<p>I’m currently a high school senior and like many above have stated, my elementary school also used a 1 to 4 grading scale. This scale accessed skills across four subjects rather than compiling one grade for one subject. It makes sense in the elementary level but not on the high school level. Here’s why:</p>
<p>In elementary school the report card is mostly for the parents. It serves as a diagnostic tool for the parent to understand in which arenas his or her child excels or lags behind. The parent can provide some focus for the child. Elementary school performance is not crucial unless the child is applying to a different school (e.g. Middle School), and even then test scores or recommendations are likely to have equal if not greater sway. The elementary school report is geared toward growth and it’s a friendlier means of assessment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean much in that most of the grades are essentially effort-based. I got 4’s across the board from kindergarten to fifth grade just because I did my homework…I don’t recall any challenging tests because most of my grades were based on homework, which was not truly graded but only ‘checked.’</p>
<p>In high school, such a diluted grading system takes away partially from the student’s drive to perform well. The elementary grading systems may be a means-based systems, but high school grading systems are stricter, ends-based or results-based systems. As in the real world, results are more important to most people than the processes by which they are obtained (but high school never teaches use that good processes are more important in the long run!). Unfortunately, this high school results-based grading system has lost some of its rigor as a New York Times article earlier this year pointed out (students apparently expected too much for doing the minimum amount of work in many high schools, leading to a gap in expectations at college). Nonetheless, single grades definitely give students more impetus to either master the material or work an authority’s system (in this case the teacher or the administration), two rather valuable skills to have later in life.</p>