Students, Grades, and Me

Grades have been a part of our culture for decades; whether in elementary school, middle school or high school the majority of students have been evaluated through a grading system. These grading systems are put into place and are used as an indicator of how much knowledge a student knows or does not know. An enormous emphasis is placed on these grades throughout a student’s educational experience. Students are told that these grades will determine their future; what colleges are they going to get into, as well as what job opportunities they are going to have. Just recently I feel our society has began to change its opinion on grades and look at the “whole child” instead of how successful they are on standardized tests.

From literature that focuses students options’ on grades it is clear that many times grading can cause more harm than good. Anxieties, internal pressures, as well as parental and societal pressures, cause students to focus on grades and lose sight of the ultimate goal of learning. The idea of grades taking away from the learning process demonstrates a miss use of grades by many educators. While grades due in fact provide some valuable information of a child’s learning, more often than not they are misused and abused.

As an up and coming educator I want to provide students with an opportunity to be successful no matter what their learning ability. When I develop tests and other forms of assessment for my students, I want the assessments to match the goals and objectives that I had put in place. While there are many grading systems out there, it is up to me as an educator to find the most beneficial grading system for my students. In order to this it begins at the beginning of the year by not only explaining my grading system but implementing authentic assessments that take away from the outcome and focus on the process.

While authentic assessments are truly important to student learning it is also important to allow students to look back at mistakes they have made and allow then to correct them. By giving students an opportunity to make corrections to any parts of the test, project, paper, report or activity that they got wrong you are ensuring students are learning from their mistakes and alleviating the pressures of the overall outcome. If students are given an opportunity to improve you are increasing motivation to do better and also making learning successful. Students should not be punished for not learning information; they should always be given a chance to be successful. While I do not want students to take advantage of this kind of grading policy I will make sure students understand the reasoning behind my resubmitting policy and warm them of the consequences if I feel students are not putting forth the effort to turn in meaningful work.

Many students are not motivated to learn simply by getting good grades. To be an effective teacher and use grades appropriately I must be able to assess all my students in a variety of different ways. Students must be aware of my overall objectives and goals not only for the year but also for each individual assignment. Grades can be a very valuable tool when used effectively; as an educator I hope to motivate my students intrinsically and use grades as a motivational tool to increase my student’s successfulness within my classroom.

These References were used for writing this article and also provide additional insight into grades, and grading :
1) http://www.utexas.edu/academic/cte/sourcebook/grading2.pdf
2) http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/grading.htm
3) http://www.middleweb.com/INCASEgrades.html
4) http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Anarch/WhyGrad.htm
5) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html