Assigning grades is one of the
most difficult and emotion-laden tasks for a teacher. It is also a task for
which teachers have had little professional preparation. A good grading system
should be a clear, accurate reflection of the differences in student
achievement. School use a variety of systems to report student performance. The
alternative reporting systems are Percentage Grades, Letter and number grades, Pass-fail
marks, Checklist, Written description, and Conferences with parents.
The
first system is Percentage Grades. The percentage
grading system is another widely-used, absolute grading system. This approach relies on the calculation of
the percentage of correct responses. Percentage grades assigns each student a
number between 0
and 100. It used because these grades are assumed to represent the percentage
of content a student has a great score or skill. The advantages of this system
are the percentage grades provide a convenient summary of student performance
and they can be recorded and processed quickly. It means, if the distribution
of grades for a given class is known, percentage grades provide a quick
overview for a counselor or other audiences of student performance relative to
other in the class. The limitation of percentage grades are the name itself is
misleading, they imply a degree of precision that cannot be justified given the
reliability of grades, and percentage grades do not indicate the combination of
skills that a student has achieved.
The second system is Letter and
number grades. Letter grades consist of a series of letters. Such as, Excellent,
Good, Poor, Unacceptable. The most common series is:
A=outstanding (Excellent)
B=very good (Good)
C=satisfactory (Enough)
D=weak (Poor)
F=unsatisfactory (unacceptable)
The advantages of Letter and
number grades are providing a convenient summary of student performance, approaching
the optimal number of categories for reporting students’ progress, and prevalence
and hence familiarity in the US and some other countries. The limitation itself
are they do not indicate the combination of skills that a student has achieved
and a letter grade by itself does not provide sufficient information to
determine whether a student should be promoted to the next grade level in
school.
The
third system is Pass-fail marks. Pass-fail marks collapses all letter grades
into two categories. A variation of pass-fail is
a pass and no pass policy in which a students’ record lists only the courses
that a student has passed. The advantages of pass-fail marks is as a
means of encouraging students to take courses in content areas they might
otherwise avoid. The limitation of it are reducing the utility of grades and tending
to have low reliability.
The
forth system is Checklist. Checklist allows a teacher to indicate which of a variety
of statements describes a given student. The advantages of it are more
adequately communicate student performance and allowing the teacher to report
separately a variety of traits relevant to instruction. Then its’ limitation
are more time-consuming to prepare and process, it can also be misleading, typically,
parents are unable to use highly detailed information about a child’s
achievement.
The
next system is written description. Written description is a writing narrative
description of each student. The narrative can describe traits that facilitate
or restrict learning, in addition to the student’s accomplishments. The
advantages of written description is it can include whatever is relevant and
can focus the reader’s attention on the most significant issues. The limitation
of written description are the flexibility of written description is also their
greatest limitation and they are time-consuming to prepare and read.
The
last system is Conferences with parents. It means the relationship and
conference between teachers and parents. Many schools supplement written grade
reports with conferences between teachers and parents. It is has some
advantages are direct communication between parents and teacher, allows teacher
to use feedback from the parents to assure that ideas are being communicated
accurately and with appropriate emphasis, and a conference also increases
parents’ involvement in the child schooling. The limitation of conferences with
parents are they often are unstructured, care must be taken to provide a
representative description of the student, it allows teachers to sense
inadequate communication, and about time-consuming.
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