The Grading System

Paper Summary:

One of the main issues that the American educational system has to contend with is the formulation and implementation of an appropriate grading system to effectively measure and determine student performance in schools and universities. There have been numerous articles printed and published that suggests for a change in the current grading system in the curriculum of the U.S. educational system, which are the letter grades. Alongside this proposal is the suggestion for implementation of other forms of grading systems such as the numerical, narrative or mixed mode (combination of both numerical/letter and narrative) forms of grading. However, while programs gearing for a change in the grading system are prevalently called upon, there are also proponents who have disagreed with these changes and opted for the abolishment of grading in formal education. These perspectives are discussed in detail in this paper, and each grading system and perspective regarding the issue of changing the grading system is analyzed through its advantages and disadvantages to school evaluation and student performance. Primarily, the stance of this paper is for the support of the implementation of the mixed mode or the combination of numerical/letter or the narrative grading system. The points for and against this choice are also discussed in this paper.

From the Paper:

"The letter grade system is the prevailing form of grading in the American educational system at present. The letter grading systems utilizes letters as the measure of student performance an evaluation. Letter grades are based on an interval kind of measurement, wherein a broad range of grades are categorized under a letter grade "representative." For example, a grade of B can range from a numerical grade percentage of 80.5%- 89.5%, which is quite a broad interval and closer to the grades of A and C. One of the advantages of using letter grades is that it is prevalently used among schools and educational institutions, and has been the norm in most grading systems used by instructors and students. However, the letter grading system has its flaws that make it problematic and an inaccurate and unreliable measure of student performance evaluation. Letter grades are an inaccurate form of grading since it is interval-based in grading, and there is an unfair distribution of equal grades to students who have different levels of performance and knowledge."

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