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In Brent Staples “Why Colleges Shower Their Students With A’s”, he claims that professors in colleges in the 1990’s are changing their grading on students assignments so much where that they are just passing out good grades when students don’t even deserve them. Colleges have started to change the whole grading system over the years just to make it look like the students are doing better. For example, “In some cases, campuswide averages have crept up from a C just 10 years ago to B-plus today” (Staples 1). There are many reasons as to why they day this.
Paragraphs 25 and 26 illustrate grade inflation at highly respected universities and what strategies are utilized to combat it. Without statistics and hard facts, Shepard’s argument would have been viewed as isolated issues instead of an epidemic. These hard facts provided a foundation for every claim made, and solidified the logicality of the professors’ statements. Her argument became reasonable because of the statistics provided, and proved grade inflation is a nation-wide problem in need of
Many times an article can be looked over, and not taken very seriously when it seems as if the author has no proof or evidence. With this being said Phil Primack wrote the article “Doesn’t Anybody Get a C Anymore?” Where he from the beginning established that there was a problem when he explained how a student said a B was a “low grade.” Primack used a lot of quotes from other people and professors that validate his main claim, and the points he is making. A similar article is Stuart Rojstaczer article “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” where he clearly states the problem of grade inflation.
He believes that professors are softening the grades. Phil Primack also is aware of the many excuses professors give for grade inflation, he even comes up with a reason. He sates, "colleges are unwilling to challenge and possibly offend students and their hovering, tuition- paying parents with some grade tough love. And without institutional backing, individual faculty members simply yield to whining students."
Students have started expecting good grades for mediocre work, knowing that the professors are under an obligation to give in to the way the rest of college professors grade. Harvey Mansfield, says that according to the american education system, grading strictly is ‘cruel and dehumanizing’ and affects the student's self esteem. The author says how he thinks that a reason professors have opted into a lenient grading scale is to spare their students self esteems and feelings. I wonder, if students don’t learn how to cope with a critique from a professor on an assignment how are these students going to cope in the real world with criticism from coworkers or authority figures. Not only do these students suffer from self esteem issues they are not being challenged enough and suffer from laziness and lack an incentive to achieve
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.
Grade Deflation Argument Analysis Grade deflation is an article written by a princeton student, that argues the benefits and the consequences of the grading system at princeton university. The article is written in a way that is easy for the audience to understand the author 's argument, as well as see the stance and the view the author has about the subject. The audience that the author had in mind when writing this article, was probably the students at princeton at do not agree with grade deflation. As at the beginning the author states “while princeton 's diverse student body rarely unifies around a single issue, nearly every student seems to be railed against grade deflation (author,54).” Then he goes on to say “This force
Kohn believes grading is a harmful thing for students because it is more of a game with competition. He views grading as something that does not lead to improvements in performance but holds students back from doing their best. He states, “A school’s ultimate mission, apparently, is not to help everyone learn but to rig the game so that there will always be losers” (Kohn 2). Kohn relates school and grading to a game. A game where students begin to try to outdo one another rather than focusing on their academics.
Nowadays our entire future strictly depends on our GPA's and getting into college and graduate school has gotten much more competitive. Because of this, students are scared to receive anything less than an A as it could make a huge impact on one's future. Also, most students generally think they deserve a better grade than what was originally earned by them. Students in college take grading policies very seriously because they are the ones paying for their education. True, this is an important matter because, like I said, when I pay for my education then I should receive a grade that I know I earned.
Imagine blowing up a balloon, with every exhale of breath the balloon gets bigger. Similar to a balloon, with every year that passes grades inflate. In “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” by Stuart Rojstaczer, he discusses how the grading system has changed over the years. Rojstaczer’s overall purpose is to increase awareness of grade inflation and persuade his audience to take action. He argues that “changes in grading have had a profound influence on college life and learning” (2).
Essay One: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin The extent that grades have on hindering the ability to learn is discussed in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, in which Shevek a college professor is troubled by the importance placed on the grading system as a mark of understanding of a subject at the university he recently started teaching at. One of the first points to be made is that understanding what you were taught isn’t the point of schools anymore, it’s about memorizing the information for a test or assignment. Second, is that achieving high marks in school doesn’t always equate intelligence or lack of it . Lastly, it’s not how well one is able to memorize what they are taught, but how they’re able to take that information, process and apply it to real world problems that shows the extent of one’s true education.
Due to the fact that it’s easy for just about any one reading this to relate to a grading system cause we all have received an amount of schooling before. The
In this case, progress and goals can be set from grades to reflect and analyze how someone is doing as a student in the school system no matter where they attend that uses grades. By all means, grades will always be required and used without them school systems would fail and would probably cause more laws lifting the restrictions of school making it okay to remove students from a school as long as they have basic knowledge and skills to work a full time job five days a week instead of a gradeless pointless schooling system that requires five days a week. Therefore, progress and goals are main key points of grades in today’s world for every student and to ask, how would you change or remove grades for your future child or relative attending school and
