We all remember the dreaded end of semester Armageddon known as “report card day.”
But why do we get letter grades in school at all?
So getting grades is a big part of the way we view education with A’s equaling success
while F’s represent the dreaded failure.
Students are taught early on that to get ahead in life, and be smart and successful, the
best foundation is getting perfect report cards in school.
Grades can help us get into advanced courses and competitive colleges, and certain exams
can grant us licenses to practice different trades and professions.
But outside of the nagging question about why we skipped over the E grade, have you
ever wondered: When were the first grades given and why?
Well if you want to blame someone, it appears that the first grades date back to Yale president
Ezra Stiles in 1785.
He wrote in his diary that there were 58 students present at his examination and that their
grades were “Twenty Optimi, sixteen second Optimi, 12 Inferiores (Boni), ten Pejores.”
These are usually noted as the first college grades ever assigned.
In Yale’s 1813-1839 “Record of Examinations” students’ averages were noted in the book
by the Senior Tutor of the Class on a scale of 4, which may be responsible for the 4.0
scale commonly used today.
In 1817 the faculty reports from William and Mary College groups students into 4 categories
“No 1 the first in their respective classes, No 2 Orderly, correct, and attentive, No.
3 They have made very little improvement, No. 4 They have learnt little or nothing.”
Ouch.
That's a major teacher burn.
But the four point scale wasn’t really standardized throughout the 19th century.
Harvard tried a 100 point scale and a 20 point scale.
Yale later tried a 9 point scale.
So until 1850 it was normal for grades to vary in terms of number systems, and weight.
In US colleges professors used descriptive adjectives to assign value rather than relying
on the numbers alone.
But by 1883 there is a report on a Harvard professor giving a student a “B” grade,
which is when letters got incorporated into the act.
In 1886 Harvard Faculty Records show that professors began grouping students into 5
classes based on performance.
Similar 5 point systems spread to places like Yale, and Mount Holyoke, the latter of which
adopted the first letter grade system in 1897.
But a failing grade was marked as an “E” and not an “F”.
Over time the E was dropped and the standard system across US colleges became 5 points
all represented by letters A, through D, and F. But the meanings of grades and the systems
for recording them often shifted in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries
Ok so we’ve established that if we want somewhere to point the finger of blame for
why we received stressful grades in school, and why a less than stellar score on a 6th
grade pop quiz gave me heart palpitations, we can start with a bunch of 19th century
college professors.
But the more important questions is: why are we still getting grades in school today?
Those guys are dead.
So they’re useful for determining class ranking, they help teachers group students
into categories, and they can also be instrumental in whether or not you can enter into certain
jobs.
But because I’m sure a lot of us are still suffering from post report card induced stress,
we have to ask the most pressing questions: do grades really matter?
And are they actually effective tools for helping students learn?
Well the answer to the first question “do grades really matter” is kind of complex
and has to be broken down a bit to get to the heart of it.
Because it seems that the importance of your grades depends on the path you decide to take.
Although we’re taught that grades are the strongest predictor of success in life, this
isn’t uniformly true.
The issue with grades is that they consider averages, which gives you the most usual outcome
but not the full picture.
An average doesn’t consider the outliers, but rather the collective information from
a certain group.
History is actually filled with successful people who didn’t finish college or even
high school: Magic Johnson, Anna Wintour, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Oprah Winfrey
to name a few, and none of these people did too shabbily in the life success department.
Also having perfect grades in high school doesn’t always predict future game changers.
Karen Arnold of Boston University conducted a study in which she followed 81 high school
valedictorians and salutatorians.
She found that the majority of them continued being successful at school later in life.
95% earned college degrees with an average GPA of 3.6, 60% went to graduate school, 90%
are in professional jobs, and 40% are in the highest tiers of those jobs.
This is because a high GPA reflects skills like being prompt, working really hard, following
directions and being well rounded.
All important skills for high level careers.
But Arnold found that although most of her former high school valedictorians and salutatorians
were “strong occupational achievers” none had entered into roles she would consider
“visionary” because the grades we receive in school are designed to reward conformity
and following the rules, rather than creative thinking or specialization.
For example if you’re really great at history (shout out to our audience members) but you
still want to be ranked number 1, you eventually will have to put that history textbook on
the back burner to study other subjects and earn the coveted “A” in every field.
Having a high GPA is usually indicative of being a generalist, not a specialist.
Arnold posits that most people who become ground breakers are actually rewarded for
creative thinking, a unique specialization, and a focus on an intellectual passion, things
that don’t always get rewarded with grades.
As a result a lot of people who become successful later in life often struggle in school.
But a 2002 study at the University of Michigan still found that 80 percent of students based
their self-worth on how well they were doing in school and students with lower grades reported
having lower self-esteem and health.
So that brings us to the next question: do grades really help students learn?
Although grades have long been considered the standard approach in education, some experts
are turning away from letter based systems.
One of the biggest critics of the fixation on grades in schools is education expert Alfie
Kohn.
Kohn notes: “The research quite clearly shows that kids
who are graded – and have been encouraged to try to improve their grades – tend to
lose interest in the learning itself, avoid challenging tasks whenever possible (in order
to maximize the chance of getting an A), and think less deeply than kids who aren’t graded…That’s
why the best teachers and schools replace grades (and grade-like reports) with narrative
reports – qualitative accounts of student performance – or, better yet, conferences
with students and parents.”
Teachers also report that grading is becoming increasingly stressful, as grade inflation
puts added pressure on them to deliver the grades that students want and parents expect.
Some educators are moving away from letter and number based grading to standards based
grading.
In 2013 Kentucky implemented a system where students received 2 report cards: one with
the traditional letter grades, and another with a individualized breakdown of what students
had learned and the students' progress in school.
Virginia’s Fairfax County implemented a similar process in their elementary schools
in the 2012-2013 school year.
Parents reported finding the new system initially confusing, but ultimately more helpful in
assessing their child’s growth and progress in school.
And classrooms around the world, including public schools, private schools, and educational
initiatives funded by nonprofits, are looking to incorporate new methods in the classroom
that place less emphasis on memorization and focus more on innovation and how students
can retain new knowledge.
So even though grades are the oldest way of doing things, they may not be the best for
measuring students’ long term success.
So how does this all add up?
It seems grades do have some weight in determining student outcomes because we’ve based so
many systems around it, but this can vary a lot based on the individual.
While grades are extremely important in certain trajectories, like going to college, attending
graduate school, or entering into certain professions, they ultimately aren’t the
only determining factor of success.
And although we’ve accepted them as the marker of a good student, a perfect GPA doesn’t
always represent things like creativity, ingenuity, and intellectual passions.
Which is why more school systems and educators are looking for ways to measure student progress
outside of letters and percentages.
So what do you think?
Have any other theories about how grades became so entrenched in our education system?
Drop all your comments and questions down below (we swear we won’t ask you to share
your old report cards) and we’ll see you next week!