GRADES. As well all know, grades are a huge part of our lives. From kindergarten all the way up to college we are being graded upon our work, essays, projects and tests. And here’s what ends up happening. You work your hardest. Study for hours on end, attend countless review sessions, office hours, talk to your friends, work extremely hard the whole semester, and your end up with a 75% in a class. By the standards of the American grading system, this is a D. This is a bad grade, and really effects your GPA. This scenario can be played out multiple ways, whether it’s for a test, quiz, project or anything, you only have very few point to miss before you receive what is considered a bad grade. This is a hug flaw in the American grading system. Saying that a student has to get 93% or better to receive an A is as little bit ridiculous. Look at it this way. If a student is given a 100 question test, they have to get 93 questions correct just to get an A, and then the drop-off is severe and harsh. A student can get more the half of the questions right, and still FAIL that test. Only the top 40% of the 0-100% range is actually used in the American grading system. After that, it doesn’t matter, you have failed. This is unreasonable, and setting students up to fail. This is evident not only on large tests, but small quizzes as well. If a student is administered a 10 question quiz, and they get two questions wrong, they receive an 80%. An 80% is a C, which although a C is supposed to represent average, it does not anymore. Receiving a C on a graded assignment is considered bad nowadays and really hurts the student. And all this happened because two questions were missed. Missing two questions doesn’t really sound that bad, but when you realize that missing those two questions gives you a C, it sounds pretty bad. We are demanding that current students be near perfect to receive good grades in their classes. Nobody is perfect, so to expect that from people who are going through potentially the most stressful times of their lives is not the best way to go. Clearly, the American grading system is flawed. Many people have turned to look at the UK grading system to see how that compares, and if it is potentially better than the US grading system, and from a quick glance it does appear that way.
| United States | United Kingdom |
| 93-100%: A, Excellent | 70% & above: Distinction |
| 85-93%: B, Very good | 60-69%: Merit |
| 78-85%: C, Average | 50-59%: Pass |
| 70-77%: D, Below average | 40-49%: Tolerated Fail |
| Below 69%: F, Failure | Below 40%: Fail |
As we can see, it appears that UK grading system uses more of the whole scale from 0-100 than the US system. And for those of us who aren’t prefect and mess up sometimes, the UK grading system seem much more preferable. Getting a 70% seems pretty manageable and achievable. But upon further evaluation, the UK system has very similar flaws as the US. What this scale doesn’t show you is how much harder it is to achieve a higher grade in the UK system. On average only about 10% or students receive higher than 70% on the UK grading scale. So while you need a lower score to receive the same grade, it appears that it is much harder to receive that grade. This also brings up one of the biggest issues with the US grading scale which was that it didn’t use the whole scale. Well neither does the UK scale as one might have initially thought. The US scale doesn’t use the bottom of their scale, but the UK doesn’t use the top of their scale. So which is better? My answer, neither of them are the best option. It’s unfair to require perfection of students in the US, but it’s also unfair if you’re going to make it almost impossible for students to achieve higher than 70-75%. I believe that there needs to be a more reasonable scale to judge students and their work. The grades that are received by students from kindergarten all the way up to grad school can determine the rest of a student’s life. I don’t know what the exact best way to grade students would be, but I do know that it is not what the US or UK has to offer right now.
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I understand where you are coming from completely and full-heartedly, but the U.S grading system, in my opinion, makes the mark so high to attain an A because everybody can not perform on the same level. It is easy to earn a 40% on an exam. However, approximately with every 10% increase, the difficulty to attain is exponentially harder so that students can be better differentiated in their capabilities. It doesn’t make sense to have an exceptional student and a mediocre student on the same level or have the same grade because the system is too easy to beat, which would have more severe societal flaws than the flaws of the grading system now.
This is very interesting to hear due to the recent conversation hat I had with my French teacher. You see, in France, grades start at a 0, and a student has to work their way up by proving what their work is worth. In the US however, we all start with a 100 and each point is deducted when you get something wrong. While I do think that the US grading system is flawed, I do think that we should make note of the extreme pressure that Europe places on their students in order to earn their grades. It’s almost an incentive to go above and beyond just to hypothetically get a 100% on an assignment. I also think that there is a negative stigma on grades in a way that students think that their knowledge is solely based on what letter grade they receive in a class. Great blog, very thought-provoking.
We have talked about this issue before and I completely agree about the flaw in our grading system. Although some people such as Ishan support the hardship of getting over a 95% for the A in his class, I am a proponent of grading similar to the AP exam. It is unreasonable to have students need to be perfect on their exams. It should reflect our true society where we understand that we do not know 100% of a topic. Sadly, this will not change for us so keep on grinding.
I agree that the grading system in the USA is rather flawed. It is demeaning to some students who are not blessed with academic skills or knowledge to try their hardest in school, only to be told that their best wasn’t good enough. Luckily, colleges have shifted their admission decisions from strictly high-school transcripts to other aspects of the students’ lives. Some programs/universities also offer interviews to get a full grasp on what their prospective student is like.
I’m glad you mentioned the little-known fact that testing in the UK is much more difficult than here in the US, so it would make sense that their grading scale is more lenient. However, I agree that one system is not better than the other. You can argue that even though the grading is different, all students still continuously have the stress of not wanting, but needing, to be perfect in order to be successful in their field.