The end of the school year is here and students have received their final grades. No doubt many parents will be pleased. What do grades and percentages tell you? Are they an indicator of:
• how much your student learned and what he or she still needs to learn?
• accuracy?
• motivation or a deterrent to future learning?
• the skill level achieved or content learned?
There isn’t a parent that doesn’t want his or her child to achieve high grades or be at the top of the class. Some parents even place a monitory value on the grades earned in an attempt to motivate the learning.
I’ve seen the effects that grades have on students. Grades tend to:
• diminish the desire to learn
• cause students to choose an easier task
• take less risks in the learning process
• lean toward memorizing facts rather than develop higher level thinking skills
The majority of schools give students letter grades as a means of assessing a student’s work for the school year. Some contend that letter grades make it easy for a student to set a goal, work hard, and track their progress. With students learning at different levels and having different learning styles, how can a simple letter grade be the same and mean the same for all children?
Some educators contend that the pressure for good grades often leads to high stress and cheating. There are students that will go to any measure to achieve good grades because that is what is expected.
Children and young adults become immune to poor grades or develop anxiety resulting in stomach aches, headaches, or other ailments. Bad grades perpetuate low self-esteem and the fear of failing tests and receiving poor grades leads to procrastination and avoidance of tasks.
Students, as well as parents, play the blame game when bad grades are achieved. It is the fault of the teacher, their friends are distracting, the content is too difficult, or they didn’t understand the subject matter.
Research finds that performance is better in reading and math in schools where no grades are given as compared to grade-based schools. Ungraded students also produce more creative essays that include complex sentences and have shown a more positive response to global issues.
My contention is for schools to get beyond letter grades and get to the core of the learning. It’s time to update our reporting systems with best practices and not take the easy way through letter grades. Are educators reporting progress or simply taking a average of scores on tests, quizzes, participation, and homework assignments? As a teacher, I’ve found that letter grades and percentages are easy and simple for parents to understand but its time to forge forward. The bottom line – reporting progress needs to be about the learning.
Our goal as educators is not to measure how much a student can memorize for a test and give it a letter grade or a percentage. We are to focus on learning that builds character, develops life-long learners, expands thinking skills, and provides real-world experiences through rigorous context. As far as I’ve seen, there is no benefit to giving grades; we give them because ‘It has been done that way since 1897.’
