SUPPASINCHAROEN 16

Tatiya Baitoey Suppasincharoen

Mr. Abel Cadias

English 10 / 1003

June 04, 2018

How Grades Affect Students at Mahidol University International Demonstration School

Grades become one of the largest problems of students. As a matter of fact, grades

determine whether or not students will be accepted by top universities in their area. All

schools use a grading system to measure students’ abilities and forecast students’

achievement. It is use to apply for universities; in fact, if the grades are completely

excellent, therefore it is straightforward to get admitted into universities. Grades are

defined as one of the university preferences. However, many students have to compete

with other students’ grades; as a result, some students struggle because their grades do

not pass the requirements of the particular university. Some universities require a

minimum GPA for students through the admission process; for all that, students who

undergo with low grades will not have opportunity to apply for universities. Students who

receive low grades continuously may feel pressure and stress. For this reason, low grades

can demotivate students. The purpose of this research report is to argue that grades do

more harm than good to Mahidol University International Demonstration School’s

students in order to prove that the society should change its old educational system. The

author uses eight academic articles from different sources, and a survey to gather data.

Grades affect Mahidol University International Demonstration School’ students due to

pressure, stress, and university admission.

Problem of Grading System

There are many problems of grading system; the main problem is grading is

harmful to learners. The article entitled “7 Reasons Teachers Should Stop Grading Their
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Students Forever” by Mark Barnes (2014) explains obviously about grading system.

There are multiple reasons that grading system should be cancelled by the fact that it is

not standardized for all schools. In other words, each school have different scales in

grading students. According to Barnes (2014) grades are personal perspective as grades

are given by teachers. By the reason that teachers have to grade students’ work and

behaviors, so that grades will come from teachers’ preferences. Which mean grades are

subjective because it is given by a teacher. In this article, it reveals that grades can make

an honest person turns into a cheater. Since a student need to take a test in order to get

grades, but some may not understand or remember the topic in the test. So, some have to

cheat on the exam because they do not want to fail or get bad grades. Not only tests, but

also homework that students have copied one another. The education expert “Alfie Kohn”

from the article “Are Letter Grades Failing Our Students?” by Cindy Long (2015) gives

a reason that grades are harmful and also needless. They suggested that report with a

description about how students act perform at school are more effective than letter grades.

Numbers in grades cannot show what students have done in classes, but words and

sentences can show it better.

Many ways to grade students and some of it do not have the same effect to

students’ grades. Based on the article “The Effect of Various Grading Scales on Student

Grade Point Averages,” to understand how the scale used to appoint grades will affects

students. Refer to Kelli and Shauna (2012), the performance of students of a particular

course can show by grades. The professor of the course will hand out the grades as a

number grades or letter to summarize student’s performance during the course. In the

article, there is a research to find out which of the types of grading scales will students

and teachers preferred. The results are that students preferred to have only plus grading

system, but teachers preferred to have both plus and minus grading system. However, the
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article told that the plus and minus grading system makes the distinction between

students’ performances. A grading system also make a distinguish between students;

those that are encourage by grades will finish their assignments and do well on the test,

but those that are not will not do any of this. This can cause a separation between good

grades students and bad grades students; the good one will be put in smart classrooms

and the bad one will be in lower classes (Barnes, 2014).

New Grading System

An old grading system that has been used for many decades is not stable. Nilson

(2015) has drawn attention to the fact that there are many components that are essential

for the new grading system. In other words, grading system needs a lot of improvement

in order for students to be comfortable with learning. For instance, indicate what students

have done in courses; words can show whether or not students have reached the maximum

of their abilities. Numbers cannot show clearly what students have done in classes. A

good grading system will motivate students to set higher goals and work for it. As

reported by Mallory (2015), the teacher at Sanborn high school has a different method to

grade their students. At the end of the school year, students will receive the feedback

individually from their teachers instead of letter grades. In the feedback, students will be

justified by their experts in each skill. Moreover, the most effective things teachers need

to give to their students are suggestions on how students can be improved. Teachers seem

to give students only grades, but not advice. Furthermore, grading system need to be

simpler because the old grading system is far from the word simple; each assignment and

test has different credit. When the class started, most of the students want to know how

they are going to be graded and because of the complexity of grading system that makes

students and sometimes teachers got confused (Nilson, 2015).

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Some schools have tried to change how they grade students; schools have to get

rid of the grading system and put on focuses on what students will get from schools. As

mentioned by Spencer (2017), there are schools that are not use grading system at all.

Those schools only focus on what students will learn. In addition, there are no letter

grades and none of the students will fail; the only thing that matter is students will master

or expert with what they have learned. There is no rush in this learning system because

students are different, so they can get the topic faster or slower than the others. This is so-

called Mastery-based learning, which students will not be stressful with their learning

because there are no grades. A new type of classroom that allows students to have enough

time to work on topic that they do not understand until they get it. However, if students

acknowledge a certain topic already then they can move on to the next topic, too. As a

result, New York City Department of Education official has to build a mastery

collaborative which shares the Mastery-based learning to other schools around the city.

Even though, each school will adopt this learning to fit their own school.

How Grading System Affects Students

In order to make good education, schools need to improve their grading

system. Some schools did not realize that grading system affects students in their learning.

Many articles come up with the reasons that grading system is full of problems, so schools

need to remove this the problem of grading system. From the article “The case for

eliminating letter grades, according to a school with too many straight-A students,” by

Anderson (2017), he provides an information about removal of grading system. A private

school in Utah started to discard the A-F grading scale and substitute with reporting

system. The school thinks that reporting system should give their students’ parents what

they need to know. The reporting system contains more essential information of students

than A-F grading scale. As a matter of fact, A-F grading scale only shows the alphabets
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that students get, but the reporting system gives words and what students have done. This

can draw out a picture of students in the class more than just a A, B, C, D, or F. Removing

A-F grading scale can help students improving their learning behaviors. The reason that

best schools are getting rid of grade reports and have these things instead: narrative

reports, meeting with students and parents, and description of students’ performances

(Long, 2015).

The article entitled “3 Problems with Traditional Grades” by Tucker (2017),

reports that grades are things that impacts on students’ achievement the most. It can affect

students’ effort in learning; some may have more inspiration in learning and in the same

time and students may lose interest in learning. This can make students have bad attitudes

toward grades. Many students stop reaching their dreams because of the grades. Students

view grades as an opportunity to be successful when they receive bad grades, they will

see themselves as losers. In a report card, there are just symbols without any explanations.

The grading system is danger to students’ mental illness. In fact, students can be stressful

because of low grades; it can affect their futures and well-being. A good grading system

should not make anxiety increasing. At the present time, in this generation, students can

hire other people to do their assignments because they are afraid of having low grades

(Nilson, 2015). Some students only focus on grades and do not participate in any of

extracurricular activities. This can make a problem in applying for colleges because

students have only academic on their reports. Colleges look for students that are complete

in every fields such as academic, activities, works, and recommendations letter from

teachers (Barnes, 2014).

Conclusion

This research report aimed to indicate that grading system is harmful to students’

future. This research report concludes that grading system has many problems. Grading
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system, how schools evaluate students, should be changed to a narrative description

because the original grading system is ineffective. It should be replaced due to the

problem that it affects students. Reporting system and A-F grading scale should be

abolished in the future in order to form a better education. This research report

recommends further studies on how private and public schools in Thailand are developing

use a new style of grading system.

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References

Anderson, J. (2017). The case for eliminating letter grades, according to a school with
too many straight-A students. Retrieved May 20, 2018 from
https://qz.com/1038258/one-schools-strategy-to-raise-empathetic-and-self-
motivated-citizens-ditch-grades/

Barnes, M. (2014). 7 Reasons Teachers Should Stop Grading Their Students Forever.
Retrieved May 19, 2018 from http://www.brilliant-insane.com/2014/05/7-
reasons-teachers-should-stop-grading-their-students-forever.html

Kelli, D., & Shauna, M. (2012). The Effect of Various Grading Scales on Student Grade
Point Averages. Retrieved May 19, 2018 from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3327239/

Long, C. (2015). Are Letter Grades Failing Our Students? Retrieved May 18, 2018 from
http://neatoday.org/2015/08/19/are-letter-grades-failing-our-students/

Mallory, N. (2015). No grades, no problem: How one high school is transforming

learning. Retrieved May 20, 2018 from https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-
18/no-grades-no-problem-how-one-high-school-transforming-learning

Nilson, L. (2015). The Need for a New Grading System. Retrieved May 18, 2018 from
https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1443

Spencer, K. (2017). A New Kind of Classroom: No Grades, No Failing, No Hurry.

Retrieved May 19, 2018 from
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/mastery-based-learning-no-
grades.html

Tucker, C. (2017). 3 Problems with Traditional Grades. Retrieved May 18, 2018 from
http://catlintucker.com/2017/05/3-probs-trad-grades/