Why Do Grades Should Not Be Allowed In Schools

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.

Competition is prevalent in various aspects of life, including sports, school, and jobs. Everyone at some point in their lifetime will have to compete against others in order to achieve a goal or earn a prize. It’s how the world has worked for a long time; it’s survival of the fittest and this minor competition between everyone is how we have continuously gotten smarter, faster, and stronger. Competition is necessary to a certain degree, but how much is too much? It’s definitely not a bad thing, and as long as there’s a healthy amount, it can be beneficial because it fosters self-improvement, and it will push people to go all out and try their absolute best.

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.

Pupils are expected to compete in order to achieve better grades than their fellow classmates.

There has been a lot of ideas on how students should be graded yet it always seems to be the same. Tests, tests, and more tests. There are so many issues with this due to so many variables. Everyone has a different life and some students do more than others outside of school. Why can’t students be graded based on how they perform on their personality, how much they are involved outside of school, and their home life? Is not everyone different?

Competition between peers makes people strive to try and be better than their opponents, and can be healthy or unhealthy depending on the competitors and their responses to the competition.

The schooling system is broken when it comes to whether students think learning the content or receiving a grade is more important. I was talking to my father about this article, and he brought up an advanced English class at the college he attended. The students who were eligible to take this class were the most talented and the highest in their class. The professor was presented with a problem. He did not feel settled grading these talented students in his class according to the bell curve college classes commonly use. He did not feel right handing out Cs and Bs to these A students. Instead of grading the students on the curve, the professor gave every kid in the class an A, and turned in their final grades on the first day. He expected all of the students to show interest, give maximal effort, and contribute to the class. He understood that they were all talented enough to receive an A. The professor eliminated any stress a grade would bring to these students, and he allowed them to fully focus on learning. I understand that a teacher cannot do that in a high school biology class, but there are ways to prevent cheating and engage learning. This biology teacher may not feel right in allowing these twenty eight kids to pass, but I believe that she should feel obligated in her heart to stay and prevent this from happening again. School is about learning about oneself and growing as a person; school is not about earning a grade and learning biology. This teacher needs to help kids learn about what is the right thing to do before twenty eight of them

When helping Northern Arizona University (NAU) address Core Component 4. B, a colleague was overheard making a comment. The colleague said “We already do assessment. We give grade and course evaluations. If you want to know how much students are learning, look at their grades and course evaluations.” The following paper will describe why grades are not acceptable methods for student learning. Additionally, it will propose a few questions that will make course evaluation data more useful in addressing accreditation requirements. Lastly, it will outline how NAU can effectively address Core Component 4. B.

I heard there is a new rule going around that we might be graded by our conduct. In my opinion I don’t think this should be done. I think our grades don’t necessarily go hand to hand with our behavior. These are the reasons I don’t think we should be graded by our behavior.

Competition is worldwide. There are competitions everywhere whether it's sports or arm wrestling. You’ll find it on TV or even in school. People are surrounded by competition to better skills. Humans have speculated that competition can ruin a person. The nature of competition is unhealthy for people. The stress mentally, physically, and relationships are damaged because of competitions.

Teachers have always used grades to measure the amount a student has learned. This practice is becoming ineffective. Many students have a wide range of grades, which show that grades may not show what a student really knows. Therefore, the standard grading system should be replaced. Some reasons why grades should be replaced are bad grades can hinder a child’s performance, grades define who a student is in the classroom, and grades are not an effective way to see if students have learned the material. The current grading system should be upgraded and every school should incorporate the plus/minus system in their method of grading.

Competition is something no one can avoid and will always be a part of society. It is human instinct as well as animal instinct to excel another. Competition is found everywhere. From businesses to schools and even in kid films like The Incredibles, competitions are everywhere. While competition does have negative views, it positively enforces us to improve ourselves and set goals. It brings forth inspiration to fix our past mistakes to make sure that we will win next time. While improving ourselves we can find goals that we are proud of achieving.

According the most recent national assessment recorded in the Washington post, “the nations high school seniors have shown no improvement in math and reading performances since 2009.” In the most recent years, education has taken a huge downfall. Since 2010, over 45% of students drop out. Many students have problems with the grading system, so many different testing programs and having to follow a set of rules and not expand on those rules. The education system needs to induce more creativity, enforce the ways on how education is important and elaborate more on the rules of grading.

One of the most thrilling facts about life on earth is that competition is inevitable. Competition encourages individuals to discover their abilities to succeed and get the best life has to offer, while the rest are left with little or nothing.

Lastly, Fox and Hanus discussed their introduction of competition that comes with social comparison. This is the second purpose that the leaderboard serves within the classroom. Students who address their inferior skills as compared to a superior, will naturally aim to improve themselves to gain an advantage. The authors note that while competition is commonly used as a tool to encourage motivation, it still has its negative side effects. These negative side effects can harm scholarly attributes of students. The authors raise an