A call for nontraditional grades

By Aarushi Phalke ‘20

It’s 9:56 a.m. as I roll out of my bed, into my chair, and search my email, Haiku, Google Docs, somewhere, for the Zoom link for the first class of the day. I can hear my dad in the room next in a meeting for work, the internet bandwidth not enough for both of us. This is the new normal. Breakout rooms, constant news notifications, writing prompts, 50 emails a day, wondering where my day went as it’s 9:30 p.m. and I should start my homework, and, eventually, sleep. 

Right now, I am in the best imaginable situation under these circumstances. My biggest problem is boredom, and I am very lucky to have remote learning as schools have closed across the country. For schools that have shifted from the classroom to online learning, many students have advocated for their administrations to adopt a lenient approach, and modify grading systems in response to the changes in our education. 

Schools all over the United States have been creative in changing how students are evaluated in this crisis so that students can continue to learn but no longer have to put their education as a top priority. Catlin Gabel School (CGS) chose not to follow these schools who value equity and student wellbeing over academic achievement. 

At CGS, a place that prides itself on experimentation and progressiveness, I am left confused as to why the Upper School (US) has decided to uphold traditional letter grades during a worldwide pandemic. What is the point? There have always been existing problems with the subjectivity and inequities of grades. Now, these problems have only worsened. 

What does a bad grade during this period of remote learning say about a student? Does it say that they aren’t putting in the effort? Or does it say that they are prioritizing family responsibilities and health over schoolwork, that their internet is down, or that they are not in the right mental state to focus on their assignments? If students are not allowed to deprioritize their education during a pandemic, when are they allowed to?

There are valid arguments for keeping traditional grades, including not having more change, wanting students to benefit by how we usually evaluate students with grades typically going up over the year, and the faith in teachers that they’ll grade with compassion.

How are teachers going to identify students who are struggling when their only interactions are twice a week over Zoom with 15 other students? Refusing to change grades for the sake of not having more change in our lives is a weak argument when class dynamics have changed, curricula have changed, and almost every aspect of daily life has changed. 

Another reason for maintaining traditional grades is so students can retain competitive applications for selective higher education. If CGS has to notify colleges that the school has changed the grading system, that may hurt an application. A “pass” does not give as much information about student performance as an A+ or a C-. 

However, many colleges will not hold students accountable for these changes in grading and will use the data available to best determine if a student can succeed academically in their college. Keeping letter grades allows students applying to highly selective schools to maintain competitive transcripts in comparison to students in schools that have adopted nontraditional grading systems. However, this action hurts students most affected either financially, mentally, or physically by the global pandemic. 

US students who filled out a CatlinSpeak survey voicing their opinions on how they want to be graded during this pandemic generally held concerns about motivation, college applications, and equity, and therefore the most popular opinion among students was to only allow students to improve their grades during remote learning, so that students receive grades showing their hard work but also so that students who need to focus on other priorities during the crisis are allowed to.

By maintaining the traditional grading system among all these changes in our lives, CGS chose their highest achieving students over their most vulnerable students. These are the true values of CGS in action.