Current Events Blogging

Recently, the Surrey School District has gotten rid of letter grades in thirty-nine elementary schools in Surrey, replacing them with detailed feedback about what the student is excelling in and what the student needs improvement in. Instead of evaluating a child's progress with A's, B's, or C's, report cards will offer information about how they are doing on each task or project. This way, parents as well as children will get a much better understanding of what the student is doing well in and what he or she may need to improve on. Many teachers and parents believe that this new way of writing report cards would be a good one, since they think feedback could lead to more discussions on education than the standard letter grade. However, many also disagree with this fact.

People who disliked the idea of removing letter grades thought that a student would be more motivated to do better in school if they saw an F or a D on their report card. Students knew what the consequences would be if they got a low mark on their report card, and would strive to improve that mark. Parents can also see how their child is doing in school at a quick glance, and would be able to help, even without the "constructive feedback."

However, the people that agree with this new system disagree. Some think that the letter grade system prevents conversation about "learning" -- instead, the topic of interest is focused on what grade the child has gotten, rather than how to improve learning. They think that constructive feedback is good because it gives you a more specific outline about the student's strengths and weaknesses, helping parents better pinpoint what to improve on. For example, one could be good at understanding some of the information taught in Science, but not all of it; getting constructive feedback would let the parent know exactly what the child is misunderstanding, and he or she could get help on just that one topic, instead of re-learning everything.

In my opinion, both letter grades and constructive feedback should be given. Letter grades are effective when a student wants to know what they need to improve on in general, but constructive feedback gives more specific information about what the student needs to improve on. Having letter grades tells a child in a quick glance what they may need to improve on (which makes them want to get better) and to let them know what they're excelling at, as well. Having a balance between constructive criticism -- which tells you where exactly to improve on your work -- and letter grades -- which tells you what you need to improve on your work in general -- is the best option.

A link to the article --- here.