Are Grades Effective? (Original Research)

Introduction

Education is critical to the development of a society. It could be seen as the building blocks of a great society. Look at the Ancient Greeks with Aristotle or Plato, or the early revolutionaries of the early American empire. The importance of education seems to be recognized by most individuals. We put our kids in schools starting at a very young age, we encourage further education in our high schools, and we emphasis the importance of education is getting future employment. Although generally as a culture we emphasis the importance of education, we rarely evaluate the way we educate and how it accomplishes the objectives it strives to accomplish.

Setting the Stage

There are various opinions on how the education system should run. The most common methods include the pass/fail method, the traditional style, mastery-based learning, and grading on a curve. There are various pros and cons to the many different styles, and there are passionate and effective educators on all sides. The most popular style is the traditional grading style, this style includes letter grades. (A, B, C, D, and F) A growing style is the mastery-based learning style, which includes students not moving on from a topic until they have mastered the topic. These two styles vary in the way the you would need to implement the styles, so we can’t choose both. The question then comes—Which style is the most effective?

Some of the reasons most educators use the traditional grading style include common understanding, it allows for comparison, and it rewards hard work. The traditional style is simple to understand because it is so common in our culture. It is generally interpreted that “A’s” are good, while “F’s” are bad. Additionally, the traditional grading style allows for comparison among students which becomes useful when students are all trying to get into a college or seek to get rewarded for their hard efforts. The reasons that mastery-based learning is growing in popularity includes no gaps in students learning, focuses more on learning the material, and rewards students who practice, and who have persistence. The mastery-based learning is also more personalized for each student, each student learns at a different pace, which allows them to exceed and focus on learning rather than competition.

Methodology

How effective is the current grading system? The purpose of this study is to identify what the survey participants thought about that very question. I also sought to identify why they thought the way they did. The research question is important as a measuring stick on how most people felt about the way they were or their kids are being educated.

I sought to answer this question by first understanding who the survey participants were. I asked three questions that helped to identify the general demographic of the survey participants. I asked about their gender, age, and their highest level of schooling that they achieved. This helped me to focus my research on how specific groups answered the questions. The second three questions were focused on the survey participants thoughts on the effectiveness of the grading system. These questions were meant to get the participant to really think about evaluate their previous or current education. The main question of the survey was “Why?” this question was in response to how effective the survey participants thought the current grading system was. I allowed them to enter in their responses into free box which resulted into many different responses. These various responses gave me a perspective into why the researchers responded the way they did.

Findings

The survey that was conducted by 69 total responders. Around 70 percent of the responders were male, while the other 30 percent were female. The ages ranged from 60+ to 10-20 years old. Although, 95.6 percent of the participants had gone to college or a trade school equivalent. The biggest focuses of their education were learning the material, and getting good grades. This took up 88.4 percent of the responses, while 7.2 percent said to have fun, and 4.3 percent said that they had no focus.

Graph from the study:

How effective do you believe the current grading system is? (4 Effective, 1 Ineffective)

Implication

It’s interesting to notice that, although just a small amount, getting good grades was more of focus in education rather than actually learning the material. This could have to deal with the motivation of students compared to the teaching style, but it should cause us to think about how we are teaching. Schools should be helping the students develop the love of learning, instead I fear that the studying, learning, and school is gaining a bad taste in student’s mouth. The interesting data from this survey came with the question in Fig. 1 above. It’s fascinating to notice that the majority of survey participants (62.3%) said that they considered the grading style to be effective. (3 is higher than 1 or 2) This is significant because when people feel that a system is working more than messing up they are more hesitant to try something new. Humans generally only change something when they feel that it is in grave need of repair. Have we got content with the system of education that we have? Are we focused on constantly improving education? Why are we even going to school? These are questions that we need to ask based on the common responses from the survey.