Should letter grades be eliminated from education?

[King Gumball]

Letter grades don't mean that much to me, only the percentage of my mark is what matters. Letter grades should not be eliminated from education because it demonstrates your range level of each subject and is used for putting the different letter grade students in each class so you are all on the same level of learning.

 

[Regeneration]

Okay...
Once you eradicate the grading system, what exactly are you left with? A pass or a fail? Students ought to know how they have performed during the year and they should have the courage to face it too. How do you differentiate between a student who has worked hard the entire year and got an A and other who just tried to do some last minute mugging up and got a C or a D?

 

[FreakyLocz14]

Okay...
Once you eradicate the grading system, what exactly are you left with? A pass or a fail? Students ought to know how they have performed during the year and they should have the courage to face it too. How do you differentiate between a student who has worked hard the entire year and got an A and other who just tried to do some last minute mugging up and got a C or a D?

Well, I think college student's major course and and prerequisites for those should graded by letter or percentage. When it comes to GE courses that the student doesn't really need to know to pursue their career goals, they can be graded on a Pass or Fail basis. I also don't think that children should be letter graded before high school, and maybe not even in their freshman year of high school. Most colleges don't care about your freshman year grades and only look to see if you passed any required courses with a C or better in that year. All the colleges I've looked at only use your grades 10-12 courses to calculate your GPA.

 

[TRIFORCE89]

But prior to high school, and even during, you're not going just to kill time. You are supposed to work hard, learn, and achieve something. If you take out grades, then you're removing the incentive and just operating a day care

 

[Melody]

Well, I think that some courses require a finer grading system even in high school. But for K-6 I think it should be purely pass/fail. The teacher can still use a grading system to determine pass or fail, but it is pointless to grade that early on.

For 7-12 it should depend on the course you are in. Core subjects can be letter graded. I'd like to see more courses graded on a pass/fail basis otherwise.

 

[Spinor]

Well, I think college student's major course and and prerequisites for those should graded by letter or percentage. When it comes to GE courses that the student doesn't really need to know to pursue their career goals, they can be graded on a Pass or Fail basis. I also don't think that children should be letter graded before high school, and maybe not even in their freshman year of high school. Most colleges don't care about your freshman year grades and only look to see if you passed any required courses with a C or better in that year. All the colleges I've looked at only use your grades 10-12 courses to calculate your GPA.

Don't think you're speaking for all colleges here. I know for sure that in my case only grades 9-11 are calculated for GPA, and Grade 12 is never, and rarely the first semester, used.

I do know for a fact that my college of choice, MIT, uses a Pass/Fail only for Freshman year courses. That is honestly frustrating for me, because I prefer to see my performance in detail.

There's also many courses like AP, Dual Enrollment, and Concurrent Enrollment courses, that require certain grades to obtain High school and college credit. I think for me this would be an 80 (B) or higher. You don't know what kind of harm would come about if the grading system was demoted to Pass/Fail. Not to mention that if you are in Fail, you don't know how hard you're failing >__>

 

[SquirtleGirl]

In Ireland we have two cycles of Secondary school. 1st-3rd year [Ages 12-15] which is your Junior Cycle and you sit a Junior Certificate set of examinations at the end of the first three years :) In class we'd be graded in percent but in our state exam results we're graded A,B,C.D,F,N.G. [No Grade]

But for our Senior Cycle [15-17/18 years depending if you choose a gap year] we are graded A1, A2,A3,B1,B2,B3 etc. depending on the level of our percentage, in order to prepare us for our Leaving Certificate grades. The amount of "points" you get depends on the level of subjects you take [i.e. Honours, Ordinary, Foundation] and the grades. So, for example, if you got 100%, it's an A1 grade. It's worth 100 points for your college application, if its in a higher-level subject. In an ordinary level subject, an A1 is worth 60 points [Because the subject is easier]

Basically, the amount of points we manage to accumulate in a range of 7/8 subjects is what contributes to out college application, not grades in individual subjects. I actually kinda like this system, but I'm applying for universities in the UK so its a whole different ball-game there xD

I never even knew they did letter grades anywhere anymore! I thought it was just in tv shows and movies and what not D:

We even get them here in Ireland :3

Well, I prefer letter grades to the straight pass/fail system for the reason that the pass/fail system is so ambiguous as to whether you did good or bad. Well, obviously you did bad if you failed, but the letter grades clear the grey area

I agree. If I fail something, at least I can say "Well at least I didn't fail too badly" whereas with a NO PASS you would just think BIG FAT ZERO instead of say... 39% or something.

 

[Nick]

I took this as a "no letter grades, so number grades instead!" kind of thing, and went ahead and voted yes. I didn't read the OP before I voted. Oops.

I don't know about anyone else, but at my high school, letter grades meant your actual grade fell within a ten point ratio. +, - were the higher and lower end of the ratio. Now, I think letter grades aren't at all accurate at displaying your abilities as much as number grades. I remember when I asked my teacher what my grades were, they responded with the letter grade. I didn't want the letter. I wanted the actual number that reflected my accurate grade. Where as, my report cards and progress reports from all my classes and individual classes were always using the number grades with the corresponding letter grade in brackets.

I just think it'd be best to eliminate the letter part of it all together. I disagree with eliminating that system altogether, however.

 

[Blue Nocturne]

I think there should be less of a focus on grades in school. Most tests that are graded are based on knowledge, and there is less of a need to know things today when all the knowledge you will ever need is on the internet. Instead, I think the focus should be more on developing skills such as intiative and creative thinking (although knowledge is still very important, specifically practical application of it). So in my opinion, there should be less of a focus on the achievement of grades and a larger focus on what skills kids are actually learning. After all, what use is the knowledge of working Simultaneous Equations, for example, if you don't know how and when to apply it to a situation? If a way can be found to gauge the development of skills, which would be time consuming at best due to how personal it would need to be to be effective, then great; but grades is probably the easiest option at the moment.

 

[Esper]

The college I went to had stopped using letter grades a while back in favor of teacher reviews. Basically, instead of a grade of any kind you got a written paragraph describing how you did in the class (and if the teacher knew who you were you might even get one that wasn't a copy of what half the class got). But when I went there they'd recently reintroduced letter grades again. Apparently having no letter/percentage grades was causing trouble for some students who wanted to go on to higher higher education because they couldn't show off a nice GPA and whatnot. The university still does these reviews on top of letter grades though. And it has the option to do Pass/No Pass for some classes, particularly the lower division classes that most everyone has to take, but only some of whom will actually need to really know it for their degree.

The reviews were nice to have for classes you did well in, but not as much for classes where you weren't really participating in. Those ones could make you feel mediocre or dumb.

 

[otaku-dono]

I'm advocating for a Pass/No Pass system, not percentages.

It's unfair to put the people who scrape through and the people who get 90%+ in the same boat, tbqh.

 

[Morgnarok]

No because they seperate the geeks from the average to the don't give a crap kids.

 

[PlatinumDude]

Most of us have grown up with letter grades. I wouldn't want them eliminated because they are simple to follow.

 

[Sora's Nobody]

Well, when i lived in france they had a number grade from 1 to 20 you would get like 17/20 based in how many mistakes you made. But here in denmark we have a very messed up one, it goes: -3, 00, 02, 7, 10, 12. and the extra 0 infront of 00 and 02 is to prevent frauding. The problem with letter fraude is that it doesnt really let you visualize how many mistakes you made. But when you have a percentage, or something like the two i mentioned from france and denmark, you can do the calculation and find out.​

 

[Waffle-San]

For High School I'm going to say definately not. I think the number grades we achieve at our school are appropriate. If anything needs to change its how those grades are achieved or how certain projects weigh into your final mark. In Alberta we have mandatory final exams worth 50% of our final mark, 50%!! We're the only province that has this and we're also considered to have one of the hardest curriculums in Canada (alongside Quebec).

But for certain University courses I think a Pass/Fail option should be applicable for reasons Lightning already explained. If I'm getting my degree in the Dramatic Arts but I want to take an Astro Physics course on the side, I'd rather it not effect my mark. Though if I'm taking a physics degree then of course it should count.

 

[Brendino]

I think that for certain courses, a pass/fail system would be more beneficial, such as classes where marks are opinion based rather than fact based. For example, you can't definitvely give someone a mark based on how good they are in Physical Education or Art, but for things like Math and Sciences, they are based on facts which determine if a student's answer is right or wrong.

With that being said, I don't believe that letter grades (or percentages) could be eliminated from high school education, because students have to take a wide variety of courses.

However, this system could possibly work for certain university and college courses, because marks for the class might be based on opinion rather than fact. The only problem that I see with this is that you wouldn't have any way to know how close you are to passing or failing, and some students would rather just have some sort of system (be it percentages or letter grades) to know how well they're doing.

 

[FreakyLocz14]

I think that for certain courses, a pass/fail system would be more beneficial, such as classes where marks are opinion based rather than fact based. For example, you can't definitvely give someone a mark based on how good they are in Physical Education or Art, but for things like Math and Sciences, they are based on facts which determine if a student's answer is right or wrong.

With that being said, I don't believe that letter grades (or percentages) could be eliminated from high school education, because students have to take a wide variety of courses.

However, this system could possibly work for certain university and college courses, because marks for the class might be based on opinion rather than fact. The only problem that I see with this is that you wouldn't have any way to know how close you are to passing or failing, and some students would rather just have some sort of system (be it percentages or letter grades) to know how well they're doing.

And yes, you would still be graded by a percentage while enrolled in the class in question, so you would indeed know how close you are to passing or failing. I'm just saying that the final grade reflected on the student's transcript could be Pass or Fail.
Things like PE and Art require a certain level of skill that some students just naturally have and some do not. Especially since PE and at least one creative or performing arts course is usually required for high school graduation and/or college admission and college graduation.

A better idea would be for students to be able to choose a letter/percentage grade or a strictly Pass/Fail option. This would allow students with the appropriate talents to reflect those talents on their transcripts while at the same time perhaps draw in beginners who maybe want to learn a new instrument, take up an arts course for recreation, take a PE course to get in-shape rather than to be a competitive athlete, and maybe even students enrolling in foreign language courses who just want to learn a new language instead of show off their proficiency in that language. Students with lower skill, experience, and talents levels will tend to be intimidated by letter grades and not take these courses to expand their educational horizons.

And students would still be graded by letter grade/percentages/a point system on individual assignments and such. They would still know where they stand as far as how close they are to passing or failing. I'm just advocating for the final term grade reflected on the student's transcript be Pass or Fail.

 

[UltimaSilva]

No since that would be such a drastic change in education. A friend of mine moved here from Slovenia at the start of the year and is very interesting. I asked him how they did grades at his old school and he said they used numbers. I believe it was 1 2 3 4 and 5. I think he also said 5 was the highest possible grade. Very interesting in my opinion.