By Cassidy Lee

Staff Writer

  Students tend to dread the day that report cards come home in the mail or when they look at their grades online. The flaws of the common grading system prompts students and teachers to undergo an immense amount of stress. The grading system used in school across the nation should be reformed to further promote the idea that a letter should not have such a heavy impact on a students life.

  Grades have remained the focal point for education and are accepted as the final word on learning. However, the current grading system often discourages students to achieve high academic standards and incentivizes teachers to increase student satisfaction and avoid censure from parents and administration for giving too many low grades.

  “Unfortunately, grades as we know them today do not reflect the learning outcomes that the students have and have not achieved,” states Rick Reiss from Stanford University. “In this context, what does a D, C, or B mean? Has a student achieved some of the outcomes?”

  Changing the grading system can would motivate students to focus more on learning. Rather than being the focal point, grades would mirror the material that students have learned.

  With the current grading system still in place, cheating and plagiarism continue to be a common strategy that students use in order to procure the grade that they want because they are not motivated to learn the actual material and already stressed. A better grading system would make cheating more difficult or less appealing, and would instead do a better job at encouraging students to learn and excel.

  Students often stress over, and try to maintain high grades; however, this can be detrimental to a student’s mental and physical health. In many cases, students tend to stress over low grades because it may impact their precarious future careers. Anxiety levels tend to increase when a student can not meet their instructors expectations or feel that they have a lack of control over their academic success.

 A study conducted by New York University found that “Nearly half (49 percent) of all students reported feeling a great deal of stress on a daily basis and 31 percent reported feeling somewhat stressed. […] Grades, homework, and preparing for college were the greatest sources of stress.”

  An improved grading system would prioritize something more than a letter. A teacher would focus on student learning outcomes and assess by using a clear rubric and detailing what outcomes students failed to or succeeded at achieving in their grading. The teacher would also provide positive as well as specific, constructive feedback for students to improve.

  Because of this, students would feel more in control of their grades and will be less likely to shift blame onto their teacher; animosity between teacher and student would be reduced when there is a clear understanding of why the student received the grade they did on both sides.

 Keeping the grading system used in schools today would only cause students to further worry about their grades and the effect that it may have on their future. Current grading systems should be reformed to further promote students learning and understanding of materials rather than what their ultimate grade is.