Grades

[sosleepy]

Should there be grades in school? Are they a positive or negative? Do grades even matter?

My english class has started an assignment on grades. From my perspective there should be grades. They are a positive to any student that has the right mind set. People should see them as a mark on whether they understood the information being taught to them. It also allows them to set higher goals than they may have reached for. Grades don't matter though. They are just important to the colleges and universities. They want students with high grades to say that there school is the best because the students are smart.

[stretchypanda]

Of course I think there should be grades. They provide useful information on how a student is doing in any given class. I use class averages to decide if I am effectively teaching concepts my students need to learn, and if my whole class does poorly on an assignment or test, I know I need to go back over some things.

I think grades also teach students to hold themselves accountable. Recently I have realized that students do not understand what a 0 does to their overall grade -- my mentors have even had to have a little math lesson explaining how to average one's grade, and what just one 0 can do to that average.

What makes grading meaningless, and I'm not sure if this applies to every state, is when school districts decide to hold students' hands. In Texas, a student cannot be given anything below a 50 for a nine weeks grade (or tri-mester, or however the school breaks up its terms). It is supposedly intended to help students who maybe have a rough term and just don't perform as well, but basically it tells students that they don't have to turn in any work for a whole term, as long as they maintain a C-average for the remaining terms of the school year, and they will still pass.

[Tyren]

Stretchy, the grading system is fickle though. I agree that there definitely needs to be one, but I think it is particularly easy to manipulate little loopholes like scaling, extra credit, and percentages for aspects of the class. If these aspects are worth certain percentages (say homework is 20%...its rather arbitrary overall) You dont honestly need to learn the material if you can copy it. Im sure this will show in your test score, but having a fifth of your grade instantly in the bag is a rediculously huge crutch.

Regardless, An interesting concept ive been introduced to this year is an "all or nothing approach". Its god awful for procrastinators like myself, but there are 16 tests (inconveniently taken online in a secured location) which require perfect scores to pass. We are given 8 attempts at each test (some leniency is shown here) allowed to take them at certain time periods assigned throughout the week. There are problems with the idea, but it forces students to memorize the ideas presented in the tests, no partial credit here. Homework isnt graded, but its required (or atleast reading) to keep up with the material. They still grade it the same however (10 completed tests = C, all 16 = A, etc.).

Sleepy previous to college life, I agree grades are less important. The problem is If schools were as nonchalant on the topic, the students would walk all over them and they would do their best to learn as little as possible. The majority of students dont want to be there in the first place. However, there are highschools that do this. There are private institutions that are certified to give diploma's and they allow you to study whatever it is you desire. I find particularly brilliant individuals learn best when given their freedom but this learning style is most definitely not for everyone (and it costs ALOT).

[stretchypanda]

My biggest problem with daily assignments has been that someone somewhere down the line taught my students to look for key words in their book, and write the sentence surrounding those key words when answering questions. It's stupid and usually the answer is wrong, wrong, wrong, because often students don't even complete the thought.

The problem with any kind of test a student is allowed to (and even forced to) take as often as it takes before s/he passes is that many students will just take the test the first time to see what's on it -- no regards toward passing or failing.

I'm not saying grades are the most important thing in a school. They are. There's really no other way to show someone outside the classroom how your students are performing, and, unfortunately, lots of people want to see tangible evidence of performance. What I am trying to say, from the perspective of a teacher, is that the process of grading assignments is a good way to gain insight into what the students are taking away from your lessons. It is by no means how I measure achievement, since my students who never turn in work also ace my tests, but it is a good system of reporting data for those people who really don't care HOW you get the grades, but rather THAT you get the grades.

And again, I look at grades as a measure of accountability. I am not lenient toward my students when I am giving easy assignments that could be completed and turned in during class. If there is no reason an assignment can't be completed on time, there is no reason I should accept it more than a day late. It shouldn't be my job to teach responsibility, but that is often the case.

[sosleepy]

Leniency is important to students. At my school I got three homework assignments do the next day. While some peers got an extra day to turn in their work. That is not fair. Grades just show some of what the student learns. They don't always get to show because late work is not accepted.

[devonin]

The problem I have with grades is that curriculums are so hugely inconsistant across school boards, and the actual teaching inside the curriculum is so hugely inconsistant inside a given school board that taken as a whole national average, grades tell you 100% nothing at all about anything useful.

Within the bounds of a single classroom, you can compare your grades with the grades of others and guage how you are progressing, but if you have a very strict teacher or a very lenient teacher, your grades aren't necessarily indicative of your progress. I've recieved a 70% on an english paper that, submitting the same paper to another english teacher for comparison purposes, got a 90% So what was my "actual" grade on that paper? Was one teacher too harsh, was one too lenient? Neither? Both?

This only especially becomes an issue during the transition from highschool to college/university. In the US at least, you guys have a standardized SAT that is common to everyone who writes it, so you can guage, regardless of their highschool grades, how well they've learned what highchool was supposed to teach them, but as I understand it, that merely contributes to the application process, and your GPA also factors in, among many other things.

In Canada it is basically the same way except with no SAT, your average is the prime contributor to acceptance, and with no way to establish the accuracy of your average compared to someone else's the entire thing becomes a bit of a crapshoot.

As such, I don't think grades "matter" insofar as they don't represent anything objective. Grades on standardized tests, and anything that is universally written across all school boards are about the only kind of grade that is useful outside the bounds of the school in which it was issued.

I can't really think of a -better- system, and there are (in theory anyway) enough standards to lend some credence to your grades, so for right now it is the best of bad options as far as I'm concerned.

I'd be curious to see how a purely pass/fail system would work through elementary and highschool. If you raise the standards of pass/fail from 50/49 to something in the area of 65/64, and assign an automatic 0 to anything that isn't handed in on time, you remove the ability of a student to simply do one major assignment very well then slack off for the rest, because pass/fail/fail/fail = fail.

Obviously there are issues with this system as well, but I think it is an interesting alternative, demands that you at least make an attempt at all work, but has the downside of emphasizing all assignments equally, and I am a fan, in general, of weighting.

[xWnLx Crisco]

My opinion is that grades are pointless but there still needs to be a "level" of knowledge that the student needs to have to go on the the next step.

If a child still can't read a book then they should not give him or her a high school diploma.

That might be a harsh reasoning but why would we let for our country to be run by people who were escorted through high school because they couldn't keep up with the rest of the class?

I can understand how that would take a toll on a childs emotions that they might feel dumb or slow but it is better to have an agreement on where you need to be before they let you in the real world.

[NEoN BLuE]

grades are stupid i dont think they matter i mean they make some of us feel stupid i men i hate grades so why have them^_^

[devonin]

As regards the potential objections to being "held back" I think that we've stigmatized it so heavily that the mere -idea- that someone ought to be held back is enough to destroy their self-esteem, which is why schools are so hesitant to do so in the early years.

One way to start getting around that is to make elementary school more like highschool. Actually seperate all of the subjects into grades just like highschool. That way, if you are doing perfectly well in everything being taught to you in grade 3 except math, you can go to grade 4, you just have to retake grade 3 math.

The failing of elementary schools in that regard is the "All or nothing" grade system, you can still be pushed forward with some failing grades if overall you're doing okay, because the alternative is to hold you bake and make you repeat the -grade- instead of just the -class-

[stretchypanda]

Originally Posted by devonin

As regards the potential objections to being "held back" I think that we've stigmatized it so heavily that the mere -idea- that someone ought to be held back is enough to destroy their self-esteem, which is why schools are so hesitant to do so in the early years.

One way to start getting around that is to make elementary school more like highschool. Actually seperate all of the subjects into grades just like highschool. That way, if you are doing perfectly well in everything being taught to you in grade 3 except math, you can go to grade 4, you just have to retake grade 3 math.

The failing of elementary schools in that regard is the "All or nothing" grade system, you can still be pushed forward with some failing grades if overall you're doing okay, because the alternative is to hold you bake and make you repeat the -grade- instead of just the -class-

Judging from what I've seen in the high schools in which I've worked, being held back isn't really a big deal to a lot of kids. I had a junior in a freshman-level biology course this last semester, and she eventually just dropped out.

That's a whole different debate, though. School is just not meant for some people.

Also, it's been my experience that kids who are held back in elementary grades are not emotionally prepared to go on to that next step. I've never met a kid who was a year older than his classmates who I thought could succeed in the grade he should have been in.

[devonin]

Judging from what I've seen in the high schools in which I've worked, being held back isn't really a big deal to a lot of kids.

Which was my point. In highschool, you're being made to repeat only the class you failed in, and can advance in any class you passed. Thus it isn't so much a big deal. Whereas in elementary school it has been my experience that you either pass the grade or are held back.

If elementary school were to be segmented in the way that highschool is, you could apply the same logic, only making students repeat the single subject they failed instead of holding them back completely.

The kids who are emotionally unready to advance are a seperate subject entirely from those who have the necessary maturity to advance a grade, but have failed to learn subject matter.

[theinsomniacnimrod]

From what I've seen High School grading was not based on intelligence or if you learned the material, but rather if you could get your work done. Homework was the biggest part of our grade so that even the kids who received a 0% on the test could pass - but at the same time, really smart kids who received a 100% on the test but did no homework would fail, which is wrong in so many ways.

My college is based mostly on how well we do compared to the rest of the class. I'm not sure if that is correct either - just being in a different section can drastically change your grade. The good thing is that grades are no longer inflated and a 'C' really means average. The high school system makes it too easy to get an 'A' and doesn't make them as rewarding.

[Reach]

The problem I have with grades is that curriculums are so hugely inconsistant across school boards, and the actual teaching inside the curriculum is so hugely inconsistant inside a given school board that taken as a whole national average, grades tell you 100% nothing at all about anything useful.

Exactly.

Essentially the main purpose of grading people is so that you can split people into groups...and continue to push capitalism. You need a way of saying one person is better than another person, because as we know jobs are selective. This is fine. You can say they're good for monitoring progress and such and this is true to an extent, but grades are a very limited picture of how well someone is performing. The real problem is in the fact that the grades themselves are usually relatively meaningless.

On most tests and exams, the student gets a good grade by using rote memorization, where the system tends to favor those that are the biggest teachers pets rather than those that truely understand the material. Then you have problems with grade inflation and such where grades have become so important that the student (nor the teacher) doesn't care about anything else other than their grade. Essentially, in the end we have a bunch of students working for meaningless numbers.

And then these numbers are supposed to mean something when you go to apply to a university, as if a 90% in one school is supposed to be the same as a 90 in another. It's one whole gigantic mess if you ask me, and it turns into a free for all where you play the system any way you can to boost your meaningless numbers up higher than other peoples to get in 8)


The SAT is supposed to fix the inflation problem, where a standardized test gets rid of differences between states and schools. This is true, but the SAT is simply a horrible test. It's useless nowadays. It used to be an IQ test, but they changed it to more crap you have to rote memorize that now includes a pointless essay. You might as well get rid of the SAT because it's just a useless annoying addition to the problem.

So yea, I think the system sucks. But it's something I have to deal with. My grades are important, and as much as the system annoys us all we have to put up with it >__>

[devonin]

Originally Posted by Reach

Exactly.

Essentially the main purpose of grading people is so that you can split people into groups...and continue to push capitalism. This is fine. You can say they're good for monitoring progress and such and this is true to an extent, but grades are a very limited picture of how well someone is performing. The real problem is in the fact that the grades themselves are usually relatively meaningless.

To some extent the US and other countries get around this with universal standardized tests at various points in the academic career, which (literacy test in grade 10 notwithstanding [in ontario anyway]) Canada lacks pretty much across the board.

The real problem is that we're still discovering that person to person, people learn best in wildly different ways, and the school system isn't equipped to appeal to all of them. I've been in university classes composed of a 40% written midterm and a 60% written final. This is fantastic if you do written tests well, and horrific if you do written tests poorly, but the alternative requires offering a dozen ways to do each assignment, and while that sounds great, in a class of 50 students it is wholly unreasonable.

In a perfect utopian education system, we could start testing kids young to determine the ways in which they learn best, and gear their curriculum towards that. It's something that already happens to a small extent in certain kinds of absurdly expensive private school but it just isn't feasible in general given the current budgetary setup of the education system.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by devonin

To some extent the US and other countries get around this with universal standardized tests at various points in the academic career, which (literacy test in grade 10 notwithstanding [in ontario anyway]) Canada lacks pretty much across the board.

The real problem is that we're still discovering that person to person, people learn best in wildly different ways, and the school system isn't equipped to appeal to all of them. I've been in university classes composed of a 40% written midterm and a 60% written final. This is fantastic if you do written tests well, and horrific if you do written tests poorly, but the alternative requires offering a dozen ways to do each assignment, and while that sounds great, in a class of 50 students it is wholly unreasonable.

In a perfect utopian education system, we could start testing kids young to determine the ways in which they learn best, and gear their curriculum towards that. It's something that already happens to a small extent in certain kinds of absurdly expensive private school but it just isn't feasible in general given the current budgetary setup of the education system.

I wrote the SAT. It's completely optional here, but you can take it if you want to. Also, in Nova Scotia we have to write standardized math, english, chemistry and physics exams (assuming we take those classes), which are generally pretty fair.


I totally agree with you there though, about learning styles. I simply don't learn well through rote memorization and testing. I find it an annoying that hinders my understanding. The system is really geared towards one type of thinking and learning.

If you think about it, school is almost ANTI learning. I mean, you sit kids in a desk where they can't move and talk and they're expected to sit there and take notes with generally very little application of the material. Last time I checked, kids like to move around and get hands on with the material, and like application and understanding more than memorizing and testing.

This is a huge flaw, and the fact that the system really refuses to change regardless of failure in this aspect is a sign, to me, that grades are more important with respect to capitalism than learning.

[devonin]

This is a huge flaw, and the fact that the system really refuses to change regardless of failure in this aspect is a sign, to me, that grades are more important with respect to capitalism than learning.

We could really take a lesson from France on this one. In France, degrees are issued by the state. So regardless of where you go to school, your degree is the same across the board, issued by the government of France.

This has kept tuition costs -incredibly- low, and the incentive for students is to go where they percieve the best teachers to be, rather than where they can afford to go, or if money isn't a problem, where the "best" degree comes from.

This is a further incentive to teachers to do their best to keep the classes interesting, informational and educational, because if a school gets a reputation for having crummy teachers, students have no real incentive to not just pick a different school.

[stretchypanda]

Originally Posted by devonin

Which was my point. In highschool, you're being made to repeat only the class you failed in, and can advance in any class you passed. Thus it isn't so much a big deal. Whereas in elementary school it has been my experience that you either pass the grade or are held back.

If elementary school were to be segmented in the way that highschool is, you could apply the same logic, only making students repeat the single subject they failed instead of holding them back completely.

The kids who are emotionally unready to advance are a seperate subject entirely from those who have the necessary maturity to advance a grade, but have failed to learn subject matter.

I totally misread your post, sorry.

In university education programs, there is a huge, huge, HUGE push toward differentiating instruction. What I've seen in schools is that there's really no support for differentiation in the real world. Lawmakers, administrators, parents don't care how you teach kids (I realize this is not always the case with parents). You're given 50 minutes a day to cram as much information as you possibly can into these little minds, but you have to make sure that information will help the students pass their effing standardized tests.

A lot of schools in Texas basically stop teaching after the TAKS and TEKS are over. They take their vacations, spend the rest of the year letting the kids play games or study for other classes -- when they could be spending that time teaching students the skills they'll need for the next level in whatever subject.

I think that we are taking what we are learning about how to teach to heart and loving it, but I am starting to realize that it is hard not to fall back onto what is easy when you consider all the pressure that is placed on a teacher.

[ToshX]

I hope my argument wasn't crushed sometime inbetween the first post and this, but I can't bring myself to read every single post <__<

Personally, what I think is that grades do their job in a matter of ways. I mean most grading systems are set up to be so easy that if you work, you can get good grades. I mean being smart is a great thing, but if you don't work, you probably won't get good grades, even if you do good on all of the tests. So why does this matter? Well this matters because when you get a job, you're going to HAVE to work in order to keep your job. You can't just sit around and talk to your fellow workers all day like you pretty much could in school. The grading system will show the ones giving out jobs who is willing to work for their company and who is not willing to work for their company(well, a general idea, of course it really varies from job to job and person to person). If someone has straight D's on their report card in college, they probably aren't to do their job quite as well if a person with, say, straight B's.

But if you factor in the stuff like the fact that there are some garbage teachers who can't teach what they need to, and also there are some really nice teachers who will pretty much give people an A just for showing up and paying some attention whatsoever, it really gets offset. So my argument could really bring this either way.

EDIT: @Amanda yeah, in my schools, after standardized testing was over, we literally watched movies and even went to "pool parties" and all sorts of things until high school. And even in high school, we just watched movies and did mindless crap all day after the testing was over.

[tsugomaru]

I really hate the people who beg for extra grade points when the want/need it. Grades, in a sense, is a currency between students and teachers. If a student wants the grade, then in general, they'll work harder for it and what they get is what they deserve.

Imagine a class where you only get one grade, and that's the grade you get for your final. All the other things in between, labs, papers, homework assignments, and tests all count for nothing towards your grades. Do you think students will actually do them? Their minds are telling them they'll be entirely safe if they fail this or that assignment because it won't affect their grade. As such, they'll never study for said class and study for something where the points do matter.

~Tsugomaru

[Reach]

If someone has straight D's on their report card in college, they probably aren't to do their job quite as well if a person with, say, straight B's.

This might be true, but lets close the gap for a second. What about a D and a C student? What about the difference between an A and a B student?

I think this becomes a problem. The problem is, the system does differentiate between people that have an A on a B, but on what grounds? What are they proving? Is the A student more clever? Did they even work harder or did they play the system harder? What if the B student just isn't that great at tests but is an otherwise outstanding person? What if the A student had an easier marker? You can begin to see the confounding variables here.

Sure, it's easy to say well 'The A student is surely better than the F student', but the system breaks down when you start questioning the difference between an A and a B...and this miniscule difference can be the difference between thousands of dollars in scholarship, and between admittance and rejection.

And let's not even complicate things by asking what the difference between an A and a B is in completely different schools, in completely different states. How can you know? What if the B student is actually better? Hell, screw that, the difference between a bloody teacher in the same school can make that difference just as bad because grades are not standardized. There are no grounds on how what questions should be on the tests and how they should be marked, and as such grades can vary like the weather even in the same school.

EDIT: @Amanda yeah, in my schools, after standardized testing was over, we literally watched movies and even went to "pool parties" and all sorts of things until high school. And even in high school, we just watched movies and did mindless crap all day after the testing was over.

Wow. I thought my schools were bad XD