Grades are a means for teachers to show a student’s progress and knowledge in a quantifiable way. To be able to communicate to students and their guardians the progress that is being made to meet the standard.
The main form of grading in the U.S. is a traditional grading system, it uses a letter-based (A-F) or 100-point scale to evaluate a student. Often scores are averaged from various assignments in order to determine a grade. Education Week supports this notion by stating that of the 863 educators they surveyed throughout the country, 77 percent of them said that traditional based grading is their district’s grading system.
A flaw I see in this system, however, is that it does not fully represent the students’ knowledge. For example, if one student understands the material but is turning in homework late because of a job or some other force they will have a lower grade than a student who does not understand the material but is able to turn in assignments on time. This happens in numerous U.S. classrooms every year because the dominant grading system right now grades for completion and not understanding. In the long-term, this affects students’ learning as their brains are now wired to memorize information for short periods of time and then repeat the cycle for the next assignment. This completely loses the purpose of learning, which is to retain information.
An example of this was published in The New York Times and shown all over the news. In December of 2024, a student from a Connecticut school district graduated with honors but didn’t know how to read or write. She had moved there from Puerto Rico when she was young and the school system didn’t help her learn what she needed. She would speak into her phone so she could then have it transcribe the recording into writing, then just turn it in as is.
From my own experiences I have seen the classroom go from a learning space to a stressful nightmare. Where students are seen cheating and finding any means possible to be able to get a decent assignment turned in on time. And of the teachers surveyed from Technology High School, 71.43 percent said that they often had students coming to them begging for a grade to be switched or were trying to point grab instead of showing they learned the material.
This stress and anxiety that is stemming from the classroom is only being inflated by traditional grading; it highlights speed, efficiency, and accuracy. These main points shifting from achieving mastery to meeting the minimum, with non-academic activities such as attendance, participation, and completion being put in the forefront instead of academic assignments.
When academics become a competition, similar to the environment at Tech High, students can’t handle getting a B or a few points off an assignment. You get students who cheat or others who get mad when they cheat and still get the assignment marked down. You get burnt out students who lose their drive to learn for themselves. Students lose the ability to understand that an A is above the standard and a C is the average. While many teachers strive to exceed the minimum requirements that they are obligated to teach, they still only need to teach to the standard. Piper Milton, a lecturer at University of California (UC) Santa Cruz said, “students who are obsessed with grades tend to lose focus on this and run the risk of not mastering skills…I have noticed a fairly large increase in grade anxiety over the last decade on college campuses.”
The Education Week article stated, the rest of the teachers surveyed either didn’t respond or used a different grading system. This being Standards-based grading, a system where students receive a score (e.g. one through four) to reflect mastery in each standard. Grading like this moves away from overarching grades that summarize your understanding to targeting the skills that need to be mastered. Structuring it like this shifts the focus from grades to process, because the student has a better interpretation of what they’re failing to understand. This causes less competition, increases engagement, and supports equity. This system helping students make the shift from high school to college because as Milton says, “An A in a high school class might mean completing every assignment and doing well on tests every few weeks, but in college it might mean demonstrating a deep understanding of course material through things like research papers.” If college is to be graded for understanding, using a standards based grading system would make the transition from one school to the next a smoother process.
If Standards-based has so many benefits, why haven’t more classrooms started to implement it? The main reason for this is people’s lack of knowledge or their opinions that aren’t backed by understanding. Parents are worried about the switch because monitoring their child’s grade would be more than just a letter, it would be a rubric or paper outlining what needs to be improved. Teachers are hesitant because of the drastic switch they would have to make from one grading system to another. But without trying this new system, how do we know if it’s better or worse?
After seeing this, it might be time to rethink grades: are they really capturing the depth of learning the student is accomplishing? Are letter grades risking the values of education? These values include critical thinking, communication, curiosity, and growth. In the future what will matter to a student is not the letter grade but expertise they take away with them. Is the structure of schooling right now going to benefit or hinder the future?
As so many students prepare to head off to college or take the next step in their education journey, I’d like to leave you with some words of advice from Professor Milton, “the biggest advice I can give high school students is to become comfortable with needing to be flexible–the way assignments are evaluated, the way classes are structured, the kinds of readings and other material you’ll be using—these all vary from class to class in college and it’s important that students don’t start college thinking they have everything figured out.” In ending this topic, remember you as the reader should take chances, apply yourself, and be flexible in life as well as in your educational career.
