The Harms of Traditional Grading

Research has long exposed the harms of the traditional grading system. First, it stifles risk-taking and trust between the teacher and student. There are two types of assessments – formative and summative. Formative assessments are things like homework and projects – meant to aid students in their learning process. Summative assessments are things like final exams – meant to show what the student has learned. Students’ performance on both formative and summative assessments are generally factored into a final grade. 

For example, at Harvard College, weekly practice sets (commonly referred to as “p-sets”) are always graded and factored into the grade. Rather than using formative assessments as a space to genuinely learn, students are stressed about keeping their grades up as they learn. This erodes a sense of safety and trust with their teachers and learning spaces. 

First year student, Trina, shared her own personal experiences with Periodical Internal Evaluations (PIEs) in her science class. She commented that her second PIE of the semester was incredibly long and thus, she did not have time to finish. However, she put an incredible amount of effort into studying and that her “grade on that was not fully reflective of the effort that [she] but into the class.” In her situation, an “internal evaluation” was not fully reflective of her learning and resulted in a grade that would have impact on her GPA. Rather than an opportunity to practice and show her learning, this PIE became a source of stress. 

Second, it supports the “commodity of grades.” Point values such as percentage or letter grades are often believed to be strong motivators for students in their learning. However, research has shown that “extrinsic motivation is not an effective motivation for authentic learning.” Extrinsic motivation has shown benefits for menial and repetitive tasks, but ineffective, and even undermining, to motivate students with tasks that require higher-order and critical thinking. The commodity of grades pulls the focus away from internal desire to learn – to the pursuit of external validation, regardless of learning outcomes. 

This creates a toxic culture of what Harvard second-year student, Edgar, called “circular stress.” He commented that “the kids get stressed because their grades aren’t looking that [great], and then the teachers get stressed because they’re being berated by students.” Not only is the commodification of grades harmful to the students, but to the professors as well – something that the grade report touches on. Professors worry about further differentiating grades because there is “a fear of dramatically reducing their enrollments,” thus losing funding for their department.

Third, it hides information and does not provide useful data points for students in their learning. When students receive a letter grade such as a B, it is difficult for them to discern what exactly led them to the B instead of an A. In fact, it is possible that two students receive the same grade, a B, but for entirely different reasons. 

For example, it is common practice for teachers and professors to dock points for assignments that are turned in late. At that point, a B where a student turned in the assignment late, has a very different meaning from a B where a student may have been lacking in some of the substantive parts of the assignment. These examples illustrate how traditional grades provide very little feedback and information for students to learn. Even as a sorting mechanism, traditional grades fail to sort students for their actual ability in this regard. A single letter or number will fail to communicate the strengths and weaknesses of the student. 

Trina confirmed that this is indeed an issue at Harvard. She raises an example where two students receive an A. An A could include a range of grades from 90 to 94, which are indeed different. It is not exactly fair or accurate to assign these two students the same grade. As Edgar points out, the grading system fails to accurately capture a students’ strengths and weaknesses – sagely wondering: “how do you put a percent to nuance?”

Lastly the system demotivates and disempowers students. Capping the number of A’s that can be given out encourages competitions and makes students focus on external affirmation and judgment. Rather than encouraging students to focus on what they have learned and their own intrinsic motivation, traditional grading places the demonstration of competence in the eyes of others. Students are left wondering if their teacher or professor thought they did well or if they were able to outperform their peers. Once again, traditional grades fail to authentically engage students in learning – but rather place the focus on the grade itself. 

Let’s return to the Harvard grade report. The grade report recognizes the failures of the current grading system. It recognizes that students are less focused on learning and more focused on the grade. It recognizes the stress and demotivation that come with letter grades. However, it fails to recognize the harms of this traditional model of grading and does not shift away from it whatsoever. In fact, it recommends capping the number of A’s – exactly what has been shown to demotivate and disempower students. But why would Harvard want to continue implementing a grading system that is harmful to students? This is where we must turn to the purposes of education.

The Purposes of Grading and Education as a Whole

In his article, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals” David Labaree outlines three alternative goals for American education: democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility. Through the democratic equality lens, education is viewed as a purely public good. This prioritizes the citizens and collective society. Schools should be focused on promoting effective citizenship and relative equality – adequately preparing every single youth to be a productive, responsible citizen of the country. Additionally, schools are meant to provide equal treatment and access. 

Horace Mann eloquently noted that “vast and overshadowing private fortunes are among the greatest dangers to which the happiness of the people in a republic can be subjected” and that “surely, nothing but Universal Education can counter-work this tendency to the dominion of capital and servility of labor.” This idea led to the common school movement – calling for universal enrollment and a uniform curriculum. This expanded the public education system from one that was primarily enjoyed by the elite, to one that nearly every child had access to.

The social efficiency goal views education as a medium to train workers. While education is viewed as a public good — similar to the democratic equality lens — it is in service to the private sector. This prioritizes the taxpayer and the employer, shaping students and their educational experiences to benefit the market. This is clearest in the late 19th and early 20th century where education began trending towards vocationalism. An alliance of business, labor, and education leaders banded together to make the school curriculum for tailored for the market. Rather than a broader liberal arts education, students were provided with more concrete training in skills for specific jobs. As the president of an Indiana school board noted in the 1920s, the schools were “training [the students] to get jobs.”  

However, this view created a highly stratified structure – allocating students by ability into separate educational tracks to guarantee that each person can enter the workforce and contribute. This structure works to distinguish student ability according to their level and pedigree of education.  For example, even amongst college graduates – an employer will value an Ivy League degree over a regional state school. With social efficiency, it largely comes down to the ability of the education system to sort students most efficiently and enhance productivity in the market. Although there is a more private bent to this lense, it still recognizes the collective benefit of universal education because the market needs all workers to engage in learning – whether at the top or bottom track.

Lastly, social mobility views students as consumers and education as a private good. Schools are meant to provide students with a competitive advantage in the battle for more desirable social positions. They are a means for the lower and middle class to climb the social ladder, while the upper class use it to maintain their status and wealth. 

A senior at Harvard, Jordan, illustrated this point, saying: “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t come here with the intent of pulling my family out of poverty.” Similar to the social efficiency lens, social mobility encourages stratification of education. Since education is seen as an individual, private commodity – parents do not want their children to have equal opportunity, but for their children to have the best opportunity possible. The higher that students are able to climb in the world of education, the more competitive advantage they gain in obtaining high-paying jobs and positions of power. 

Even within an institution, consumers will demand even further distinguishment and sorting from fellow students. This plays out in the form of letter grades, as opposed to qualitative descriptions of progress, standardized testing that can establish the differences in student achievement, and differentiated diplomas and accolades upon graduation.

Where the idea of education to serve social mobility leans more individualistic, the goals of democratic equality and social efficiency create a much more egalitarian mindset where genuine learning is put at the forefront. Through both lenses, regardless of the grade, if a student is unable to make informed decisions in society or unable to implement skills in their workplace – the education system has failed.

When the last goal of social mobility is overemphasized, credentialism becomes an issue. Students do not care as much about the knowledge and learning at school – but rather the degree or credential they will walk away with. Unfortunately, the social mobility goal of education has increasingly become the dominant goal over the others – emphasizing the perception of education as a private good for individual advantage. 

 “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t come here with the intent of pulling my family out of poverty.”

Due to the dominance of the social mobility perspective, American education is distinctively influenced by market pressures – characterized by consumer choice, competition, a stratified curriculum, and emphasis on local autonomy for school districts and educational institutions. 

This creates a high-pressure environment where students like Harvard first-year, Leah, feel their future depends entirely on their GPA, noting that when an exam does not reflect her effort, “the med school people are going to look at [my grade] and [assume I don’t] understand this part of science. That leads to my future. And that’s why I care about my grades right now.” Students like Leah are in a way, disincentivized to learn – but rather incentivized to acquire the best grades and credentials in exchange for as little time and energy as possible.

The Corporate Capture of Harvard College

This is exactly the issue that Harvard is seeking to combat, but fails to address through their proposed grading policy. The grading report repeatedly cites the importance of using grading to distinguish the strongest students and give reliable information to future employers and admissions programs. This idea leans heavily into the idea of social mobility and social efficiency, rather than democratic equality. Harvard is clearly concerned about differentiating their students so that employers, particularly large corporations, have data points to know which students to hire. 

Through the social mobility lense, students have either bought into or are trapped in this idea of meritocracy. Many students aspire to pursue prestigious and or high-paying jobs. Employers tend to assume that selecting candidates with the best credentials means selecting students who attend the most prestigious institutions and obtain the highest grades. 

If the focus remains on differentiating students efficiently for future employers and admissions committees, true learning will never be the primary focus of learning because grades will always stand front and center as a tool to differentiate students from each other. 

Thus, the focus of these higher education institutions is not the knowledge learned in the classroom itself, but on the kinds of jobs students can obtain from attending such institutions. Rebecca illustrates how this anxiety plays out in the classroom. She noted that “one [student] has a 4.0 and the other has a 3.7 and you can genuinely not get the job because of your GPA and there’s no other way to compare you guys.” 

Inevitably in such a structure, students quickly learn that grades and credentials are simply a means to an end and will do whatever it takes to obtain them – regardless of whether they are learning or not. In fact, the report discusses how faculty often feel pressured to give students a better grade when they advocate for it – regardless of whether it is deserved or not. Untenured faculty are worried about student feedback affecting their ability to receive tenure. Meanwhile, tenured faculty are worried that students will not enroll in their classes if they do not receive the grades that they want – resulting in reduced funding for their department. Labaree highlights this exact phenomenon, known as bargaining, in his paper. Teachers have weakened rationale to hold students to high academic standards.

Although Harvard claims that their true mission is to educate and for students to learn, their focus on traditional grading only furthers students’ fixation on grades as a commodity rather than a genuine assessment and tool for their learning.

An Alternative: Recenter Academics, But Without the Grades

Harvard sophomore, Rosie, commented, “it feels as though Harvard is trying to solve a problem bigger than Harvard.” To truly recenter academics and students’ ability focus on their learning, Harvard and the education system to reconsider what the purpose of education is. If the focus remains on differentiating students efficiently for future employers and admissions committees, true learning will never be the primary focus of learning because grades will always stand front and center as a tool to differentiate students from each other. 

When asked about a grading system that would do a better job of recentering learning and academics, many of the undergraduate students interviewed for this article spoke highly of Brown’s open curriculum and grading system. Unlike most other universities, Brown allows students to develop a personalized course of study and does not require students to take general core requirements for graduation. 

To support this open curriculum model and genuine curiosity for learning, Brown operates on a different grading system that de-emphasizes grades. The school does not compute students’ grade point averages internally and does not rank students. They only provide grade point averages as necessary when students are applying for programs that require them. Additionally, students can choose to take any class for a grade, either an A, B, C, or No Credit(NC), or for a satisfactory/NC. As a result, Brown is well-known to be the happiest Ivy League school. Students report feeling less competition, more campus community, and more autonomy over their learning.

This in contrast to the general culture of learning at Harvard. Edgar reflected that at Harvard, there is an “unnecessary emphasis on grades. And it actually almost feels as though if Harvard is trying to refocus academics, then maybe even something that reduces stress of what it means to take a class might actually encourage [student] initiative towards things like gen eds, which are supposed to expand our understanding.” As it is currently, “if I were to get an A minus in the class, I might not take it. But this is a class I am still interested in. And if there isn’t a stress of [whether I will receive] an A minus or an A, I’ll take the class.”

“People come [to Harvard] for different reasons and they’re all valid.” Some students are here to truly study what they are interested in. Unfortunately, this is often students who have the privilege, resources, and financial stability to learn to learn. However, the reality for many other students is that they are here for the purpose of social mobility. This is their opportunity to build a better future for themselves and their families.

Similarly, Leah, a pre-med student commented that getting a good grade plays the whole part of whether she takes a class or not. She said, “if we didn’t have any grades and I could take whatever classes I wanted …. I would be taking an art class, a music class, a gen ed that I really wanted to take. I would learn how to play piano. I feel like if I wasn’t so focused on my GPA and what grade I need in order to get into med school, I would definitely be taking a bunch of different classes that I’m not taking right now.”

While Labaree’s three purposes of education will always be at play with each other, as Rosie succinctly put it: “people come [to Harvard] for different reasons and they’re all valid.” Some students are here to truly study what they are interested in. Unfortunately, this is often students who have the privilege, resources, and financial stability to learn to learn. However, the reality for many other students is that they are here for the purpose of social mobility. This is their opportunity to build a better future for themselves and their families. 

By following a similar model to Brown – decentering grades and reducing pressure, Harvard may be able to push students back towards their purported goal of supporting their central mission: teaching and learning. But the grade proposal does the opposite by doubling down on grades and creating a different stress. Although it may be true that students are stressed by the grade inflation in the current system due to the pressure to maintain a 4.0 GPA, the college’s proposal will inflict a similar stress on students, maintaining a generally high GPA. It does not matter what the grade is – if students continue to fixate on grades, there will never be space for genuine learning.

Rather than doubling down the focus on grades to fight grade inflation and recenter academics, the solution should be to draw the focus away from grades. The proposed A cap does the opposite will likely never get us there.