Grades are detrimental to education

The case for measuring the quality of students performance. (a Grade) What is a grade? According to the Cambridge dictionary grade noun [C] (MEASURE/MARK) /ɡre=8;d/ A measure of the quality of a student’s performance , usually represented by the letters A (the best ) through F (the worst ) So why are measurements of students performance on balance beneficial to and critical to the education of students? Which is the resolution we are presented with. “Grades are detrimental to education” I will outline below why grades are quite simply essential for education , but first take a moment and contemplate. Dear voters what will you be doing once you finish reading both sides of this debate? You will be measuring the quality of our performance relative to each other and in accordment with a grading rubric you will assign us a GRADE. First notice that we are debating if ANY TYPE of grading system is or is not on the whole detrimental to education and if education would be better WITHOUT grades. . 1. Grades give immediate gratification for hard work & and something tangible to work towards. As im sure everyone understands especially those who have kids , children often do not know what is best for them. Grades promote learning and critical thinking even if indirectly which after is the goal of education . As parents have done for ages and continue to do so , parents often set goals for there children for example if bobby gets a 90 on his next exam he will get a PS3 system for Christmas. This thus MOTIVATES bobby tremendously to learn the material and get a high quantifiable grade. Thus qualitative assessments of students performance are absolutely necessary for students that do require something tangible to work towards. Even if this motivates students to learn indirectly they are learning. Furthermore many students myself included have felt a great overwhelming sense of accomplishment when rewarded with a high letter grade on a exam. This further motivates students to keep learning and doing hard work because they see a real tangible pay back to learning. So in conclusion it is clear that Letter grades make it easy and practical for a student to set and chase goals. By examining a teacher’s feedback, following directions and working hard, students are not only able to track their progress by identifying gained knowledge, but are able to see their grades getting higher. Therfore we can also conclude that grades are perhaps the ULTIMATE motivator in education. Furthermore The formation of a goal and the desire to achieve it doesn’t only help students grow within their educational institution, but is a lesson that they can use long after graduation. 2.Efficiency Not only are grades beneficial for students but also teachers greatly benefit from qualitatively quantifying the performance of students. For example letter grading systems provides teachers with concrete and effeicent ways of evaluating mastery of course content by students. Furthermore if a high school student applies to college, one major factor that the admissions office consider are grades. When college students apply to graduate school, the admissions office again considers grades. When students apply for a job, the employer considers the students grades. Without grades, post-secondary schools and employers will have no way to know whether the student learned the material well or badly. Employers would obviously prefer to hire computer programmers and lawyers who achieved top grades rather than those that received the worst grades because top grades are a proxy for learning. The students with the best grades learned the material better than the other students and are therefore likely to make better workers. UC Santa Cruz, for example, used to have a holistic rating system, where each student merely received an "essay" as feedback from each professor. The campus switched to grades so that graduate schools would have some legitimate way to measure students' performance (against each other and against other students from other schools). 3.Grades provide feedback to the student Students might *feel* that they understand the material or that they are learning. However, that subjective feeling must be tested by some objective, external measurement. A student that *thinks* has learned the material may have a rude awakening when he takes a quiz and scores 20/100. Without this external feedback, the student would never know whether he truly understood. Psychological studies have found that all people have a natural bias to believe that they are above average. For students, this translates to most students believing that they have above average knowledge of the subject matter. Without external feedback to dissipate this bias, students that don't really understand the material would not realize that they need to study more or harder. 4. The educational system would crumble without grades. My opponent would have to offer a rival educational system without grades. It is incoherent to talk about whether a student has learned a certain subject matter, without somehow grading their knowledge. Without some tangible form of knowledge, any attempt of a student or teacher to figure out how much a student had learned would be nothing more than a subjective guess based on cognitive bias (such as a teacher saying that students who he or she liked "knew" the material better). Without grades, students that did not talk much during class would likely be marginalized because the teacher would assume they had not learned anything. Thus, I negate the resolution and argue that grades are on the whole necessary and beneficial and the educational system is better with them.