Over recent years, many academics have been pinning hopes on the letter grading system. But this approach proves to be not as efficient as we would like it to be. The thing is that letters provide rather vague information on students’ capabilities, motivations, and knowledge level. People subconsciously try to turn letters into numbers to understand whether young people may be called smart, are proficient enough to move to the next grade, enroll in a college, get a scholarship, and play sports.
It is crucial for learners, parents, educators, businesses and governmental bodies sponsoring educational institutions to understand what A and B mean, what is the difference between them, what A students are capable of and what B students cannot do. But do they really understand this? As experience shows, it is often not the case.
It is challenging to fit all students’ failures and success in one symbol. When grading is over-simplified, educators lose control over young people’s academic activities, progress, and performance. It is worth remembering that learning is a complex process influenced by many factors. Not taking them into account means creating a mess and lowering objectivity.
Not only teachers may be blamed for the inconsistency of letter grades. Most parents do not want to dig deep, analyze numeric grades with percentage, determine how much points their kid has got for each assignment or exam question. It is much easier to say that A is good and F is bad. Students are required to correct the situation, but nobody explains how this can be done. Such approach in no way may be called honest.
If a child gets F for a test, adults may say “you are lazy” or “you are not smart enough”. They do not bother to delve into the problem, find knowledge gaps, and help a learner to reach better results. Moms and dads have no time for these things and want to get a plain answer to the question: “Is my child doing well?” It should be short – yes or no.
When communicating with teachers, parents are mainly focused on test scores, attendance, ask whether their kids submit all assignments on time. But they rarely want to know whether students are active in a class, demonstrate curiosity, like the ways how information is transmitted and practical experiments are conducted.
Subjectivity is a serious drawback of letter grades. It is difficult to control educators and understand what evaluation criteria they use. In contrast, numeric grades provide clear data on the quality of students’ work. For example, when assessing essay according to 0-100% scale, a professor may allocate 20% for grammar, 30% – for argumentation, 15% – for formatting, and 35% – for the originality of authorial ideas. If each of these four criteria is analyzed separately, it becomes clear where a person had failed and what areas one should improve.
Therefore, despite high popularity, letter grading is not the system on which educators can rely. It is worth seeking more objective and comprehensive approaches. In this article, experts from Pro-Papers.com have outlined 7 interesting alternatives which schools may take advantage of.
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Just like in video games, educators may use trophies, badges, and XP to reward hard-working students in the classroom. With gamification elements, education becomes much more engaging and fun, turns into an exciting quest.
2. Live feedbackStudents should get written or verbal feedback right after accomplishing academic tasks. There is no need to guess why a teacher has put a certain mark because explanations are provided immediately.
3. UngradingGrades start the educational process rather than complete it. With the traditional approach, students pass tests and move to the next topic. With ungrading, they use marks as a guide for learning and work on errors. As a result, each student has an opportunity to eliminate knowledge gaps.
4. Standards-based reportingIn this case, letters are replaced with numbers, which allows to reduce subjectivity. The example of essay grading with percentage use has been considered above.
5. So? So what? What now?Students should ask themselves “So? So what? What now?” after completing each academic task. Also, these questions may be asked by teachers. This approach helps young people to assess their knowledge and understand what may be done to improve it. Here is what each question means:
- So? What work was done? It is necessary to summarize the steps taken and draw a detailed picture of a certain academic activity.
- So what? Why was this activity important? What benefits did it bring?
- What now? Did a student bring a task to a logical conclusion? What else one may do to improve the result?
This is a radical method because it leaves no room for intermediary options like “knows, but not everything” or “knows nothing but this”. Students either master a syllabus or not. If way too many mistakes are made, young people have to learn everything anew. The efficiency of this approach is questioned but, nevertheless, it is an alternative to letter grades.
7. CelebrationLearners are not punished for bad results but invited to celebrate their victories. This method presupposes that motivation is much better than coercion. A classroom ceases to resemble a prison cell and turns into a place where young people may find inspiration, play and win, be proud for their accomplishments, and set new ambitious goals.
