Let’s Make Grading A Conversation

(What is considered a good gpa for college?, 2020)

[Abstract]: Standardized admission testing was first established in the U.S. in the early twentieth century. By the 1940s, the A-F grading system emerged as the preferred grading scheme, along with the 4.0 GPA scale and the 100 percent system that are often all used in conjunction in schools today. However, there is an ongoing debate as to the fairness and purpose of standardized testing and grading scales where a grade is simply assigned to a student by a teacher. From unfairness based on race and socioeconomic status in standardized testing to the increased subjectivity of grades, these arbitrary marks of “100” or “A” carry no weight other than the unnecessary stress they put on students and teachers that can lead to them losing sight of the true goal of education: to learn. While some argue that the traditional grading system and standardized tests ensure students put effort into their work, I argue this is not the case and here needs to be a change in America’s education system from an ‘examining culture’ to an ‘assessment culture’. More than a mere way to grant grades, evaluation can and needs to be formative. Self-grading where there is also a conversation between the teacher and student regarding that evaluation can provide the student with a sense of autonomy that can contribute to positive affect. This formative evaluation can have a positive effect on the development of students’ higher, deeper and more reflective learning levels, similar to Fredrickson’s Broaden-and Build theory. While standardized testing still has the ability to provide relevant information, there needs to be more emphasis and weight placed on the process of grading within the process of learning and student involvement in it.

Starting as early as elementary school, I was always told that I needed to get good grades. My parents would say,”You need to get A’s to get into a good college.” The thought of getting a B seemed like the end of the world to me, especially once I got into high school. I didn’t even want to get an A- because that would bring my GPA down. My focus was not on learning in a way that would allow me to truly understand and retain the material. I’ll admit that I crammed the night before a test or two. Okay, three. Fine, pretty much all of them! My goal was to get the A, and even though I had trouble remembering what I had just learned after the test, it didn’t matter because I had already received the grade. Before going to college, I used to always say the phrase “C’s get degrees” and thought that once I got to college grades wouldn’t really matter as much as long as I passed. But, I’m going to be honest here, if I got a C in one of my classes, and I think many other students can relate, I wouldn’t be too happy. And don’t even get me started on how many times I took standardized tests to get the best score I could to send to colleges.

This got me thinking, why is there such an emphasis on letter grades, GPA, and standardized test scores? Does it have to stay this way?

In this article, I address the arbitrary letter grade system that is currently commonly implemented, the grade inflation in higher education that perpetuates systemic racism, and the flaw in the emphasis on standardized tests such as IQ tests and the SAT that are arguably unfair. Then I propose visions of reformation of the grading system as a way to add to this ongoing conversation.

There is not even a consensus among academics regarding what an “A” or “B” really mean. Grades seem to consist of a mixture of information that vary from school to school, teacher to teacher and even student to student (Cizek, Fitzgerald, & Rachor, 1995). Grades are just arbitrary marks on a paper and have become subjective to a point that they now have no significant meaning for anyone involved in academics, from parents to college admission counselors. Further contributing to this is what some call a “success bias”. Cziek describes how, beginning in elementary school, teachers seemed to structure their assessment practices and combine formal and informal assessment information in ways that were most likely to result in a higher grade for their students (Cizek, Fitzgerald, & Rachor, 1995).

And this grade inflation continues in college classrooms. Tucker argues that in the traditional grading system most institutions currently implement, the difference between an outstanding job and a good job is lost. Inflated grades give the appearance of excellence but are not a true measure of student learning and knowledge (Tucker & Courts, 2010). And this concern over grade inflation is nothing new. Over a century ago in an 1894 Harvard committee report concern was already raised about inflating grades:

“Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily — Grade A for work of not very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity … One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work.” (Tucker & Courts, 2010).

Average GPA has consistently demonstrated an upward trend in the past few decades. Are students producing that much better work or is something else going on?(National)

In a 50-plus-year nationwide study of the history of college grading carried out by Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor, using data he and Furman University professor Chris Healy collected, it was found that in the early 1960s, an A grade was awarded 15 percent of the time. Today, however, an A is the most common grade given in college, with the percentage of A grades tripling to 45 percent. Of all grades awarded, 75 percent were either A’s or B’s (Lewin, 2010).

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is not immune to grade inflation either. At UNC, the average G.P.A was 3.21 in the fall of 2008, up from 2.99 in 1995. A’s have become the most frequent grade, and together, A’s and B’s accounted for 82 percent of the 2008 grades (Lewin, 2010). Even professors, such as Andrew Perrin, a sociologist at UNC, takes issue with what this means for grading. “An A should mean outstanding work; it should not be the default grade. If everyone gets an A for adequate completion of tasks, it cripples our ability to recognize exemplary scholarship.” (Lewin, 2010).

The concern I have for grade inflation is not that more people are getting A’s as UNC professor Andrew Perrin mentions above. If people demonstrate excellent scholarship, they should get the A. There shouldn’t be a limit to how many people can get A’s or B’s. The ability to recognize “exemplary scholarship” that Perrin asserts is being crippled by grade inflation leads me to the question: What standards are instructors basing this “exemplary scholarship” on? The concern with grade inflation I have(and Perrin’s argument against it) and thus the current grading system in general is that the arbitrary letter A given to a student is largely a marker of class and cultural capital, as argued by Hassanly Ladha, an Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. Ladha calls attention to the fact that white students have more social and cultural capital than black students; whites are more likely to have parents and other family members who have gone to college and are more likely to have access to tutors, books, and the internet (Ladha, 2020).

Significant racial disparities exists between the GPAs of black and white students as well, with only 20% of black students having a GPA greater than 3.5 and 45% with a GPA under 3.0 while 60–70% of white students have GPAs in excess of 3.3 and 40% have GPAs in excess of 3.5 (Ladha, 2020). So, the effect of grade inflation is to ensure that grades are dispersed in a way that allows a certain class and race (white upper and middle class) to maintain its position in society and continue to discriminate against less privileged students (lower class, black, etc.).

To ignore such facts is to perpetuate the continuing of such injustice in education. Just as important to grading as “standards” is context. Students come from a variety of backgrounds; cultural, socioeconomic and educational.

Just as the reliability and validity of grading scales have been called into question, the same thing has happened with standardized tests, such as IQ tests and the SAT. IQ tests, which are often used to place students in special education or gifted programs, have been found to be affected by factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and parental expectations (PEX) (Weiss and Saklofske, 2020). Higher SES families are typically more immersed in the dominant culture and therefore more likely to score higher on a culturally loaded test such as the SAT. Parental expectations and cognitive development are “reciprocally interactive” because naturally bright children stimulate their parents toward higher quality interaction which then motivates the child toward intellectually enriching pursuits that further stimulate cognitive growth. Standardization samples have also shown large differences in IQ scores between Whites, African-Americans, and Hispanics which could be due to differing educational attainment rates. There are also historical inequalities in access to quality education and discrimination in job opportunities and promotions that play a role (Weiss and Saklofske, 2020). It is important to note here that this does not necessarily mean IQ tests are biased, but there is an argument here that they are unfair.

With the SAT, similar arguments are present regarding differences in scores among racial/ethnic groups and based on SES. In 2018, combined SAT test scores for Asian and White students averaged over 1100, while all other groups averaged below 1000. With regard to income, a 2015 analysis found that students with family income less than $20,000 scored lowest on the test, and those with family income above $200,000 scored highest, with average scores on some subtests, such as reading, differing by over 100 points (Elsesser, 2019). This is not surprising given the cost to take the test to begin with and the expensiveness of test prep which even the College Board, who administers the SAT, admits has its benefits and can raise test scores. Stereotype threat, in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group, has also been shown to be a possible factor that can be a contributing factor in long-standing racial gaps in education through impact on test scores such as the SAT. If students are reminded of their racial group before taking a test, research by Steele and Aronson has shown that this can raise self-doubts and increase anxiety during high-pressure exams and lead to lower scores for those who are negatively stereotyped (and higher scores for those who are positively stereotyped) (Steele & Aronson, 1995).

Clearly, with both grading, IQ tests and the SAT, certain groups do have a disadvantage.

So, we now see that there is evidence to make an argument that grade inflation and the traditional A-F grading system have made receiving an “A” arbitrary and arguably meaningless while simultaneously contributing to a cycle of discrimination for certain racial groups and the less privileged. We have encountered evidence regarding the unfairness of standardized tests such as IQ tests and the SAT. So, what now? What can we do to change this?

I am arguing that we need to change from an ‘examining culture’ to an ‘assessment culture’. In other words, we need to change from viewing tests and grades as an end product/goal after something has been taught (‘examining culture’) to viewing these components as part of the larger, overarching process of learning (‘assessment culture’). In the ‘examining culture’ we have today, tests and grades are not always interpreted as a way to contribute to learning and are instead viewed as a completion of instruction (leading to arbitrary grades and test scores). In an ‘assessment culture’ assessments and grades are given during and after instruction and then interpreted in order for both students and teachers to learn from them and alter their behaviors accordingly (institute new instruction practices, go back as a student and work on certain material more, etc.).

So, more than just granting grades for the sake of it, evaluation can and needs to be a formative experience. This formative evaluation can have a positive effect on the development of students’ higher, deeper and more reflective learning levels.

How can this be done?

1) shared assessment of student performance

2) test optional institutions

3) option to pass/fail courses

Both self-assessment and shared assessment (grading undertaken by both the student and the teacher) foster the learning of content and provide useful meta-cognitive knowledge that can be applied to future endeavors (López-Pastor, Fernández-Balboa, Santos Pastor, & Fraile Aranda, 2012). So, student self-assessment can be empowering and positively contribute to learning. The important thing to bring up with self-assessment is that it must be understood as a process. Self-reflection needs to take place along with many thoughtful and fair decisions based on previously agreed-upon criteria (López-Pastor, Fernández-Balboa, Santos Pastor, & Fraile Aranda, 2012). The negotiation process through working with a teacher to determine a final grade in a course can be beneficial for all parties involved. The professor is able to use his/her expertise to provide suitable arguments and fair guidance in order to help students sharpen their judgment skills and the student the opportunity to develop their self-evaluation skills which can be applied all throughout their lives. It also provides the student with a sense of autonomy that can contribute to positive affect, relating to Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build model of positive emotions (Zullig, Koopman, & Huebner, 2009). Broaden-and-Build theory states that positive emotions have the power to broaden our awareness, exploratory thoughts and actions, our ability to identify potential opportunities, our likelihood of approaching potential rewards and build psychological resources, intellectual resources, social resources (e.g., friends) and physical resources (e.g., health). Put more concisely, positive affect can broaden one’s attention, openness to social experiences, and ways of thinking which over time will build resources that promote further happiness. So, school satisfaction which is highly correlated with positive emotions in schools should predict enhanced behavioral coping and engagement skills, which should in turn build increased academic and social resources.

Shared-assessment will also allow for students to not be graded based on “standards” that do not take into account cultural, socioeconomic and educational differences. Further, I argue students should be graded not compared to others, but to themselves. On whether or not they have shown improvement and put forth effort to learn.

For me as a student, these arbitrary marks on the paper were the only thing I cared about. (Inside higher ed)

Some may argue that self-grading may lead to students not actually putting in sufficient effort into their schoolwork because in the end they can just give themselves a high grade. However, it is important to realize that this is already what is going on in our current grading system with grade inflation (and contributing to a cycle of discrimination as discussed earlier). If students walk into a college classroom knowing that they can do as little work as possible and exert minimal effort and still get a high grade, that is exactly what they are going to do. This means that grades are priority while learning takes a backseat, which ultimately weakens the value of a college degree. Further, since many jobs nowadays require a college degree, employers will struggle to find a true gauge of how the student will perform in the workplace, because while they may have received A’s, who knows if they possess the actual skills required (Tucker & Courts, 2010). Also, I am arguing for a shared-assessment grading process in which the student and teacher work together to determine a student’s final grade in a course. If a student does not put forth sufficient effort and/or demonstrate competency in course material, then that should be discussed. There has also been shown to be no statistically significant difference between grades granted by professors and those from student self-assessment in different university degrees and courses. Reliability of students’ grades also increased when teachers communicated clearly the assessment criteria, students were in more advanced courses, and students had previous experience with self-evaluation (López-Pastor, Fernández-Balboa, Santos Pastor, & Fraile Aranda, 2012). So, it is important to provide students with opportunities to train themselves in self-evaluation, such as with the help of scoring rubrics.The goal is to place learning at the forefront of our education system again and shift away from our obsession of receiving a certain grade.

With standardized tests, some may argue that they should still be used because they show quantitative results and I agree. Properly designed and used tests can and do further societal goals of fairness and equality of opportunity (Warne, Yoon, & Price, 2014). Warne asserts that standardized tests can be used as measurements to help advocates understand the degree of inequality among groups and how much progress society has made toward reducing these inequalities (Warne, Yoon, & Price, 2014). Caution does need to be exercised though in using solely IQ tests to determine placement in the educational system, as it can contribute to the cycle of historical inequalities that certain groups have faced. Caution should also be used in utilizing that SAT for college admissions due to the concerns of its unfairness.

Over 1,000 colleges and universities are now test optional as a way to address this unfairness (Elsesser, 2019). It has been statistically shown that there were no significant differences in college cumulative GPA and graduation rates between submitters (those that submitted SAT scores) and non-submitters (Elsesser, 2019). So, without standardized tests such as the SAT, college admission officers are able to predict who is likely to succeed at their institution. I argue that going test optional then doesn’t seem like a stretch since colleges are already selecting successful applicants without these unfair tests.

We are at a turning point specifically with higher education. With the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges have instituted pass/fail policies that allow students to choose to either receive a standard letter grade or a pass/fail option with a C or higher considered passing. After a UNC student created a petition in March 2020 to urge administration to consider such a policy change due to the pandemic, the policy was implemented (Hines, 2020). The circumstances that lead to this change, such as increased anxiety and financial burden, are factors that have always been present and will continue to be for years to come. The fact that such policies have changed shows that further, more permanent change is possible. These aren’t things that are just a part of going to school and have to stay the same. Circumstances change and so policies should adjust with them. Perhaps the grading changes that have been made due to these unprecedented circumstances will open the minds of more institution administrators to the possibility of new grading policies and methods.

Transformation is also possible, such as a school where no letter grades or GPA is given, only feedback on performance. However, right now, I believe that reformation should be the goal, which could ultimately lead to such a transformation over time. Further, the reforms I am suggesting, shared assessment grading, test optional institutions and pass/fail options, are not the be all and end all solutions. I am not saying this is the only possible answer. The point of this article is to keep the conversation going. One about learning, growing, and improving.

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