Does Grades Do Students Any Good???

I recently read an article that judged whether or not grades do more harm than good. Many researchers, educators, and parents are now beginning to questioning the purpose and effectiveness of grades. They believe parents definitely deserve to know how their children are doing in school and they know students benefit from understanding how they are performing. But they strongly feel how the child’s progress is communicated can have a great impact on how he or she learns. Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards” and Punished by Rewards, writes extensively about the influence of grades on learning. He was asked him to articulate how grades impact a student’s education for this article.

Kohn states, “Research suggests three consistent effects of giving students grades – First, their interest in the learning itself is diminished. Second, they come to prefer easier tasks – not because they’re lazy, but because they’re rational. After all, if the point is to get an “A”, your odds are better if you avoid taking intellectual risks. Third, students tend to think in a more superficial fashion – and to forget what they learned more quickly – when grades are involved. As far as I can tell, there are absolutely no benefits of giving grades to balance against these three powerful negative consequences – except that doing so is familiar to us and doesn’t take much effort.”

Kohn goes on and gives suggestions on alternatives for documenting a student’s progress. His suggestions include a written narrative report or parent/student/teacher conferences.

Do you agree that grades do students more harm than good?


To read the rest of the article I posted a link below:
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Grades_Any_Good/