Diminishing Grades In Schools

Assigning grades to students in school has been a crucial part of the education system for ages, but there is a debate on whether or not grades are actually an effective motivator for learning. Although assigning grades is helpful in terms of ranking and placing students, it can be questioned whether or not this the best and only way to help kids thrive in their educational career. There are many different supporting ideas for and against both sides of keeping grades as a standard for student learning or getting rid of grades altogether which will be discussed in this paper. Some topics include which of the two types of motivation acquired by administering grades and diminishing grades is the most effective, determining if the standard of grading

Often times, teachers are crammed for time to teach their curriculum to students because they need to assign tests by a certain time so that they can get a final grade to submit to the school board by the end of the term. Because of this, it does not allow for any modifications to the curriculum if need be to help the students. This stress on the teachers also gets put on to students who are expected to take these tests in a short amount of time after learning these concepts, which related to the first point, causes stress for students to may be a bit slower in understanding some things. For subjects such as History where a lot of impactful events occurred over a period of time, it does not leave room to understand the implications of those events. Instead students are forced to just memorize dates and names to regurgitate on the tests so they can get a good mark in the end and have a good GPA to get into higher education. It can be argued that grades are needed to help determine which students get into which universities, but a solution could be to have more schools that are specialized in certain departments or specialties. This way, instead of having major universities or colleges that broadly teach all subjects having students compete to see who has the highest grades to get in, only students who are

This privilege comes with the ability to give the child a better education and therefore leads to them attaining high grades. Studies have shown that families with a higher socio-economic status have higher levels of achievement in school (Berliner, 2005; Gutman, Sameroff, & Cole, 2003). This is unfair for students who may not be as well off in their family financial situation and cannot afford to get a higher education because their overall performance in school is not as high as others and can lead into a spiral of stress and despair in their performance in school. In fact, children who live in poverty have been found to be held back in school because they are not as mentally developed as those in higher SES families (Woolfolk, Winne, & Perry, 2016, p. 126). Ultimately, this sets an unfair advantage to those who can afford it, while those who cannot are left in a cycle of underperformance that they did not choose. It can be argued that being in an undesirable situation like this does not completely diminishes the ability to perform well in school and that there are success stories from students in poverty, but it is still a lot more difficult than those who are born into a privileged family. Schools in more poverty dense areas do not have as good an education as those in more upper class neighbourhoods, even for public schools. This lowers the possibility for these students to get into post-secondary