ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY

Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essays

Introduction

The primary purpose of student grading and grade reporting is to communicate student achievement and progress in learning. Student grades have two purposes: to give information and to serve as a substitute for pay. Actually, grades can serve several purposes: an administrative function, to establish a permanent record of student achievement; a guidance function, to determine strengths, weaknesses, and needed goals and skills; a communication function, to provide information to students, teachers, parents, and others; and a motivational function, as a reward or sanction.

Argument

“Giving students grades does more harm than good. Schools should replace grades with written evaluations of student's strengths and weaknesses. These would benefit both students and parents.”

Discussion

Narrative grading involves teachers in writing open-ended descriptions of student performance and other traits—descriptive comments about student achievement, work habits, and citizenship. Descriptive reporting can provide a holistic picture and flexibility for assessing individual learning. It is most effective when tied directly to student learning goals and objectives (Guskey, 2008). Unfortunately, the process is time consuming and of questionable value when teachers employ standard-comment menus in computerized grade reporting. Comparative ranking of students is virtually impossible. Narrative grading, most common in elementary schools, is rarely used alone, but is often combined with alpha or standards-based measures.

In contrast to grades, written performance assessments provide information about students' knowledge and skills to guide instruction, provide feedback to students so as to monitor their learning, and can be used to evaluate instruction. In addition to eliciting complex thinking skills, classroom performance assessments can assess processes and products that are important across subject areas, such as those involved in writing a position paper on an environmental issue (Guskey, 2008). The assessment of performances across disciplines allows teachers of different subjects to collaborate on projects that ask students to make connections across content. Students ...