The Pros And Cons Of The American Grading System

As a Curriculum Coach, I facilitate professional development for teachers based on the needs of our staff and students. After spending time observing classrooms and meeting with teachers, I realized that we needed to examine our current grading practices. Our current practices focus too much on grading effort and behaviors, and not enough on measuring understanding of specific learning targets. As a result, our students and teachers focus on turning in assignments, instead of learning. If ask why a student is failing, the most common response is “he is not turning in his work”. Teachers are unable to communicate which specific learning targets the students are missing, because the grades are distorted by student behaviors. When making decisions about placement in honors courses, it is difficult to determine which students have the knowledge necessary to move into an advanced course because their grades are clouded by effort and

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 pressure to uphold a grade motivates students to look for and memorize the information on upcoming tests. Furthermore, students will be more likely to opt for projects and classes with more basic content to learn because easier classes increase the student's likelihood of receiving an A. To students, the easy way out is the right way since the success of gaining an A on transcripts has become more important than learning.

First and foremost, letter grades have been used since the 19th century without any complications. “The traditional grading scale is universally recognized. Virtually everyone knows that earning an A is good while earning an F is associated with failure. The traditional grading scale is easy to interpret and understand. The simplistic nature of the system makes it user-friendly for teachers, students, and parents. It also allows for a direct comparison from one student to another within a specific class” (Meador). Ultimately, parents remember and understand the letter grading system. It's easy to be happy that their child earned an

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.

There are myriad unforeseen consequences when schools use the traditional grading system. For the past century, traditional grading practices and policies that have contributed to much of the failure of student achievement. The use of the traditional grading system has slowly led to the major issue of grade inflation. Most often students’ grade tend to be inflated with the help of non-academic factors such as homework, participation and student effort. High school teachers tend include effort as part of the grade, giving high grades to students who work in class despite whether they

He explains the effects of how the grading system trains students to focus on grades more so than the actual course information. In the current system, after the student participates in the final test, the information is no longer relevant and the knowledge fades away. Farber explains that over time, even an older individual who returns to academia will revert into a grade hungry student. He effectively compares grade hungry students to substance addicts. In his analogy, the students becomes a junkie and the substance is replaced with a grade. In continuation, Farber explains that grades are not a successful incentive for a learning student; that classes taught with only a grade as an incentive will be forgotten as soon as the final test is taken. In support, Farber states, “And if you don't want it and don't need it, you'll probably never get it straight, grades or not” (Farber). Farber explains that grades lead to a lack of self-motivation which in turn lead to a lack of self-discipline and he continues on. A majority of Farber's essay is devoted to the explanation of how grades impact students in a negative

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

The more beneficial way of learning is always the best for parents and kids. Standards based grading is one that is bringing kids and parents down. Standards based grading should be banned from all schools for letter grades, beneficial standards, and most of all, higher and better grade proficiency. A reason for this is that it’s affecting middle, high, and college grades, for when it’s time to move on. Another reason is it takes time to turn over to letter grades from SBG, and teachers don’t actually help you for one’s and two’s. Plus it’s easier to understand Letter Grades-(parents). These are all three reasons why standards based grading should be removed from all schools.

The letter grade system offers many benefits to students the most compelling would be it is easy to understand there is a grade associated with a number system. If a student was to receive a pass/fail grade there is no desire to outperform nor do they have the desire

In “A Simple Alternative to Grading”, Glenda Potts of The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges claims that the current grading system creates many issues and added stress for all parties involved (students and teachers). In addition to this, she claims that a contract grading system would be a preferable alternative and gives numerous reasons to support this. The author emphasizes how the current grading system is subjective, wasteful of time, and stress inducing for both students and teachers. Because the current grading system is holistic, the author claims that it often makes unfair comparisons between papers of completely incomparable content. There are a lot of viable alternatives, but the author focuses on contract grading because that is the system that she has experience with in her classroom. In the contract grading system, clear guidelines are set and must either be met or missed with no room for uncertainty. Potts explains that this makes grading quicker for teachers and makes expectations for assignments more understandable and clear cut for students. The author mentions a few issues that higher-performing students had with obtaining their previously easily-earned A’s, but was able to overcome these issues by explaining the function of the system to the students. The author finishes by proclaiming that grades should not be about a letter, but about learning and retention.

Once a person graduates from law school, before they can begin working as a lawyer they have to take a test called the Bar. The test is not graded with A’s; B’s, C’s, D’s, or F’s and instead is graded by the pass-fail system. Once the test is graded it shows that the person either passed the Bar or failed the Bar. What is important with the Bar is that persons passes which indicates the competency of their understanding of the material to use it in the real world. Whereas the current letter grading system shows who understood the material. The pass-fail system should also be implemented in all U.S. high schools, this revolutionary idea that is practical in nature would benefit students because letter grades can cause unneeded stress and

In sports, analysts examine a players skills and abilities through the use of personal records and game statistics. Similarly, grades reflect a student's strength and weakness in the classroom. In Paul Goodman’s excerpt entitled “A Proposal to Abolish Grading,” he argues that Ivy League Universities should abolish grades. His reasons are that students focus on passing a test more than they do on expanding their education. Eliminating grading standards will allow students to learn new material without being stressed. Goodman's main focus is on prestigious schools, but it is an issue that concerns every school. For it begs the question if grades are necessary to measure a student's inclination to learn. Goodman believes that today’s students

Over the past few years, the traditional grading system of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s have slowly faded away only to be replaced by the insufficient “Standards-Based Grading”. While some schools are adopting this unorthodox grading system, several others still continue to follow the traditional “A-F” grading system. Many believe that the standards-based grading system does not work well with all students and doesn’t accurately grade them. Standards-based grading is a fairly new system of grading where the student is evaluated on his or her ability to complete an assignment and master the concept, not by what they get right or wrong on each individual assignment. This has been very confusing to those who are unfamiliar with standards-based

Starting from my first days of life, my parents did everything to please me; additionally, they always tried to do their best to develop my literacy skills and help me to become smarter. I always loved learning and each time when they made up some game or a new interaction, it was great fun to play. I had no idea that learning could be challenging because each task that they offered was easy to accomplish and absolutely doable for me. I grew up knowing that there was no process more exciting than learning. Besides, at the back of my mind, I was convinced that every new thing I learned was changing me for better. When I became a schoolboy, my parents were pleased whenever my grades were excellent. I wanted them to feel pleased and happy all the time. At the beginning, I strived to get an A to deserve some reward; for instance, getting some ice cream seemed to be a sufficient motivation for me to learn a long text or do loads of assignments. However, later on, I started getting delighted just because when I managed to learn something new, my knowledge made me