More Than a Grade: The Distance Traveled is the Measure of Potential

In my last post, I argued that futures thinking is missing the mark. We’ve become so fixated on preparing students for what’s ahead that we risk neglecting what is in front of us. Learning is treated as a necessity—a prerequisite for success—rather than a process.

If we look at school, the dominant narrative is all about preparation: getting students ready for the next grade, the next exam, university, life. “You need to study for this test so you can do well, move up, and eventually succeed.” As I said previously, we’ve over-indexed on learning for the future, reducing it to a transaction.

A major reason for this is that summative assessment cultures reinforce a flawed way of thinking about learning and potential. It’s not that summative assessments can’t measure learning as a journey, but the way they are typically positioned in education reduces them to snapshots, moments in time used to predict future success.

What if we shifted our attention way from outcomes and toward measuring obstacles overcome? If how good a learner someone is related not primarily to how they perform but how far they’ve traveled to get there.

Take the story of José M. Hernández, the astronaut whose journey was captured in the film A Million Miles Away. He was rejected by NASA 11 times before finally being accepted.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant in his book Hidden Potential, argues that it’s because our systems for judging qualifications are broken. They’re designed to spot excellence in its final form—not in progress. In applying to NASA, Hernández’s early experiences as a farm laborer and the resilience he built overcoming adversity weren’t considered indicators of his potential. But they should have been.

Similarly, a student’s grade on an exam tells us very little about their future potential. We track a students progress from one test to the next and grades can show improvement, but this doesn’t capture the obstacles a student has navigated. Whether personal adversity, systemic barriers, or the sheer effort required to close a learning gap, these are the indicators of success.

The issue isn’t summative assessment as a tool—it’s how it’s wielded within a culture that prioritizes performance over process. The current system doesn’t just measure learning; it dictates who is seen as ‘capable’ and who isn’t, often without acknowledging any of the context behind those numbers. Instead, like Hernández, the distance traveled should be our measure of a students potential.

Learning, then, becomes not just an investment in the future; it’s an ongoing process of discovery, resilience, and transformation.

So how do we ensure we test for learning, as opposed to mastery?

Eduardo Briceño , in The Performance Paradox, distinguishes between two zones:

• The learning zone, where individuals are free to experiment, make mistakes, and grow.

• The performance zone, where they apply what they’ve learned under pressure.

This feels like the distinction at the heart of the debate around AI in education. Critics of generative AI worrying about its impact on assessment and performance, while proponents are focused on how it might enhance learning. 

The problem is that for the large part, institutions are incentivised to care about performance. For schools that operate as competitive businesses, performance matters. It’s not that they don’t want authentic learning, they just believe there is a trade off that needs to be made, between learning and achievement. Just last year a principal asked me last year how we balance parental expectations for top results with authentic teaching and learning? 

This is a false dichotomy. Authentic learning produces results. In fact, Adam Grant argues that the more opportunities young people have to make mistakes, the better they perform in the long run. I’ll say that again, more mistakes lead to better outcomes.

Why are we so willing to accept the tech industry is built on concepts like failing fast, or that large film companies can produce films that flop but we under-prioritize failure and risk-taking in schools?

Don’t get me wrong, performance matters. I want the pilot flying the plane I’m in to perform, I don’t want them making mistakes mid-flight. But their ability to perform safely and effectively depends on the time they spent in flight school (in the learning zone). Real learning requires failure.

I believe students’ don’t spend enough time in the learning zone. We’re fixated on performance, driven by competitive schooling, so much so that we avoid the very process that leads to mastery. Competitive assessment goes further than just measuring performance, it actively hinders it. We’re chasing short-term results at the expense of deep, lasting learning.

So how do we build a process-forward, growth-focused learning culture in our school? In Part 3, I’ll dive into how we start this by fostering a culture of psychological safety—in classrooms, among teachers, and within our school community. Ultimately, parents, teachers, and students all want what’s best for young people, so part of the work is aligning on what that means. If we want better outcomes, we need to stop obsessing over assessment and start investing in learning.

References:

Briceño, E. (2023). Performance paradox: Turning the power of mindset into action. Random House Publishing Group. 

Grant, A. (2023). Hidden potential: The science of achieving greater things. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.