Neatoday Long Essay About Letter Grades

One huge subject that has been talked about for many years is whether or not letter grades are failing students. Some people believe that letter grades are good for students while others believe they are hurting students. Some may believe grades are a good way to keep students motivated to do well, while others believe letter grades are misleading to one’s success. In her article, Are Letter Grades Failing students published by Neatoday.org, Cindy Long, argues that letter grades are failing students because they do not want to study for the actual knowledge, they just want the passing grade. Cindy Long, effectively convinces her audience by using emotional appeals, as well as citing reliable sources throughout her article.
In today’s day and …show more content…
Long provides us with this evidence when she states, “In Colorado, districts want to get rid of ‘D’s’ in their grading systems. In Virginia, there are efforts to standardize what an ‘F’ signifies. In an Iowa district, letter grades on report cards are supplemented by more frequent teacher feedback focused on priorities” (long). Long provides this to explain how states across the United States are not sure how to measure the learning curve. Long, believes that these states cannot accurately measure their students’ progress with just letter grades. These states believe that letter grades should be abolished and start leaning to a student based assessment sheet. The student based assessment sheet is the teacher’s comments on how the student is progressing in the class, based on the student’s skills in each area. Long goes on when she quoted this from Kohn, “That’s why the best teachers and schools replace grades (and grade-like reports) with narrative reports – qualitative accounts of student performance – or, better yet, conferences with students and parents.” (Long). Long, quotes this because this became a real issue and more and more states tried to attempt