How many Spanish classes can you miss and still get an “A” in the class? If you want a “B” in your statistics course, how many questions can you get wrong on the next exam? If you already have an “A” in sociology come April, do you still need to take the final? Most students can answer these questions without having to reference a single syllabus.
Starting in elementary school, our academic progress is measured on a rigid grading scale, and we start learning what we need to do to get those “A’s.” We know how many hours we need to study and how much of the textbook to read in order to get a 93 percent in each class. But in our efforts to keep our transcripts pristine, actual learning often pays the price.
Several law schools across the country, Stanford and Yale among them, no longer give out letter grades, but instead have levels of achievement. There is now the start of a movement amongst undergraduate institutions to do away with letter grades in favor of more qualitative performance reviews, especially in light of the nationwide grade inflation phenomenon. Instead of getting an “A” or a “B,” students would receive evaluations or narratives from their instructors assessing how well the student met the set goals of the course.
This kind of system would let students and faculty get the most possible out of the class by focusing on in depth discussions, instead of just studying what will be on the exam. It would let students think outside the box and question material without worrying how their test grades will impact their GPAs and their chances at graduate school. And it would by no means make classes easier to coast through; it is far simpler to cram for three tests each semester and get your “A” than it is to contribute thoughtful ideas to class discussions every session.
At a school as large as GW, this grading model is more utopian than practical, as it would be almost impossible for professors teaching large introduction classes to personally get to know each student. Still, as long term plans for GW are put into place, a different type of evaluation system is certainly something to consider, especially as colleges nationwide embrace this trend.