Before our midterm grades were released this spring, I made a goal for myself that I would not involve myself in conversations about grades for the rest of the year. Pretty soon I gave in because of a 60 on a math quiz, the stress of AP exams, simply needing to complain with my classmates, and a growing sense that maybe my ostensible academic failures were not my fault, but because of something more systemic. This growing disillusionment with our grading system seemed, to me, heretical at first, having grown up very personally invested in my academic success, which was always measured by numerical grades. Yet, a more critical analysis of my heretical instincts has led me to question our grading system. Maybe it’s just something in the pollen-filled spring air, or maybe I do have a point; in any case, here is my case for the abolition of grades.
I. On humanizing education and standardization
As high schoolers, we have long begun to develop interests and capabilities in particular subjects and activities. They result from diverse proclivities, upbringings, personal goals, and, of course, hard work. No system, whether numbers or letters, can fairly standardize these personal differences because they are so deeply-rooted in our complex experiences as people. Trying to standardize these differences in interests and capabilities is inherently antithetical to our educational mission. Deerfield deliberately selects students from different backgrounds with different interests and aims to celebrate that diversity. So why do we try to measure different students with the same 100-point ruler?
Beyond that, grades inaccurately represent our learning experiences, since no singular number can encapsulate our complex thinking processes as students. Say that one student immediately grasps the art of analytical writing and consistently produces good essays, while another, who started off with less writing experience, improves quickly but still lags behind the progress of the other student. Should the second student be rewarded for improvement? No grade can truly account for a student’s effort, commitment, growth, or support for others. In fact, none of these things are reducible to any number or letter.
Moreover, in the spirit of Deerfield’s core values of “face-to-face interactions” and “shared experiences,” I would argue that abolishing grades promotes more genuine human relationships between students and teachers. Grades deter difficult, but important conversations with our teachers, such as asking for an extension or voicing a disagreement with something they said, because students fear the authoritarian “grade-drop.” Grades, along with our fixation on them, can easily lead to teachers-student relationships being reduced to the dynamic of grade-giving and grade-receiving, as opposed to a genuine connection.
Furthermore, grades are ineffective and misguided as an external motivator. It is the pursuit of genuinely fulfilling student-teacher relationships that always propels me to dig deeper into the topics that I am interested in and share those findings with my teachers. Even more, it is always those exciting, face-to-face conversations that challenge me to reevaluate my knowledge, rethink my own bias and work to achieve above and beyond, not a numerical grade.
Besides, when I receive a poor grade in a class, I cannot help but think that I am undeserving of a connection with my teacher, or of a voice equal to those of my classmates, or even of exploring that subject further, until I get my grade up first.
Finally, grades hinder teachers from being the best teachers they can be. Deerfield teachers have different ways of thinking and teaching, which is in itself a valuable learning experience for students, as we need to adapt to different types of expectations, reflect on how our past experiences shape the way we engage with certain subjects, and engage in open, critical conversations about different perspectives. I like that my teachers are different from each other because it is personally rewarding to bond with and learn from people with various outlooks. When they are not forced to evaluate each student by assigning a grade, teachers will be able to more flexibly draw from their own experiences and creatively mold their classes to the interests of their students, such as by experimenting with unconventional assignments and class formats. Especially in humanities classes, I appreciate learning about teachers’ opinions, but relentless tests and quizzes have meant that time to engage in meaningful, connective conversations gets lost. Teachers should not be forced to mold their feedback to students to a uniform, inflexible grading system. When they attempt to do so, we end up with inconsistent, inaccurate representations of Deerfield’s rich diversity in teaching styles.
II. On student wellbeing
Grades seriously impact students’ mental health. The nature of a ranked scale is that we long to get higher grades and be at the top. This is especially evident in our 0-100 scale, where small point differences that hardly indicate anything about the performance of a student can alter percentile standings dramatically. But such stress is inherent to any system that seeks to measure the progress of a student against a fixed standard. When we fall short of that fixed standard, we often end up with self doubt: asking ourselves why we did not work harder, and pondering why other people could do it when we couldn’t, even though the problem was not us in the first place. Even for students who consistently score excellently and supposedly “benefit from the system,” grades become a toxic standard: it becomes an expectation, even a need, to score above a certain threshold, and when we do not, it somehow erases the excellent work we have done before. Of course, grades should never overshadow our intrinsic value as human beings nor make us doubt our potential. But even in classes where I have excelled grades-wise, I find myself inputting higher numbers into Canvas for the grades I have, just to see what grade “I could’ve had.” As students, it is incredibly difficult to see past an pervasive system that we are constantly surrounded by, that attempts to reduce our performance to an instantaneous, ranked grade. Therefore, if we, as we have been repeatedly told, are truly more than our grades, the grades that attempt to define us should be abolished.
Grades also perpetuate a toxic system of competition that harms students’ relationships and mental health. I have tried so hard to compare my own grades only to myself, but when there is a literal scale that measures each student as above or below one another, it establishes a pretty clear hierarchy. We are constantly told that people learn at different rates and excel at different things, but these kind voices will never defeat the concrete numerical grade that we can physically see on DAInfo—which, conveniently for the competitive demons of our heads, are further quantified against averages and quintiles. Even as someone fiercely critical of the grading system, I cannot help but obsess over my own grades, simply because grades exist as a prevalent measure of success in our society. We want to succeed, even if it is by society’s arbitrary standards. So then how could we not climb the grade ladder, stepping over our peers in the process?
III. On “pursuit of mastery”
Abolishing grades would also promote the “pursuit of mastery” at Deerfield. First, it would allow teachers to create innovative assignments that do not necessarily fit into a traditional system and cannot be assigned a point value. Deerfield, as an institution that trains us to tackle real life issues, must move past formulaic, mundane assignments. For example, in history classes, my most rewarding and meaningful assignments are those where I spend long periods of time in the library, close-reading primary sources, interacting with scholarly literature, and practicing the work of real historians. These assignments are focused on developing skills, as opposed to content mastery, and therefore are hard to measure with a grade. However, these assignments are not only extremely valuable for pursuing mastery but also necessary because they represent the future of learning in the age of artificial intelligence; they showcase the uniqueness of human intelligence that AI cannot replace, and that, for the same reason, cannot be reduced to a number.
Secondly, abolishing grades would encourage students to take intellectual risks. Students will be more inclined to choose challenging courses that they previously may have shied away from due concerns about their GPA. Even within a class, students will be empowered to take on challenging tasks such as developing more ambitious arguments in essays and discussions, selecting more challenging research topics, and attempting more challenging problems. Abolishing grades also offers students the opportunity to create specific, long term, and personalized goals for themselves that are not numerical. Although many students do this currently, the second a concrete, numerical grade is released, it seems to overpower any progress we have made in any area that is less measurable, such as learning new thinking skills, developing better work ethic, or even fostering a closer teacher-student relationship. This should be the focus of education at Deerfield, where we have a naturally ambitious, self-motivated, and academically talented group of students who, most importantly, are self-selected. We chose to come to Deerfield because we see grades as a bare minimum and want to engage with learning on a deeper level. Our journeys in learning are boundless, and yet grades give the false impression that knowledge is objectively measurable, or that we are 89% close to fully comprehending a subject, when we should strive for exploration, not perfection.
Most importantly, abolishing grades would serve the ultimate goal of education, which is to cultivate a lifelong joy for learning. The content you learn in class will fade away with time, but a thirst for knowledge and genuine fulfillment from learning are lifelong. Yet these traits are curbed by our hyperfixation on grades, which is inevitable as long as grades exist, precisely because our self-selected student population chases academic excellence, even when the school adheres to a misguided definition of excellence.
IV. The alternative, and of course, college
There are many alternatives to grades that could work at Deerfield. I propose a reforming of our course comments as a replacement for grades, as well as monthly, formal meetings with each of our subject teachers to discuss our progress in the class face-to-face, candidly, and humanly. Beyond this, there are many possible systems that have been proposed by educational thinkers across the US, which I will elaborate on.
The biggest obstacle I ran into when discussing my ideas about abolishing grades with my peers was, of course, college. We are conditioned by our grades to believe they are essential to education and therefore, college admissions. However, I believe we need to consciously unlearn the influence grades have on us. Even colleges have begun to recognize that grades are poor reflections of a student. A 90 at another school, in general, means less than a 90 at Deerfield, and colleges already arbitrarily adjust for those discrepancies, and do not treat grades as an objective marker. Moreover, it seems that the popular consensus among admissions experts, including the College Advising Office, is that grades serve as nothing more than a sieve in the beginning stages of college admissions to narrow down the applicant pool to academically qualified candidates. Deerfield is already a vetted, college preparatory school and has a fantastic reputation for our alumni, so we do have the leeway to abolish grades while maintaining our college admissions.
Secondly, this is really not that outlandish of a proposal. In October 2021, the Washington Post published a feature on the “Mastery Transcript Consortium” (MTC), a non-profit collective of 275 private high schools and 125 public schools that are trying to establish a “mastery transcript” system. A “mastery transcript” entails a series of “micro-credentials,” such as “global perspectives,” “community service,” “collaboration,” “critical thinking,” and “compassion.” Under these “micro-credentials,” students will submit work samples such as a piece of writing, presentation, or portfolio. These samples are then compiled into a “transcript” along with a school profile and teacher comments, without any grades, and submitted to colleges. According to the MTC’s website, as of February 2023, 315 universities in the US now accept Mastery Transcripts, including Harvard, California Institute of Technology, Georgetown, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
If you are not convinced by these precedents, then my question is this: why can’t we, at Deerfield, be pioneers of an educational revolution? Why can’t we do better?
Conclusion
Even in light of the things I am saying in this article, I personally fall victim to obsessing over grades as a measurement of my personal value, again and again. So long as grades exist, they remain reductive and dehumanizing. It is not enough for us to ask students to simply see past their grades while we place them under the pressure of a cold, unforgiving, and ultimately inaccurate system. We need an institutional overhaul: a significant reconsideration of the purpose of education, the values of this school, and how we reflect those values in our education.
In the meantime, students: start by giving yourself some grace. Grades are a system that have been placed into our lives, not an inherent measurement we must live by. Start by taking time to consider the well-established alternatives to this toxic system and holding an open mind. I invite you to actively question the value of grades and its effectiveness in encapsulating your academic experience, your Deerfield days.