Middle Schools Should Not Use Letter Grades

First I would like to emphasize the definition as MIDDLE SCHOOLS should not use letter grades. Also I am going to make a proposal as the instigator: That we use number grades instead, more specifically, percentage grades. EX. 95%, 76%, 84% But first I would like to say why letter grades are not a useful grading system. -John Lounsbury of the National Middle School Association has more than a few good reasons. "Traditional report cards are of minimal value to parents," says Lounsbury. "Letter grades do not report at all on many of the things that parents find most important: Is my child making friends; is he responsible; is he learning new skills? " Also, Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards agrees, and takes the argument one step further. He says, "The research on grades has demonstrated three robust and reliable findings: When kids are led to focus on getting good grades, they tend to do less creative thinking; they pick the easiest possible task if given a choice, and they begin to lose interest in the learning itself. " According to a NY times article: With parents shopping for the best schools, the letter grades can obscure some of the most salient information, because they are determined largely by how much progress students make year to year rather than how well their skills stand up against objective standards. ---------------------- ---------------------- Now let me take the time to expand in detail on my proposal. If Middle Schools Use percentage grades, there will be a whole lot of competition, precision, and efficiency in grading 1. Competition lets say two students, in the same class, are very competitive, and they are competing for grades, which therefore will lead to higher grades (psychological law of incentive: "More inclined to do something with more incentive") But how can this competition exist when there's only a certain amount of grades, with letter grades, there's only 15 DIFFERENT GRADES! With percentage grades, there would be 100 DIFFERENT GRADES! With more competition, this would positively affect students. 2. Precision With percentage grades teachers would be able to give more precise grades, as I have said before there would be 100 grades in percentage (1-100%), and only 15 for letter grades (F- through A+). With percentage grades, teachers would now have the opportunity to give student's their real grades, instead of winging it with an estimate-like grade. For example lets say a student gets a 91%, the student would know the EXACT grade for his test, homework, etc. but if he got "A-" he could think it was anywhere between 90% and 93%, this proves why LETTER GRADES are NOT accurate in the LEAST. 3. For my last point, efficiency. If a teacher has to convert a fraction into a letter grade, this could take much more time. For example, lets say a test is worth 60 points, and the student scores 57, the math may be easy for some but for a teacher, this could be hard. Instead, the teacher could just divide 57 by 60 and get the percentage grade, without having to convert it. This site clearly shows the complexity of the percentage to letter conversion. . http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca... ======================================= Sources: . http://www.nytimes.com... . http://privateschool.about.com... -Thank You For Judging and Debating