Here are some of the best questions for a teacher survey about grading practices, plus tips to help you ask the right ones. We’ve seen that using conversational, AI-powered tools like Specific can help you build and launch these surveys in seconds.
Top open-ended questions for grading practices surveys
Open-ended questions let teachers freely share their thoughts—which is gold when you want deeper insights. These work best when you need context, personal stories, or want to spot patterns you might miss with simple yes/no. Just keep in mind that open questions typically have much higher nonresponse rates (up to 18% vs. 1-2% for closed questions) [1]. Still, the detail you can unlock often makes it worthwhile, especially if you use follow-up questions or an engaging format.
How do you decide which assignments to grade for accuracy versus for completion?
Can you walk us through your typical grading workflow for a major assessment?
What do you find most challenging about your current grading process?
How (if at all) do you adjust your grading to account for student differences?
What do you wish students better understood about how you grade their work?
In what ways do you involve students in grading or self-assessment?
How do you handle late assignments or requests for re-grading?
What’s one change you’d make to your grading policy if you could?
How have changes in grading practices (like standards-based grading or portfolio assessment) affected your approach?
What feedback have you received from students or parents about your grading practices?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for grading practices
Single-select multiple-choice questions are perfect when you want structured, quantifiable feedback—or to jumpstart conversation with an easy entry point. They’re especially helpful if some teachers might feel overwhelmed by long-form answers. You can always use a follow-up question to let them expand on their initial pick.
Question: Which grading method do you use most often in your classroom?
Traditional percentage-based grading
Standards-based grading
Portfolio or project-based assessment
Combination of methods
Other
Question: How often do you update students about their grades?
Weekly or more
Every few weeks
At the end of each marking period
Only when students ask
Question: Do you use technology platforms to support grading?
Yes, regularly
Sometimes
Rarely
No
When to followup with "why?" It’s smart to ask “why” after someone answers a multiple-choice question, especially if you want the real reason behind their answer. For example, if a teacher selects “portfolio assessment,” a good follow-up is: “Why do you prefer this method? What do you find most effective about it?”
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include "Other" when your options might not cover every teacher’s experience—often the case with innovative or niche grading methods. The follow-up lets teachers share an approach you hadn’t considered, unlocking fresh insights.
NPS question for teacher grading practices feedback
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question—“How likely are you to recommend your school’s grading practices to a colleague?”—can be eye-opening in a teacher survey about grading practices. NPS isn’t just for customer satisfaction; it measures advocacy and overall sentiment in educational teams too. You’ll see at a glance if teachers are promoters, passives, or detractors, and can dig deeper with follow-ups. Try this NPS survey generator for teachers and grading practices to see how it works.
The power of follow-up questions
If you want insightful, actionable survey results, you can’t just stop at the first answer. Follow-up questions create more in-depth responses, clarify ambiguities, and make your surveys feel truly conversational. Modern survey tools like Specific include an automatic AI follow-up questions feature that asks smart, context-aware followups, just like an expert researcher would. This saves you hours chasing down answers via email and boosts the completeness and relevance of each response.
Teacher: “I use multiple methods depending on the assignment.”
AI follow-up: “Could you share an example of when you choose portfolio assessment over traditional grading—and why?”
How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 follow-up questions are usually enough. It’s important to balance depth with survey fatigue: let teachers skip ahead when they’ve already made their point. Specific allows you to set this logic automatically.
This makes it a conversational survey. Unlike rigid forms, follow-up-driven surveys feel like a dialogue, not an interrogation. This keeps teachers engaged and more willing to share.
AI survey response analysis is easy—even with hundreds of open-text responses, you can use AI to cluster and summarize key themes quickly. See how in this guide to analyzing teacher survey responses with AI.
Automated follow-ups are a new way to make every response count. Try generating a teacher grading practices survey and experience it for yourself.
How to prompt ChatGPT for teacher grading practices questions
You can use AI tools like ChatGPT for brainstorming high-quality survey questions. Start simple:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for teacher survey about grading practices.
If you want better results, give extra context (who you are, your school, why you’re surveying, what decisions you hope the feedback will guide):
We are a team of curriculum designers at a K–12 school district looking to improve student equity. Suggest 10 open-ended questions for a teacher survey about grading practices so we can learn about the diversity of approaches, pain points, and areas where teachers want support.
AI can also help organize your draft questions:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Next, pick the category you want deep insights on, and ask for more:
Generate 10 questions for the category “handling late work and flexibility in grading.”
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey uses chat-like interactions (instead of static forms) to encourage open responses, clarify with smart follow-ups, and mirror a real conversation. AI survey generators like Specific change the game by letting you describe your survey needs in plain language and instantly creating a draft—no code, templates, or manual question-writing required. Even better, it adapts the follow-up questions to each respondent in the moment, increasing detail and relevance.
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated (Conversational) Survey |
|---|---|
Create questions one by one, editing as you go | Describe survey in a sentence, get personalized draft instantly |
Static forms; zero follow-ups unless pre-scripted | Smart, real-time follow-ups drive deeper insights |
Open-ended responses can be messy to analyze | Built-in AI summarizes and organizes responses |
Works but can feel impersonal | Feels like a human conversation in chat |
Why use AI for teacher surveys? AI survey tools boost engagement and data quality. For example, studies show that teachers (and other respondents) provide more detailed and informative answers to chatbots than traditional online surveys, as measured by response quality [2]. Tools like Specific make this easy—even offering an AI survey editor for making quick tweaks by chatting and a survey builder that works for any topic.
If you want a practical walk-through, check out our how-to article on creating a teacher grading practices survey.
Specific delivers a best-in-class, fully conversational survey experience. Both you and your teachers will appreciate a feedback process that’s as smooth as texting.
See this grading practices survey example now
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