Analyzing and Argumentative Essay: Grades and Self-Esteem

Self esteem is the component of a person's personality that dictates how they view themselves. People with healthy self-esteem

The concept of self esteem is widespread in life. When it comes to academics and extracurricular actives people associate high self esteem is necessary for success. Society makes promoting self esteem an important goal. With that in mind, it is surprising that only recently scientific literature began providing insight into the nature of development of self esteem.

Academic self- esteem is wanting to get good grades and perform well in school by working very hard to get the best grades.

Furthermore, the author points out that grades are not improving because students and education are improving but rather because parents and students are demanding grades to be adjusted according to what they think it is needed not what it is deserved. “Students and parents are demanding -- and getting -- what they think of as their money's worth” (Staples, 216). Students are not receiving the grade they truly deserve based on their work but what the parents and the students themselves

self esteem cultivates success. The greater our self esteem, the better equipped we are to deal with life’s daily challenges and stressors. Positive self esteem enables us to handle problems and bounce back from them quicker.

School testing is a very controversial topic. Many people believe that SOL testing is useless and unnecessary, while others believe it is very helpful. In “Problems With Standardized Testing” by Jasmine Evans, she states the issues and irregularities that come with testing. She explains how the stakes are too high, pressuring students harshly: “That pressure to succeed creates a poor environment for learning” (Evans par.

When high stakes tests are used as a large part of a teacher’s performance evaluation it fails to show the bigger picture. Students come from diverse learning backgrounds and testing does not show the growth that the teacher helped the students to accomplish. High stakes testing forces teachers to focus only on subjects tested and spend many, many hours on teaching test-taking strategies. By narrowing the curriculum, testing does not allow students to focus on a deep understanding of material or develop critical thinking skills. There has also been a “trickle down” of curriculum into the lower grade levels to help prepare them for standardized testing.

High stakes assessments are damaging our education system because all the important decisions are being made base in one assessment and not taking under consideration other evaluations. I would like to see a change in the way students, teachers and schools are being evaluated, I want to see a balance between the decisions that is affecting students. I want our schools to teach the curriculum and not a test. I don’t want students feel pressure and stop learning because of the fear of one

Responsiveness: Does the essay respond appropriately to the assignment sheet? Is the essay an argument?

Countless of students are not being educated as well as they should be. The article argues, the wrong test can ineffectively evaluate quality of strong teachers. Therefore, those teachers become penalized. Whereas, the wrong test can fail to identify a weak teacher. As a result, the student is who suffers in the end. Secondly, the article discusses three primary purposes for the educational testing’s; compare, to instruct, and to evaluate. Comparison allows the educational system to identify score differences among students, whereas instructional testing is an ongoing evidence of a student’s level of achievements. Lastly, evaluation is to determine the quality of teachers. So, if the tests are appropriately implements, students can benefit. However, comparison has dominated the American education system.

Opponents have stated that the tests are not objective or fair, that extreme testing challenges the ability to yield students that are critical thinkers, and they support a thin curriculum. Standardized testing evaluates a student’s performance on one certain day and does not take into account exterior influences. The success of a school is contingent on the performance of the students. There are many individuals who just do not do well on tests. Many of these students are understand the content and are smart, but it is not reflected on the test. Standardized testing only evaluates the student’s performance instead of the general progression of the student throughout the year. In this paper I will provide my thoughts on whether or not standardized testing is a good thing or

Of all the problems we have in our education system, grading is the most misunderstood. Alfie Kohn reinforces the idea that grades have a negative impact on students,in his essay from “Degrading to De-grading”, by stating that grades encourage students to take the “easy way”, by taking the least challenging courses. Another point Kohn makes is that students’ learning is negatively affected by grades because the students only recite the information for the test. After the teachers test the information the students just “learned”, the information becomes irrelevant to the student.The students quickly forgot the information and never really learn it. Not only do grades harm the student, but also the teacher. Grades harm

“Our educational goal [is] the production of caring, competent, loving, lovable people” . The students found in the schools across the United State are the future of America. They are the doctors, teachers, business people, lawyers and many other roles, that will be out in the workforce in the years to come. What they learn in school will impact them immensely; it is the responsibility of a teacher to give students the best education in order to ensure the common good of the future. It is essential for students to not only learn content matter, but also the skills to enable them to participate in a democracy. Due to standardized testing, the emphasis of education has become on score and rankings rather than learning. A standardized test does not look at the whole student, the scores provided are on a very narrow aspect of education. In the classroom, there are countless ways for teachers to assess the student as a whole person not as just a score. Standardized tests scores should not be the sole criteria for determining a student’s academic achievement.

I would argue that self-esteem is indeed critical to student success. Certainly, Maslow’s theory and model of student development can provide insight on the importance of self-esteem in self-actualization. Maslow’s theory understands self-esteem to be a measure of a human beings understanding of his or her acceptance and value. In order for an individual to have good self-esteem, he needs to perceive himself as understood, respected and useful. Recognition of the environment’s influence on self-esteem will necessarily help us to understand the importance of providing a positive educational framework in our classrooms. We must not undervalue the

Schools are and will forever be learning institutions, but learning isn’t limited to purely comprehension and fact memorization that can be found in books. Furthermore, knowledge is an unquantifiable metric and similarly, grades and scores have a multitude of factors that could affect the results. This is not to devalue good academic standing but rather raising a question of “Do we want to develop students holistically or