ipl-logo

Pros And Cons Of Weighted Grading System

1457 Words6 Pages

Cassie Davis, a former student at Highland High School in Nunn, Colarado, worked herself strenuously in order to achieve academic excellence. She took every AP and Honors class she could, and in her senior year, while the others students began to relax as the result of their college applications being finished, she hit the books and continued to take classes at the University of Northern Colorado. However, she was punished for her diligence, as her school’s grading system discounted her college credits, and she lost her valedictorian status to a kid who had not taken difficult college courses. She found that she had been cheated, punished for choosing to challenge herself and learn more. Though this story is just one example, it is a true story (Manzo) that accurately demonstrates what can happen …show more content…

They claim that this system enforces economic inequality, and is inherently destructive to less wealthy citizens. To answer this claim, it is necessary to understand the college admission process. Students’s grades, class ranks, and number of activities are not entered into a computer that determines which students are accepted by how high their numbers are, but instead are viewed by real humans. They evaluate students not just quantitatively, but qualitatively, looking at their backgrounds and determining whether a students has tried to challenge him/herself by taking the most difficult classes that are available to him/her. If a student comes from a poorer school which does not offer AP courses, an admissions officer can still determine whether a student tried hard to challenge him/herself with the resources that were available, and students that try hard will appear to be a strong candidates regardless of how many AP courses their schools

Show More
Related

  • Academic Struggles And Success Of Omarina Cabera

    727 Words  | 3 Pages

    This film documents the academic struggles and success of Omarina Cabera. It follows her middle school years in an impoverished middle school in Bronx, NY to her graduation from an elite New England Prep school. It explains how she overcame a childhood of poverty and instability and became more than just another high school dropout statistic. According to the film during research conducted by Robert Balfanz, one of the nation’s top education researchers, he discovered that if a 6th grade child in a high poverty school is absent more than 20% of the time, or fails a math or English course or receives an unsatisfactory behavior grade in a core course, there is a 75% chance they will drop out of high school unless there is decisive intervention.

    Read More

  • A Young Person's Guide To The Grading System

    602 Words  | 3 Pages

    Grades are as valuable as star-shaped stickers, yet they have the power to lay the foundation of our entire lives. The grades we earn have no commercial value, but students invest millions into taking a class to get a grade. In Jerry Farber’s essay “A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System,” he crushes society’s constant need for competition by pointing out all of the major flaws in the grading system and offering a new credit system as a solution. Farber is correct by claiming that the grading system is flawed, stressful, and overall, useless. Farber builds his essay on the basis that grades are problematic for the school system to use.

    Read More

  • Congradulations 'Position In Margaret Talbot's' Best In Class

    912 Words  | 4 Pages

    They were so upset that they “hired a lawyer and sued the school district, the superintendent, and the principal of Valley View”(228). Talbot’s use of these anecdotes show that it has been taken too seriously and that some have gone overboard. When another student sued their school district over valedictorian, the judge ruled that Moorestown High School “‘heightens the levels of competition by naming a valedictorian’”(227). This anecdote of

    Read More

  • Why Colleges Shower Their Students With As By Brent Staples Summary

    605 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the article “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with As,” Brent Staples explains why colleges give out excellent grades to students that have not earned them. The author gives examples of university issues, reasoning for inflation from a student and professor standpoint, and then suggests a reasonable solution to the grade point average boosting. Staples succeeds at fearing the reader that the system will not change and higher education will become devalued. Staples starts by explaining what goes on in universities that creates conflict.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Why Colleges Show Their Students With A's By Brent Staples

    1045 Words  | 5 Pages

    Brent Staples wrote a beautiful, yet unconvincing article about colleges giving away “free” A’s to students. The article, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s,” appeared in 1988 in the New York Times paper (Staples 935). Staples himself has earned a PhD in psychology and is a member of the New York Times editorial board (935). The general purpose of this article was to inform the audience that over the past couple of years, university grading policies have become extremely lenient (935). The audience is a very limited to educational administrations and alumni of major universities.

    Read More

  • A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Essay 'Best Of Class' By Talbot

    511 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her essay Best of Class, Talbot tries to convince her audience that though the valedictorian system is flawed, it should be kept to motivate and reward student for their academic achievement. Talbot”s audience can be thought to be liberal adults of any education. This can be deduced due to both diction and various explanation of high school functions. As an article published in the widespread liberal New Yorker, the article reaches a number of people, mainly adults, though the word choice is simple and can be easily read by any level of education. Also, Talbot goes into detail describing the various academic factors that contribute to a GPA, a concept adults wouldn’t be to familiar with unless they had children.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Alana Semuels Free Tuition Is Not Enough

    1027 Words  | 5 Pages

    Alana evokes emotion from her audience when discussing the load if students involved with the Tennessee Promise, and explains how exasperating it can truly be. She puts forth the effort to interview a particular student, Abigail Mitchell, and question her typical day to be “Her tuition is covered, but to pay rent, as well as help out her grandmother and five younger siblings, Mitchel works 30-40 hours a week at Arby’s.she also has a work study, and is enrolled in 15 hour classes.” (Semuels). Alana does not want her readers to feel bad for Abigail but rather to put themselves in her position and think of the hardship she goes through to support her family and what students have to deal with, besides school. This ties in with Abigail’s message, that failure is not an option, because she is supporting her entire family and no matter how much she wants to quit, she

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis

    388 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article, “Some Teens Start College Work Early Via Dual Enrollment” written by Joanne Jacobs,from the U.S. News and World Report Education, discussed a current path that most high schoolers are taking that will lead them to college success. Jacobs uses ethos and logos to prove the successfulness of the Dual Enrollment Program. The program offers students the opportunity to experience college life, to gain both high school and college credit, and to gain confidence. In most states, high school students who want to take a college class need to attend the class in a community college with regular undergraduates.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Two Years Are Better Than Four By Liz Addison

    426 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her article, “Two Years Are Better Than Four,” Liz Addison argues that community colleges are important because they offer the opportunity for self-discovery that so many today long for. It is commonly argued that colleges don’t have any worth because they expect students to have already gained knowledge and experience before attending. In Addison’s opinion, while this may be true for some four-year universities, community colleges don’t have such unrealistic expectations. When talking about four-year universities Addison says, “prove yourself worldly, insightful, cultured, mature, before you get to college. Yet, down at X.Y.C.C.

    Read More

  • How Not To Get Into College, By Alfie Kohn

    1346 Words  | 6 Pages

    In Alfie Kohn’s essay, the argument of grade expectations being too overvalued rests on a chain of assumptions, but can be argued. Alfie Kohn’s essay portrays that he wants students to find a variety of different purposes in school, and questions the idea of grades being too centralized. In detail, Alfie Kohn explains how students go to school not for the right reasons, but for the wrong reasons instead. For example, the author writes, “They’d scan the catalogue for college courses that promised easy A’s, sign up for new extracurricular-activities to round out their resumes, and react with gratitude when a professor told them exactly what they would have to know for the exam so they could ignore everything else” (para. 8).

    Read More

  • Two Years Are Better Than Four

    909 Words  | 4 Pages

    Can Two Be Greater Than Four? Does college really matter? Has college lost its rite to passage appeal? Can one still go to college and be successful in the pursuit of self-discovery? These are the types of questions that Liz Addison challenges in her short essay “Two Years Are Better Than Four”. By taking into account my own experience as a current community college student and advocate, in this response to Addison’s essay I choose to elaborate on her views of community college being better than a four year university in the sense of offering a better college experience.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: Hispanic Immigrants

    500 Words  | 2 Pages

    I was born in Southern Los Angeles and lived in a conserved community of predominantly hispanic immigrants seeking socioeconomic prosperity for their families and an adequate education for their children. My family was a part of this community and as such, I was always met with a high standard for education and was taught to fully appreciate the benefits that followed it. I would constantly be reminded of these benefits when I would continuously witness not only my own family struggle, but when neighbors and friends also struggled to provide essential payments for their utilities, food, or rent. These financial struggles stubbornly persisted to haunt my family and in 2008 we were in no position to maintain our home and consequently lost it. This drastically strained family

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Free Community College

    776 Words  | 4 Pages

    However, it is still an issue for students to cough up that money. The idea of making community college free to any student in America has been a dream for low income students for a while. President Obama’s desire to make the tuition of community college to everyone in the nation would only make it difficult for students to get a free education, limit them to essential resources, and discourage students from applying to four year universities. Granting free community college tuition to incoming freshmen will draw “more students to already crowded community colleges”. Along with the overcrowded campuses, a very long waiting list will soon form making it just as competitive to get into a four year university.

    Read More

  • Sheila Kennedy Minimum Wage Essay

    2154 Words  | 9 Pages

    From her investigation, she discovers that “low-income children growing up in states that have greater income inequality are dropping out of high school at higher rates than are children living in states with less income inequality” (Kennedy). Given that the wealth gap is constantly growing, many people in the lower and middle class will struggle to climb the ladder to wealth. Many students that struggle economically would drop out of school if they “perceive a lower benefit to remaining in school–even if they aren’t struggling academically” (Kennedy). This is horrible for those who study well in school, yet they have to drop out since their family is in need of financial assistance. Students are not at fault of this since they cannot choose where they grow up.

    Read More

  • Standardized Testing Bias

    1523 Words  | 7 Pages

    They argue that the real issue lies with the fact that colleges rely too heavily on the SAT in admission decisions. Scores of studies have shown that the SAT and ACT are poor indicators of students’ future success in college. Despite this, many colleges will still use these tests to weed out students who scored low, students that they predict will perform poorly in college, regardless of their levels of achievement, academic or otherwise, outside of standardized testing. This results in high numbers of students of color, who traditionally score lower on standardized tests, getting left out of the admissions process - because they’re being predicted not to do

    Read More

More about Pros And Cons Of Weighted Grading System

Open Document