Grades determine who gets to take honors courses, who gets to receive scholarships, who gets to graduate, who gets into a desired college and more.īesides academics, people use grades to label a student’s worth, Feldman said. Some common grading practices, such as giving extra credit and averaging grades over time, can perpetuate inequities for disadvantaged students, said Joe Feldman, an Oakland-based consultant who works with schools and teachers on equitable grading practices.įor example, giving extra credit to students who complete extra projects or attend outside events ends up rewarding students whose families have resources for those tasks, Feldman said, while it disadvantages students whose families don’t.Īlso, the practice of producing one cumulative course grade by averaging a student’s performance from beginning to end can discredit improvements that a student made over time and can penalize students who started class behind grade level, Feldman said.ĭespite these flaws, grades are used to determine vital parts of students’ futures. “Realistically, nobody can tell the difference between 90 percent and 93 in any meaningful way,” O’Connor said. Percentage ranges for letter grades are often arbitrary, and one number out of a 100-point point scale doesn’t communicate much about what or how much a student has learned, said Ken O’Connor, a Toronto-based education consultant who helps schools and teachers change their grading practices. Research studies dating as far back as 1912 show that a single sample of student work can draw scores all over the map from different teachers.Įxperts point to the 100-percentage point grading system as a prime culprit. Several experts say middle and high school grades are frequently unreliable, arbitrary, subjective and widely varied in terms of what they actually measure.
Experts say it points to deeper issues - issues of equity and privilege - plaguing age-old grading practices in U.S schools. There’s a wide variation in grading scales that highlights how inconsistent grading systems are from teacher to teacher.
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