vary so drastically, coming to a consensus on homework is nearly impossible. We sent a survey out to parents of a school regarding the topic, asking parents these two basic questions:

• How much time is your child spending working on homework each night?
• Is this amount of time too much, too little, or just right?

The responses varied significantly. In one 3 rd grade class with 22 students, the responses regarding how much time their child spends on homework each night had an alarming disparity. The lowest amount of time spent was 15 minutes, while the largest amount of time spent was 4 hours. Everyone else fell somewhere in between. When discussing this with the teacher, she told me that she sent home the same homework for every child and was blown away by the vastly different ranges in time spent completing it. The answers to the second question aligned with the first. Almost every class had similar, varying results making it really difficult to gauge where we should go as a school regarding homework.

While reviewing and studying my school’s homework policy and the results of the aforementioned survey, I discovered a few important revelations about homework that I think anyone looking at the topic would benefit from:

1. Homework should be clearly defined. Homework is not unfinished classwork that the student is required to take home and complete. Homework is “extra practice” given to take home to reinforce concepts that they have been learning in class. It is important to note that teachers should always give students time in class under their supervision to complete class work. Failing to give them an appropriate amount of class time increases their workload at home. More importantly, it does not allow the teacher to give immediate feedback to the student as to whether or not they are doing the assignment correctly. What good does it do if a student completes an assignment if they are doing it all incorrectly? Teachers must find a way to let parents know what assignments are homework and which ones are classwork that they did not complete.

2. The amount of time required to complete the same homework assignment varies significantly from student to student. This speaks to personalization. I have always been a big fan of customizing homework to fit each individual student. Blanket homework is more challenging for some students than it is for others. Some fly through it, while others spend excessive amounts of time completing it.  Differentiating homework will take some additional time for teachers in regards to preparation, but it will ultimately be more beneficial for students.

The National Education Association recommends that students be given 10-20 minutes of homework each night and an additional 10 minutes per advancing grade level. The following chart adapted from the National Education Associations recommendations can be used as a resource for teachers in Kindergarten through the 8 th grade.

It can be difficult for teachers to gauge how much time students need to complete an assignment. The following charts serve to streamline this process as it breaks down the average time it takes for students to complete a single problem in a variety of subject matter for common assignment types. Teachers should consider this information when assigning homework. While it may not be accurate for every student or assignment, it can serve as a starting point when calculating how much time students need to complete an assignment. It is important to note that in grades where classes are departmentalized it is important that all teachers are on the same page as the totals in the chart above is the recommended amount of total homework per night and not just for a single class.

Kindergarten – 4th Grade (Elementary Recommendations)

*If students are required to write the questions, then you will need to add 2 additional minutes per problem. (i.e. 1-English problem requires 4 minutes if students are required to write the sentence/question.)

5th – 8th Grade (Middle School Recommendations)

*If students are required to write the questions, then you will need to add 2 additional minutes per problem. (i.e. 1-English problem requires 5 minutes if students are required to write the sentence/question.)

Assigning Homework Example

It is recommended that 5 th graders have 50-60 minutes of homework per night. In a self-contained class, a teacher assigns 5 multi-step math problems, 5 English problems, 10 spelling words to be written 3x each, and 10 science definitions on a particular night.

3. There are a few critical academic skill builders that students should be expected to do every night or as needed. Teachers should also consider these things. However, they may or may not, be factored into the total time to complete homework. Teachers should use their best judgment to make that determination:

• Independent Reading – 20-30 minutes per day
• Study for Test/Quiz - varies
• Multiplication Math Fact Practice (3-4) – varies - until facts are mastered
• Sight Word Practice (K-2) – varies - until all lists are mastered

4. Coming to a general consensus regarding homework is almost impossible.  School leaders must bring everyone to the table, solicit feedback, and come up with a plan that works best for the majority. This plan should be reevaluated and adjusted continuously. What works well for one school may not necessarily be the best solution for another.

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Fast Grading: Time-Saving Tips for Grading Efficiently

But, frankly, it’s a lot. As soon as you knock out one stack, another pops up like a game of whack-a-mole. Sometimes you’ll be managing multiple piles at once, and keeping your head above water feels impossible. However, there are some practices that can help you save time. Here are a few I’ve learned over the years.

#1: Turn grading time into class discussions.

For daily grades–homework, classwork, pop quizzes–you can lead students in grading their own work.

There are so many reasons I love this method. (And honestly, saving grading time is just a happy byproduct.) 

Additionally, you’ll quickly pinpoint widely-missed learning objectives, allowing you to double back and re-teach concepts with a new approach. It makes so much more sense to address gaps right in the moment rather than in a day or two after you’ve graded and handed back an assignment. 

Another valuable effect is that students will quickly understand that their mistakes lead to learning opportunities . It helps build and sustain this classroom culture when students see that they are not the only ones missing something. “I’m actually really glad you missed that one” is an unusual but effective way to develop that culture.

And finally, yes – it saves you tons of grading time. You’ll want to monitor closely to be sure students are grading honestly, but you’ll spend way less time on it overall.

If you construct a solid rubric, the grading will fly by. In fact, the assessment will begin to feel almost automatic. Plus, a well-designed rubric can still allow for subjectivity in grading, showing students that it’s not just about checking off boxes but doing so in the best possible way.

Building a rubric takes some trial and error, but I promise you — once you have it down, it will save you gobs of time and will make your grading consistent and fair. You don’t have to start from scratch, either; Rubistar is a great (and free! ) place to get started.

#3: You don’t have to grade everything .

This doesn’t require much explanation, but rather a bit of instinct and professional judgment. Sometimes, you just need to let it go.  Remember, the goal of any assignment is to demonstrate understanding . If you are able to see at a glance where your class is, don’t torture yourself with more grading. Save your energy for feedback and grading that will benefit the students more.

Obviously this won’t work for every assignment. You do need to monitor students’ progress towards mastery of skills and content knowledge.

However, there is value in trying, and students need to know that. True effort is key; check to be sure students have put their best first try out there. I like to walk with a clipboard and a grade sheet , checking off completed assignments as I walk around.

Here are some examples where this could be appropriate:

• First time attempting a new skill
• Writing/project checkpoints (brainstorming, outline, rough draft)
• Random homework checks
• Exit tickets/informal assessments

A high-tech option would be to create assessments using Google Forms (or a similar format). The objective portions are graded instantly and provide helpful data and feedback. They take some time on the front end, but (to me) it’s worth it.

A mid-tech option is the good old Scantron. These forms have saved me countless hours and are also a great way for students to practice for standardized testing. Additionally, some grading machines can provide data, alerting you to all kinds of useful info.

For my low-tech friends, create blank answer sheets for students to fill out for objective portions of tests. Make teacher keys. And if you grade stacks of tests by page, not by student, your brain will amazingly start to recognize patterns, expediting the grading process. Similarly, try to grade all of one assignment at a time rather than bouncing between different ones.

As you grow in your classroom career, you’ll develop your own time-saving practices. But these ideas can get you started and keep you from drowning in papers and red pens.

[…] being intentional about bringing work home can both help bring you balance and rest. Trying a few grading hacks can help as well. Promise yourself you’ll try something new this year and see if it […]

[…] Fast Grading: Time-Saving Tips for Grading Efficiently – Every Teacher, Every Day […]

By year three of teaching I was able to fit “grading” in during the school day. I made sure I did not have to bring home grading during the weekend. I prioritized that and if I had to work from home, did planning or creative works – rather then grading! I recommend the book: Project Plan for Teachers: Organize Your Classroom for Success! A great gift for teachers, as a planner, course supplement, or training tool…Project Plan for Teachers: Organize Your Classroom for Success (PPT) was designed for aspiring, new and veteran teachers to develop a blue print for their classrooms. Best used at the beginning of the year, or to reset mid-year… PPT uses graphic organizers, charts, project plans and bits of advice along the way to help make your academic year a success. A teacher’s blueprint, covering up to 35+ areas of focus during academic year the workbook will assist educators in building the classroom and career they have always wanted. Organizing for Accountability; helps to minimize the burden of the many tasks, but also helpful for cooperating teachers, teachers in training, coaches, trainers, school leaders and professors of education. Those leading workshops on Classroom Management, Teaching Strategies and Organizational Skills for Reflective Practitioners can benefit from reflection questions, activities or graph organizers to shape the training and the discussion. Book available online. Copies also available via [email protected] with discounts.

Thanks for the recommendation! So helpful!

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Tactics for Tackling the Grading Dilemma

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Exhausted from a day of teaching, managing projects, and lunchtime detention, you head home, knowing a stack of ungraded student work awaits your arrival. You ask yourself, "What would happen if I didn't grade those papers?"

What would happen? Most likely, there wouldn't be a direct consequence other than the guilt teachers often feel for not keeping up with grading. With everything else on your plate, guilt is the absolute last thing you need! I'd like to offer some grading suggestions that might make life easier:

The Power of Peer Assessment and Self-Assessment

Students grading and assessing each other goes far beyond lightening the load for the teacher: It allows students to learn from each other and practice being fair and impartial and gives the kids a chance to really get to know the assignment and expectations -- inside and out.

I have found that students are often much tougher on each other -- and themselves -- when it comes to grading. Which brings me to self-assessment. Why not let students help you develop a rubric, or a criteria chart, for the assignment and then allow each student to grade herself? When you go to check a stack of papers that have been self-scored, don't be surprised if most students have faithfully followed the expectations and graded themselves more than fairly.

Before I go any further, I'd like to throw in a quick disclaimer: As a former secondary school teacher, with five class periods and nearly 150 students, I can speak only from my own experience. I have a hunch that elementary school teachers might have some different approaches for dealing with the grading load. (Teachers in grades K-6: Please contribute your comments below!)

The One-in-Four Rule

My second year in the classroom, an education professor told me that the key to longevity is to grade only one in four assignments. That strategy means that three are perhaps assigned only for credit or no credit, while the fourth gets your undivided attention -- a grade and comments. This rule saved me.

The rule allows you to keep up the rigor and keep your sanity at the same time. You know there is something not quite working when the teacher is carrying a larger workload than the students. And if you are an English teacher, as was I, that stack of essays can get quite daunting pretty quickly. (By the way, Carol Jago's book Papers, Papers, Papers: An English Teacher's Survival Guide is a must-have grading-survival guide for all language arts instructors.)

The Stamping Method

Go to a crafts store and buy a selection of ink stamps, or go online and design your own. I had stamps made that were self-inking and read "Exemplary," "Accomplished," "Promising," and "Developing." I used these four stamps for the papers I chose to assess, not grade. I could spot-check a paper and stamp it with the appropriate stamp in less than two minutes.

In my grade book, I would assign points -- or not. What does that mean? Some of the work I would just stamp with a generic stamp, such as a smiling daisy, and return. Ask yourself this question: Would it benefit my students more for me to fiddle around with inputting that measly assignment in the gradebook, or should I spend that valuable time developing a dynamic lesson instead? Exactly.

Student Journals

Ever lost or misplaced student work? (I think we all have, unfortunately.) This suggestion curtails that possibly, and, more importantly, places a high level of accountability on the students and teaches them organization. Also, crafting all of one's assignments in one notebook or journal is powerful stuff. It serves as a comprehensive artifact of one's learning.

Require students to follow a specific format for their journal -- one section for daily journal writing and class work, and another section for homework, for example. Students can keep a running table of contents in the front, and write "Didn't do" on the line where they are missing an assignment.

Collect notebooks every other week, and decide which assignments should be the one of the four to assign a grade and give teacher comments. For the rest, do quick assessments. (Hopefully, you will have a few of the assignments already graded by self-assessment or peer assessment.) For secondary school teachers, be sure to stagger the days and weeks you collect notebooks from different class periods.

Finally, consider assigning the overall work in the journal one grade, and writing it with the date on the inside front cover. This works as a carrot for students every two weeks. They know it's a weighty grade, and they know it is in their hands. For As and Bs, I would put a sticker -- a glittery dolphin or a smiling sun, for example -- next to their grade, and students would often proudly show it off to their tablemates (and these were high school kids!)

Let's face it, many of us spend valuable minutes and hours, even days, grading assignments that probably don't need such attention. (Teachers are as slammed in their day as the busiest waiter or emergency-room physician is. It's true -- we are.)

Consider shifting some of that precious time from grading to developing your already awesome lessons into even more dynamic and relevant learning experiences for students.

How have you tackled the grading dilemma? What creative and effective ways have you involved students in assessing their own learning? Please share your ideas.

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Homework: A New User's Guide

Cory Turner

If you made it past the headline, you're likely a student, concerned parent, teacher or, like me, a nerd nostalgist who enjoys basking in the distant glow of Homework Triumphs Past (second-grade report on Custer's Last Stand, nailed it!).

Whoever you are, you're surely hoping for some clarity in the loud, perennial debate over whether U.S. students are justifiably exhausted and nervous from too much homework — even though some international comparisons suggest they're sitting comfortably at the average.

Well, here goes. I've mapped out six, research-based polestars that should help guide you to some reasonable conclusions about homework.

How much homework do U.S. students get?

The best answer comes from something called the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP . In 2012, students in three different age groups — 9, 13 and 17 — were asked, "How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?" The vast majority of 9-year-olds (79 percent) and 13-year-olds (65 percent) and still a majority of 17-year-olds (53 percent) all reported doing an hour or less of homework the day before.

Another study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that high school students who reported doing homework outside of school did, on average, about seven hours a week.

If you're hungry for more data on this — and some perspective — check out this exhaustive report put together last year by researcher Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution.

An hour or less a day? But we hear so many horror stories! Why?

The fact is, some students do have a ton of homework. In high school we see a kind of student divergence — between those who choose or find themselves tracked into less-rigorous coursework and those who enroll in honors classes or multiple Advanced Placement courses. And the latter students are getting a lot of homework. In that 2012 NAEP survey, 13 percent of 17-year-olds reported doing more than two hours of homework the previous night. That's not a lot of students, but they're clearly doing a lot of work.

Source: Met Life Survey of the American Teacher, The Homework Experience, 2007. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

That also tracks with a famous survey from 2007 — from MetLife — that asked parents what they think of their kids' homework load. Sixty percent said it was just right. Twenty-five percent said their kids are getting too little. Just 15 percent of parents said their kids have too much homework.

Research also suggests that the students doing the most work have something else in common: income. "I think that the debate over homework in some ways is a social class issue," says Janine Bempechat, professor of human development at Wheelock College. "There's no question that in affluent communities, children are really over-taxed, over-burdened with homework."

But the vast majority of students do not seem to have inordinate workloads. And the ones who do are generally volunteering for the tough stuff. That doesn't make it easier, but it does make it a choice.

Do we know how much homework students in other countries are doing?

Sort of. Caveats abound here. Education systems and perceptions of what is and isn't homework can vary remarkably overseas. So any comparison is, to a degree, apples-to-oranges (or, at least, apples-to-pears). A 2012 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development pegged the U.S. homework load for 15-year-olds at around six hours per week. That's just above the study's average. It found that students in Hong Kong are also doing about six hours a week. Much of Europe checks in between four and five hours a week. In Japan, it's four hours. And Korea's near the bottom, at three hours.

Source: OECD, PISA 2012 Database, Table IV.3.48. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

How much homework is too much?

Better yet, how much is just right? Harris Cooper at Duke University has done some of the best work on homework. He and his team reviewed dozens of studies, from 1987 to 2003, looking for consensus on what works and what doesn't. A common rule of thumb, he says, is what's called the 10-minute rule. Take the child's grade and multiply by 10. So first-graders should have roughly 10 minutes of homework a night, 40 minutes for fourth-graders, on up to two hours for seniors in high school. A lot of of schools use this. Even the National PTA officially endorses it.

Homework clearly improves student performance, right?

Not necessarily. It depends on the age of the child. Looking over the research, there's little to no evidence that homework improves student achievement in elementary school. Then again, the many experts I spoke with all said the same thing: The point of homework in those primary grades isn't entirely academic. It's about teaching things like time-management and self-direction.

But, by high school the evidence shifts. Harris Cooper's massive review found, in middle and high school, a positive correlation between homework and student achievement on unit tests. It seems to help. But more is not always better. Cooper points out that, depending on the subject and the age of the student, there is a law of diminishing returns. Again, he recommends the 10-minute rule.

What kinds of homework seem to be most effective?

This is where things get really interesting. Because homework should be about learning, right? To understand what kinds of homework best help kids learn, we really need to talk about memory and the brain.

Let's start with something called the spacing effect . Say a child has to do a vocabulary worksheet. The next week, it's a new worksheet with different words and so on. Well, research shows that the brain is better at remembering when we repeat with consistency, not when we study in long, isolated chunks of time. Do a little bit of vocabulary each night, repeating the same words night after night.

Similarly, a professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Henry "Roddy" Roediger III , recommends that teachers give students plenty of little quizzes, which he says strengthen the brain's ability to remember. Don't fret. They can be low-stakes or no-stakes, says Roediger: It's the steady recall and repetition that matter. He also recommends, as homework, that students try testing themselves instead of simply re-reading the text or class notes.

There's also something known as interleaving . This is big in the debate over math homework. Many of us — myself included — learned math by focusing on one concept at a time, doing a worksheet to practice that concept, then moving on.

Well, there's evidence that students learn more when homework requires them to choose among multiple strategies — new and old — when solving problems. In other words, kids learn when they have to draw not just from what they learned in class that day but that week, that month, that year.

One last note: Experts agree that homework should generally be about reinforcing what students learned in class (this is especially true in math). Sometimes it can — and should — be used to introduce new material, but here's where so many horror stories begin.

Tom Loveless, a former teacher, offers this advice: "I don't think teachers should ever send brand-new material that puts the parent in the position of a teacher. That's a disaster. My own personal philosophy was: Homework is best if it's material that requires more practice but they've already received initial instruction."

Or, in the words of the National PTA: "Homework that cannot be done without help is not good homework."

More From Forbes

New report: how do teachers spend their time.

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TOPSHOT - Children listen to their teacher as they sit in a classroom on the first day of the start ... [+] of the school year, at the Chaptal elementary school in Paris, on September 2, 2019. - In France some 12.4 million students crossed the doors of elementary schools (6.7 million), secondary school (3.4 million) and high schools (2.3 million) on September 2, 2019. (Photo by Martin BUREAU / AFP) (Photo credit should read MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images)

One of my favorite quotations comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring . When Gandalf the wizard recounts the story of the ring and the havoc that it has brought to Middle-earth to the hero Frodo, Frodo says to him, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” To which Gandalf replies, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Given the tumult of the past several years, I have to imagine that many of us have felt like Frodo. Especially in education, the pandemic threw things into chaos and caused massive losses of learning . When schools open back up in the fall, they are going to have to make up for a lot of lost time. They will not be given much time to do so, so they’ll have to make the most of it.

Do schools make the most of the time that they are given? In partnership with Hanover Research , I surveyed a national sample of 686 public, charter, and private school teachers . I asked them a battery of questions about how they spend their days both inside and outside the classroom to try and answer that question. Here are some big takeaways.

Direct, whole class instruction is the most popular method of classroom teaching . Of the 686 teachers surveyed, 81 percent said that they had engaged in direct, whole class instruction in the previous week. Of those teachers, almost a quarter (24%) said that they spent more than 10 hours of that week providing it. The next most popular instructional modality was working with students individually, with 78% of surveyed teachers stating that they had engaged in it in the previous week and 6% of those teachers saying that they spent at least 10 hours doing so.

Student discipline issues are the most common classroom interruption . When asked to think back to their most recent day of teaching and identify what interruptions happened in their classroom, 58% of teachers said that they had been interrupted by a student discipline issue. Forty-six percent of teachers said that they had been interrupted by student questions or concerns outside of class, 39% had been interrupted by the intercom, and 27% had been interrupted by administrators. Fifty-nine percent of teachers said that they had to spend time out of the classroom addressing student discipline issues in the previous week. More than half of those teachers said that they spent more than one hour doing so.

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Almost three quarters of teachers spend less than 5 hours per week working outside of the regular school day. While the overworked teacher burning the midnight oil is a popular narrative in media, when asked “in the average week of teaching, how many hours do you spend on school-related activities outside of the regular school work day?” 10% of teachers said they spent less than one hour, 30% said that they spent 1 to 3 hours, 31% said they spent 3 to 5 hours, 18% said that they spent 5 to10 hours, and only 7% said that they spent more than 10 hours. This figure is corroborated by a similar question where I asked teachers to look back on their most recent school day and to think about how much time they spent on pre- and post-instructional activities. (Pre-instructional activities would be things like lesson planning and post-instruction would be things like grading.) Fifty-nine percent of respondents said that they spent less than one hour per day on pre-instruction and 58% said that they spent less than an hour on post-instructional activities.

There clearly are teachers putting in lots of out-of-school hours, but they are the exception, not the rule.

There were not large differences between school sectors. When the above questions were disaggregated by school sector, public, private, and charter school teachers tended to answer in very similar ways. Here and there, one sector might stand out as slightly different, but on the whole, it appears that teachers across sectors spend their time in similar ways.

There were interesting differences within the population of teachers. Longtime Brookings Institution education policy researcher Tom Loveless used to remind folks making comparisons of state-level school performance that the spread of student performance within states was much wider than the spread of student performance between states . It appears something like that is true in this survey as well. When I asked a question about how much time teachers spend working outside of school hours, the answers were similar from public, private, and charter school teachers. But looking within just the public school sector we see a spread of 8% of teachers spending less than an hour per week and 7% spending more than 10. Those are serious difference in teachers’ experiences that could be happening within the same school district or even building.

Hopefully better understanding how schools use time can be informative as they think about how to maximize the time that they have with students. The next few years will be critical to mitigate the massive levels of pandemic learning loss. Every minute will count.

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