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Pros And Cons Of Weighted Grading System

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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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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

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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.

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Denise Clark Pope, a graduate from Stanford University and the author of “The Predicament of Doing School,” has done an extensive study of the school system at Faircrest High School, and observed what happens inside and outside the school building. She writes about how students get high grades, and the cost at which high grades are achieved. She also includes her theory of how students and everyone involved with the school system just “play the game” of school instead of truly learning the information that is being taught. The author make several claims on how the school system works.

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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.

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It is ultimately a way to discriminate against students based not on their intelligence, achievements, or skills, but based merely on the family they were born into. This is a most unfair practice and one that should be seriously examined for its effect on higher

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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

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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.

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