Middle Schools Should Not Use Letter Grades

1a. Pro completely ignored my points regarding precision. Precision is everything... to a kid in middle school? No. Further, this is a completely irrelevant argument. If one sees that they scored a B+ on an exam, then they know they scored between 86 and 89. On most tests, you can be able to tell exactly how many you got wrong with a score like that. For instance, if each question is worth 2 points, then you know you got an 86 or 88 on the test meaning 6 or 7 wrong out of 50. As I said, this is easy to calculate if someone in MS cared that much. Additionally, you'll notice that Pro ignored my point about how if precision WAS important in a specific scenario for any reason, then it could be accomodated to. 1b. The idea that letter grades represent profiles (i.a. A = excellent) is only true in some cases, where I believe it can be beneficial i.e. grading participation or effort. However, on a report card, letter grades represent number grades. Pro says that one's self esteem would be raised by seeing a letter rather than a number; however, that's not always true. The plusses usually make people feel better about their grade, as it's seen as "almost" a grade higher lol. A lot of systems only have plusses (and no minuses) as well, so that it's possible to get a C+ but not a C minus. That would just be a regular C. Anyway, the bottom line is that nobody's being profiled by a letter. People's attitudes and expectations about their grades vary. Also, Pro's suggestion that you could use a point system for grading things like participation is just silly. Giving someone a 5/5 points is no different than giving someone an "A" which represents the same exact thing. 1c. Regarding my 3rd point about assumed proficiency, Pro's only response was that the teacher could tell the student or parent before or after what the proficiency actually represents. Uh, in that case, then the teacher can just as easily tell the student the numbers that they used to get their letter grade, so if anything, this is a moot point. 2. Pro said that instead of a student being pressured to say, "I will get an A!" he will instead exclaim, "I will get above 90%!" However, I pointed out that since an A = above 90% (and up to 93) then these 2 statements are saying the exact same thing. He said that it's not the same thing in "many" ways - but then only mentioned 1 of those many ways - in saying that in one case you're shooting for a 90-93 wheras in the other you're going for an A (which is the same thing...)? Yeah, I don't get it either. This point goes to Con. 3. Pro ignored my 3rd point. While he responded to the part about competition, he completely neglected my argument that this debate focuses on report card grades and test grades, so the student is only competing against himself. The grade reflects one's own knowledge of a subject, and not necessarily one's ability over other students. 4. Once again, Pro dropped all of my arguments that he couldn't refute. I said letter grades can be better in some situations, and explained how letter grades successfully demonstrate what the whole point of grading is: depicting one's proficiency in a subject area. Someone who scores 92% and someone who score an A both demonstrate above average proficiency. The only thing he mentioned in his rebuttal was more about precision. 5. Pro says that a MS student (who is oh so obsessed over their 3 point marginal grades, mind you) wouldn't be able to do the simple math that converts letters to numbers. However, since he pointed out in point 1c that the "teacher can just tell them" then the same explanation suffices here :) Regarding Pro's concluding arguments, the NY Times source he used was talking about something entirely different (not promoting numbers over letters) and the chart he gave was pretty useless too. Here's one that does the same for my case: http://staff.wwcc.edu...