America's Educational System

Essay by pachangaUniversity, Bachelor'sA, November 2011

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Will changing the grading system in America's educational system improve student's performance?

The letter grade system is the established form of grading in the American educational system currently and commonly used in some part of the world. These grades were A, B, C, D, and F. Letter "A" being the highest and "F", indicating a fail, the lowest. With that said, there are numerous articles and publications suggesting a change in the current grading system (Letter grade) in the curriculum of the U.S education system with proposed grading systems such as the numerical, narrative or mixed mode (combination of both numerical/letter and narrative) forms of grading.

Arguments over grading is always in constant debate with seemingly endless lines having been drawn between both support and opposing side of the spectrum. My goal in this paper is to point out why the letter grade system in the United States should be maintained and how that correlates to student's performance.

As a freshman college student, I disagree with any proposals to amend the current grading system.

Grading is a letter, number, or other symbol indicating the relative quality of a student's work in a course, examination, or special assignment (Rinsland 9). The letter grading systems exploit 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 grouped under a letter grade "representative." For example, a student with a grade of B can range from a numerical grade percentage of 80.5%- 89.5%, which is comparatively a wide interval and closer to the grades of A and C. I believe the current system provides enough of a distinction between different levels of performance, and is quite fair and adequate.

Grading help...