The Flaws of the American Educational Grading System - Essay Example

Is the American grading system ineffective in measuring learning progress? In “An Open Letter to College Admissions Committees” Andrew Knight, a physics teacher who resigned from Loudoun County Public School, persuades college admissions committees to stop using grades in their assessment process. He is a worthy opponent of the existing standards within the framework of the available educational system because he has credibility as a high school teacher who has experienced problems with self-entitled and pressured students, their parents, and school administrators. His work demands attention because the U.S. grading system receives criticism permanently due to problems of high school graduates who lack the competencies required to be successful in college and occupations. 

He exemplifies students, who choose easy teachers, or those who give high grades, though he focuses on students and their parents, who harass teachers to give these students higher grades because of self-entitlement. Self-entitlement means that because they passed exams and completed requirements, they feel that they deserve at least a B grade. Finally, Knight proposes comprehensive exams that have depth and breadth as a better measure of subject competencies. He states that the results of these exams should replace high school grades in college assessment processes and outcomes.

Though Knight touches on some of the limitations of the grading system in his school, he has a biased sample, from which he bases hasty generalizations. His experiences with self-entitled students come from his limited class interactions. Yet, he states categorically that this problem affects the entire country: “While I can only speak to grading practices at my school, I suspect that these concerns are endemic throughout high schools nationwide” (Knight). Though his experience somehow proves that grades are false indicators of competency for his class, he cannot say that his students represent the majority of American students. Because his sampling is biased, he cannot make the hasty generalization that grades are no longer objective and accurate measures of competence. Some students, who work hard for their grades and have learned competencies, are exceptions to his hasty generalizations.

Aside from biased sampling and hasty generalization, Knight commits the ad hominem fallacy when he judges students as generally self-entitled, so their grades do not measure their competencies. He approaches the problem with the grading system from the assumption that self-entitled students have made it an unreliable performance measurement. He suggests that these students are cheaters and lazy in learning class materials; thus, their grades do not reflect the mastery of their subjects.  He does not consider that several self-entitled students may have mastered their courses, but their levels do not fit the grades that they are demanding. Some self-entitled students may have motivation problems only, not learning deficits.

Finally, Knight uses the grading system as a red herring to the fundamental issue of the education system, which is raising student motivation toward learning. He blames self-entitled students, including the idea of self-entitled American culture, for poor learning among high school students. He does not consider his role in why his students are not committed to learning course competencies. Rick Wormeli, a secondary teacher for more than two decades, tells his exasperated colleague, who loudly complained that he did not care anymore for his students who failed his tests: “If eighty percent of your students are failing your tests, maybe there’s something wrong with what you’re doing, not what they’re doing” (14). As a teacher, Knight should be accountable for the failures of his grading system. He should delve deeper into why his students are not motivated to learn.

The American grading system is an effective way of measuring learning because the system is not the problem of poor education quality, but poor student motivation and learning. Many teachers continue to believe that the grading system is an effective way of measuring learning. Thomas R. Guskey, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Kentucky, surveyed 314 educators to assume that classroom observations and homework completion and quality are better indicators of student learning than standardized assessments. April Bleske-Rechek, Nicole Zeug, and Rose Mary Webb, who are associate professors in different American universities, stress from their study that multiple-choice assessments correlated more to student achievement than short-answer tests. These studies show that grades continue to serve administrative and learning functions for numerous teachers. Letter grades can still provide an accurate assessment of learning, provided that they are related to target learning outcomes and include regular assessment and feedback.

 The problem is not the grading system itself, but how it is explained to stakeholders and how it is used to bring students meaningfully from one grade level to the next. Wormeli underscores the accountability of teachers in the learning process: “It doesn’t matter why the student failed; effective secondary teachers provide the ladder” (19). Teachers have the main challenge and responsibility of motivating students to learn and helping them and their parents understand what the grading system means and how higher grades can be meaningfully attained. Instead of saying that grades are ineffective learning indicators, teachers can use them to improve their teaching and motivation strategies. If they continue to blame grading systems for poorly performing students, Wormeli recommends something for them: “Now get back into that classroom and live up to the promise of teaching” (14).