Imagine a classroom where learning matters more than letters on a report card. What if students were not judged by number but by their growth and creativity? It’s time to ask if the traditional grading system is helping students or holding them back.
Many kids no longer come to school to learn but just to remember the information long enough to get a good test grade.
NPHS math teacher Mr. Carell explained that any system that “emphasizes achievement over true learning” will end up with some students who “are only going to try to get a good grade on a test, as opposed to really trying to absorb content and learn it.”
Many students fear making mistakes in school because errors often lead to lower grades. Instead of viewing mistakes as learning opportunities, they may resort to alternative methods—such as cheating—to achieve the grades they desire. By shifting the focus from grades to genuine understanding, schools can create an environment where students feel encouraged to take risks, learn from their mistakes, and develop a deeper grasp of the material. Under this system, students who genuinely want to gain knowledge will still have the opportunity to do so, but they won’t be judged or penalized for every small mistake.
Moreover, letter grades don’t always show the amount of effort, perseverance, or dedication a student put into their work.
Joe Feldman, author of Grading for Equity, says: “A student who writes an A-quality essay but hands it in late gets her writing downgraded to a B, and the student who writes a B-quality essay turned in by the deadline receives a B. There’s nothing to distinguish those two B grades, although those students have very different levels of content mastery.”
Feldman exposes one of the main issues with the current grading system because those Bs are the same, but they don’t reflect a similar grasp of the content.
Finally, one of the most significant issues in grading is exposed by Doug Reeves, in “The Case Against Zero” , which is that zeros makes no sense when it comes to grading because “mathematically, with a 0-to-100 scale, failing a class is more likely than passing a class. Think about it. Each letter grade is 10 points — an A is 90-100, a B is 80- 89, a C is 70-79, and a D is 60-69 — but the scale’s one failing grade, an F, spans not 10 points, but 60 (0 to 59). The result is that a zero disproportionally pulls down an average and makes it that much harder to pull a grade up significantly.”
This indicates that a student who gets two 85s and one zero sees their average drop from a B to an F. Even with two more 85s, they would end up with a 68 [D+] to end the class. There is no reason that a student should suffer this dramatic grade drop because they forgot to do something.
This flawed grading system is killing GPAs.