Necessary Changes in the Grading Systems

Necessary Changes in the Grading Systems

Jillian Brown, Contributor

In school you’re taught important life skills that you can’t live without. School is a place where you learn crucial information that you will use in the future. School is where teachers do their best to pack you with all the information you will need to succeed in life. School may have been this was long ago, but it no longer is.

At school most of the information we are taught is just to pass a test and get grades, hopefully good ones. According to our school system your grades determine how smart you are, where you will go in life, how successful you will be, and most importantly how much money you will make in whatever profession you may choose. This is not true, but this is how our school systems view us.

Grades define the contours of our educational system. Our society is structurally dependent upon the grading performance. Students who have GPAs of 3.0 and above will succeed and those with 2.0 or below will work in fast food restaurants for the rest of their lives, this is not true, but it is the way that our school system see us.

Grades should be meant as a way for teachers to assess where a student is in their education and help that student progress, not just to higher that grade by the end of that specific marking period, but to help that student understand the curriculum. Instead teachers grade all students accordingly, assuming that everyone is able to comprehend what is being taught, all at the same pace, knowing that not every student understands. Due to this students feel the need to cheat on work and tests in order to keep their grade up.

On top of our grading system, some of the information we learn will probably never be used again in our lives. School is supposed to prepare us for the real world as teachers say, but the information were taught and the tests we take don’t prepare us for the real world. Memorizing the distance formula and Pythagorean theorem is pointless unless you become a math teacher or the other few jobs that require these skills.

Students need to learn life skills like cooking, cleaning, parenting, finding jobs, managing money, and so many more, not how to find the square root of 4.

School is causing so much stress on students , studies have shown that today’s average high school student has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s.

“My teachers assign me hours of homework, expects me to get it all done and do good on it and then they want to wonder why I fall asleep in class.” Said freshman Aundrae Allen when asked how he felt about school work.

A lot of students anxiety related problems are rooted in school with tests and grades, as well as trying to stay on top of work that takes days to do and still getting a good amount of sleep.

The technology of the world has evolved in many ways that will help people find answers they need without stressing them like tests and “Fs” do, what we’re being taught in schools needs to evolve as well.