No AR Points In School

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.

Pass or fail grading systems is just not accurate enough to determine a students performance on his or her work. It is almost just not fair especially for students in college that have classes with a pass or fail grading system. Its not fair because students pay so much money to go

The current academic grading system is helpful in student performance. The main reason the opposition disagrees with my point of view is simply that they believe the system has unfair limits and is not easily understood by everyone. The opposition argues that,“the grading scale is easy to manipulate because it is often subjective in nature.” (Meador) They argue this because, every teacher has a different teaching style and ways of grading. For example, during high school chemistry, my teacher required that we explain our solving process on each

No extra credit would be giving to substitute for poor performance or to increase grades.

Did you know, that in some schools, they have abolished the grading system and you have as many attempts as possible to get the answer right(Vivian Diller)? This isn't even close to what would happen in a real job, if you keep failing, you are going to get fired. Students in any kind of school should not receive participation awards because they do not deserve an award for "trying", you cannot get far in life by "trying."

They should take the time to actually work with the student and try to improve their work, and if they still can’t get it right, try to help them by effort. If the student’s really working hard and trying to prove to you that they are getting on track and that they are working hard I feel that they deserve a few points. From personal experience and opinion, I think that I will prefer a teacher that will help me and give me effort points instead of just moving me on not caring about my education. I have seen incidents in that matter and all it did was set the student up for failure. Experiences from high school, when I was attending the principal gave the teachers a rule that if the students were failing below a 60% in the class the teacher could not put that grade on the report card. So what they will do is give the student a 60% for that grading period as a final grade and students used this as a way to play around and not take it seriously because they knew that they were gonna get a 60%.(lowe) Michael Zuckerman used this as an example in his article about the students attending Harvard University. Harvard students were getting by fairly easy and the graduating class was not prepared for the real world. They did not take it seriously, and to think that it is “Harvard” doing this is mind blowing.(Zuckerman)This issue didn’t do anything but make the students not care about information in my opinion. They are not caring and they are giving up, that’s why there are more dropouts. So with that said, why is grade inflation the problem? Is it because of the students or the

Teachers may deduct points for incomplete or late work and may add points for class attendance and participation. The grading standards include research, citations, writing style, legal analysis, sentence and paragraph structure, and grammar.

For this reason, grade fixing/inflation is not helpful to students. It may increase a student’s GPA, i.e. grade point average at the time, but in the long run, it will only become a proverbial noose around that same student’s neck while attempting to become successful at their future jobs. In fact, employers criticize recent college graduates for the mindset they have that perpetuates the entitlement mindset. It is this mentality, if not checked at the door, which jeopardizes all future endeavors for the said student. Regardless, whether it be furthering their education, or finding a job.

People who are against the pass fail system object to students with letter grades lower than an A receiving the same recognition since they do not work as hard. Protestors of the pass fail grading system like the letter grading system because it creates competition between students which is needed to show the better and brighter students. Groups against the pass fail system, additionally, believe that grades are necessary for college admittance. If passing were on every student’s report cards colleges would be taking a “shot in the dark” and would not have an accurate appraisal of the students they are considering. Supporters of the letter grading system would argue that implementing the pass-fail system would only hurt students and imply to them that there is not room to excel, only to pass.

This effort based grading compares students to students rather than students to the standards. A New York Times article written by Adam Grant says, “The goal [of Common Core] is to fight grade inflation, but the forced curve suffers from two serious flaws. One: it arbitrarily limits the number of students who can excel [...] [Two: it] create[s] an atmosphere that’s toxic by pitting students against one another” (Grant). Standards are set for a reason: to determine whether or not students can achieve what they must achieve to be college ready after twelve years of schooling. When teachers begin to curve tests and offer additional incentives to build a student’s grade up, they’re essentially ignoring the fact that the student may not completely understand the topic. In a personal interview with Champlin-Brooklyn Park Academy Assistant Principal, Kimberly Nelson, it was stated, “regular course testing should be graded like standardized testing; compare students to the proficiency standard, not students to students” (Nelson). In support of this statement, two economists, “Pradeep Dubey and John Geanakoplos[,] concluded” through study and analysis of grading systems, “a forced grade curve is a disincentive to study. ‘Absolute grading is better than grading on a curve’” (Grant). In other words, students neglect additional studying, assuming their grade to be already

In schools all over the United States student athletes are focusing more and more on their athletic involvement and less on their education. This is causing the percentage of students, in our nation, on the honor roll to drop tremendously. Think about it, the kids that are falling behind in school because of athletic involvement are lowering their chances to qualify for scholarships. The less scholarships they qualify for the more the universities are going to pound more money out of them that isn’t necessary. This may cause the students of our nation to change what they really want to go out and be, it may even cause them to not go to college. Every student no matter what school they go to should have to maintain honor roll level grades. If

The grading system was made, for student to pass or fail. This, of course, is absurd. What we need is a system that do not judge a student work. Put your all in your work just to see a teacher put a failing grade on your work. When student fail some dropout of school, and become another negative static. How would you feel if someone you knew personnel, dropout school because they felt like was just getting harder everyday? Do you want to see your students succeed, and become successful?

    In today’s society, children think they need to be awarded for participating in events. Participation awards do not always teach children the lessons they need to learn. Participation awards can always be great, but it is not teaching the children the lessons we want them to learn. “We must focus on process and progress, not results and rewards,” (Merryman). The awards affect how the children will act later in their life. Children will always participate if it meant they would receive an award.

Do you like getting AR points, I don’t. Here are some reasons why AR points are not necessary. AR points are a waste of time. Kids with reading disabilities have hard time concentrating on books and especially taking test on them. AR points also is just extra stress on students when they have 6 other classes. I will go into more detail if the following text.

If they are not graded on that, then will not be able to see how those aspects of their education are necessary in the “real world”. This can also negatively affect their grades. Students that are good at regular assignments, but not good when it comes to tests, it could be a serious issue for them, as it will be harder to get their grades back up. Several teachers told parents that they wouldn’t award the highest number on the scale, or that extra work must be completed to earn 4s, leaving children confused on how to reach the advanced level of proficiency (See “Parents give standards-based grading scale F” ¶ ). Since students aren’t being graded on their classroom participation or homework completion, their grades can take a major downfall if they do make a big mistake, such as bomb a test, and they might not be able to make up for it by earning bonus points from extra credit either. If they do, then it would be a lot more work than it should be. Students who are “standards-based” graded will see their overall grade drop due to the system’s inability to evaluate all aspects of their education, as well as not being able to fully understand its methods.