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Summary Of Are Grades Really Necessary? By Catherine Rampell

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In "Are Grades Really Necessary?" Catherine Rampell discusses elite prep schools' interest in terminating the traditional, letter-based grading system. She explains these schools' desire to support a less punitive scheme which displays "qualitative, soft-focus descriptions of skills that students have 'mastered.'" Rampell agrees that this desired system may make students more appealing to colleges; however, she believes that without displaying a student's GPA, the new language will prove insufficiently
"informative." Therefore, I am in entire agreement with the author that students should be given letter grades to inform them of their respective strengths and weaknesses and to promote fairness in the school system.
Although many elite prep …show more content…

A student's knowing his or her letter grade can be quite stressful if said grade is a substandard one; however, it is the utilitarian transparency of GPA that motivates a student to improve. As Rampell asserts, grades "do provide some useful information about relative achievement among students." In other words, GPA performs the task, albeit an unpleasant one at times, of separating the high-achieving students from their low-achieving counterparts. Realistically, if one individual is trying hard in school and receiving higher grades, that individual should be given credit for working harder than a student who is not putting in his or her best efforts and is receiving lower grades. Clearly marked letter grades go a long way in making this difference discernable. In contrast, by its very design, the language in the new system with its "soft focus" would muddy this distinction. This system pushed by the elites makes it nearly impossible for one student to stand out from another. In addition, if a student is informed of the skills he or she has
"mastered" instead of his or her GPA, that student will never clearly know the …show more content…

As Rampell explains, non-elite schools have high achievers who should "stand out." But in this new system with its built-in inaccuracies and ego- massaging phraseology, many schools and their best students will not be recognized because of their "non-elite" label. Without grades being seen in an easily digestible format, it will be impossible for college administrators to determine the true ranking of the schools. With one grading system using prose descriptions and the other using letters and standardized GPA, the two are not truly comparable when viewed side by side. Therefore, one type of school will be kicked to curb--the non-elite school.
Unfortunately, this will impact the students' futures regarding which colleges would accept them. This inequality in the grading system would make it harder for the non-elite students to attend the country's most prestigious universities, a task that is difficult enough now even with the current grading system.
I do understand, of course, that grades may be inaccurate representations of a student's abilities since they can be very broad gauges. The new grading system may
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