Letter grades: helpful or harmful?

Letter grades: helpful or harmful?

Drew Pravlik and Jack Clark

A majority of students face tons of stress throughout the school year. Letter grades only add to it. However, letter grades also help show students where they are struggling and what they need to work on. Schools across the country debate whether letter grades are harmful or beneficial to students’ education. 

Students worry too much about the grades they are receiving, then the actual knowledge that they are being taught. Christian Gilford, an 8th grader at Edison Intermediate School (EIS) does not approve of letter grades. “I don’t think they should exist. I think there should just be a number grade so it tells you exactly what you got and you know what you need to work on,” he stated. Christian believes that it is more important to learn what your mistakes were, than to worry about getting all A’s.    

On the other hand, some people think letter grades should exist, because they think that they are helpful towards understanding their grade, and what they are doing wrong. A sixth grader at EIS named Maddie Elfstrum had some thoughts about this: “I like letter grades better than the elementary school grades that were random letters like p and e. Letter grades should exist because it’s easy to tell how well you are doing rather than not getting any detail in your grade and how well you are doing”. Some other sixth graders would agree with her coming from elementary school. In elementary school, the students were “too young” to be able to get grades like A’s and B’s so coming into middle school they have a much better understanding of their grade and how well they are doing. In summary, many students like Maddie believe that letter grades should exist because they help them understand their grade, and they can show how well a student is doing easily.

To conclude, letter grades will always be a topic of discussion among schools and students. Some people may like them, and agree that they should stay in the public school system. Others may disagree with this statement, and that there should just be one type of grading system like number grades. Both sides will argue for a long time, but letter grades will be here to stay for a long time.