How is My Child Performing in School?

Prompt #32: In a small minority of schools across the nation, students do not earn grades; rather, they receive regular written and oral evaluations of their work. Some people believe that this is more effective for learning than the grading system, which they believe rewards students unevenly and encourages a competitiveness that is counterproductive to learning. How do you feel about this issue? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Do you wonder how your child is performing in school? As a parent or guardian you receive your child’s grades from school. If it’s a bad report card, you ask your son or daughter the reason for his or her poor performance. Parents lecture and/or punish their son or daughter to do better in school but the child does not put forth the effort to perform well for the next higher level. This can leave your child behind; and the child will not be able to retain concepts from the previous level in order to succeed in school. To prevent this poor performance from each student who does not do well, schools should use teacher and student evaluations to grade a student’s performance, rather than using scores or letter grades.

The traditional grading system using the A through F scale can be very opinionated. Teachers grade each student differently based on their grading scale. Some teachers can play “favorites” in their classes and decide to give a higher grade for the well-behaved students and a lower grade for the trouble-making students. When I was a freshman at City Honors High School, my former biology teacher, Ms. Coppola, always loved me as one of her best students. For fall and spring semester of 9^th grade, I received an A+, although, for those students who always gave her a hard time failed fall semester. Later on, those students who failed had to retake biology for one semester, just because they misbehaved in class, even though they turned in their own quality of work.

Using evaluations to grade a student’s performance allows students to improve on concepts for a certain class. This method is an effective way for students and parents to work on the materials covered in class, so that the student can catch up onto the next lesson. If the student is having trouble with that concept, his or her teacher can offer a tutoring session with the student to improve on the topics already discussed. Seeing a letter grade does not tell the student exactly what he or she needs to improve on. For example, the Oxbow School in Napa Valley is a rigorously academic and art intense school for juniors and seniors to have the opportunity to explore the visual arts and humanities. As an alumnus of this semester school, I remembered typing my self-evaluations for art and humanities class. Once I had finished evaluating my progress, the teacher of each class gives a written report on how I did in that class. The teachers’ suggestions in my art and academic work sufficiently helped me improve on certain aspects in my art-making and my 20+ typed papers, and journaling helped to freely flow my creative process. After I graduated, I felt very accomplished to move on to the university level and face new challenges.

Schools that use evaluations to track a student’s performance will enable students to advance to the next higher level. Once a student accomplishes a goal to work on, he or she is able fulfill the accomplishment much easier. That student will be able to face new challenges and expand on their learning. Remember when you walked your first step as an infant. Yes, you have fallen and stumbled a few times but it took your parent or guardian to push you forward and practice walking. When you knew how to walk on your own, you discovered how to run without falling flat on your face. Your parents or guardians knew that you felt expert to finally know how to walk and run like the grown-ups.

Teacher and student self-evaluations are an excellent tool to use to proctor a student’s performance in their academia. Students will be able to know exactly everything they need to do to improve and be caught up on their understanding of a subject. Allowing the students the opportunity to evaluate themselves can help them reflect on their progress. Most of the time students will evaluate harsher on themselves than really the teacher. Then, the teacher will know how you think you progressed in the class. Letter grades do not tell you much about how well a student did in class; it is actually a “cheaper” way to pass by a student. So, how does your child think he or she performed in school?