I Am An International Student

Education is a long-term investment. We, as students, work hard to acquire knowledge and to hone our skills so that we may use them one day. The effort we put into a single assignment should be considered as both for that specific assignment and for our rounding as complete, educated individuals. And with this mindset, students should be motivated even more to put more effort and hard work into academics, with the goal of bettering themselves for the future and advancing their prospects as individuals. And with this hard work and effort will come progress, and this progress should be reflected in the grading—not necessarily on individual assignments, but on the student’s education as a

While reading Ken Bain’s book “What the Best College Students Do” of the five different types of students he describes, I feel like I fall under the label of one having mediocre grades but achieving success. I make good grades, however I do not necessarily believe my grades always reflect my hard work, determination and effort put in, similar to his theory on false hope in standardized testing. Throughout my school career, I have consistently made A and B grades. I can remember only one C grade, which was a quarter grade, and very disappointing, but a lesson learned. At the same time though, and as Bain helped me realize through his text, grades are not everything and making a C is not something that is going to kill me; there is simply more to school than a letter grade. In fact he points out through most of the 1800s schools only used two grades, pass or fail. As seen nowadays, schools have since adopted the letter grade system.

Alfie Kohn discussed multiple fabulous points in his article, “Degrading to De-Grading”. The author suggests more effective ways to assess students’ progress other than numerical or letter grades. Kohn goes into detail about why our current grading system is flawed. Grades can cause students to lose interest in learning which causes them to stop taking challenges. If students are not engaged and interested than they are not retaining the information they are being taught. The grading system can also cause students to develop unhealthy competition with one another for instance, “I got a better grade than you!”. Indeed, grades are a wonderful concept, but they tend to be more hurtful than helpful. In some cases, grades can have positive effects on students. For example, setting goals for various assignments, or receiving help where they are struggling. Though, there are alternatives that could make positive changes in the system.

The last theme I found presented in these sources is measurement of student success. Source number one, “Are Exams Bad for Children?”, explains that we can find better ways to measure a student’s learning abilities. Stephanie Schneider says, “More reliable methods of assessment can provide meaningful information that assist student learning, rather than a test that often serves as a punitive device” (30). The

The definition of success and routes to success may be different, but it is undeniable that all people want to succeed in their lives. According to Malcolm Gladwell, success is seen as an achievement coming from hidden opportunities, effort, diverse backgrounds, or cultural legacy, in life. However, I believe education is one of the factors that contribute the achievement of individuals. There are flaws or inequalities in the United States’ education system, and one of these is the use of standardized test which is the issue that comes in between the individual and their successes. In order to increase the chance of success for an individual, standardized testing should be revoked from education because it does not measure the creativity and knowledge of students which play important roles for one to succeed.

It also can deal with how much the student as learn and understanding of the information. Many of times academic achievement is shown by grades that are given out by the teacher. The teacher gets these grades by test and assignments the students perform by using the information they gain in class. Academic achievement is very important and all schools want everyone student to have high academic achievement.

Most of test is just going to tell what students know on paper, but scores do not show what can an individual apply the knowledge in the real world. For instance, a person who has practice and invested their time on something and apply it in the real world is the one who's going to do well when it comes to who is actually is smart the one who has practice or the one that took the test and did good but is going to do bad because of the person that did not apply outside than a

School is slave labor. Rather than enjoying or learning from their classes, students are forced to do useless work that will often be forgotten immediately. Grades are meant to show much a student understands a class, but instead are used as a scale of how well a student can regurgitate answers onto a test. Students only work for good grades because of the threat of being punished for failure, and the promise of reward for passing. The punishments in this case are detention or trouble from teachers, and the rewards are making the honor roll or getting bragging rights. The real reward for learning should be having new knowledge, but this is not taken into consideration. Jerry Farber, a professor at U.S.D, made the strong claim that grades are useless and harmful in his essay, “A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System.” I wholeheartedly agree with Farber’s objection to our current grading system.

High school grades are a better way of looking at a student’s work progress than through only an standardized test(s). High school grades give a better idea of how the student will look in their future education and career. Standardized testing can shock and freak some students out and make them worry and not do so well, where as high school grades can be looked at through an extent of time on the student. Also the test scores have been categorized by the students work ability, and there are many other problems with the tests for example with the questions and how the results come out. “High school grades reflect years of effort and are a more reliable assessment

Are grades important? Discuss whether grades are necessary in order to keep students on track with learning.

“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.

If someone was to ask you “how do you define student achievement?” what would your answer be? Would you say student achievement is measured by state achievement tests? Or would you say that student achievement is too complex a subject to be objectively measured? There are many important skills students must be taught, and we need a way to effectively measure if they are in fact learning those skills. However, standardized tests cannot effectively show the learning of all students, especially those that are not good test takers. And of those skills that are tested, there are an endless number of arguably more important skills that aren’t being valued because they cannot be calculated. Furthermore,

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

Academic success could never be fully measured by degrees alone, but it can include a person’s well-being as well as their mind and certain characteristics about a person that make them unique. This success can be achieved in different ways by these different people with different strengths, but there is the same ultimate goal in sight of each and every student enrolled in college at some point. However, this goal of being successful in not only school but in life, can sometimes turn out to be the opposite of how we plan. Of course, a student can achieve success by earning degrees and still fail in life. Academic success can also be a huge constituent to a students vocational calling in college as young students make a transition into adulthood.

With so many ways to describe who I am, I think I will start off with the basics. I am a college student that attends Drake University. I would identify myself as hard-working, responsible, and persistent. At the beginning of the term, I identified myself as how I felt in the moment with answers such as tired, hungry, and bored. Yes, those were traits I identified myself within the moment, but now I try to look far and beyond the present. I want to identify myself as someone who strives to achieve everything she ever wanted, including graduating from college, with honors and getting involved within the college community. I want to be able to identify with things that have meaning and substance that I have always strived for including being determined and self-reliant.