# The Grading System in Schools **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 10, 2004, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384 "2004-04-10T22:58:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![remisser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b3f665/32.png) [@remisser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/remisser)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/1 "2004-04-10T22:58:46Z")
Who invented the grading system (A B C D F) that they use in schools and where did it originate? Also: Why, usually, are no other letters used? Are there any books on it? ---
**Author:** ![remisser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b3f665/32.png) [@remisser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/remisser)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/2 "2004-04-10T23:57:29Z")
Man, I’m still racking my brains on this searching google. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Oregon\_sunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/50afbb/32.png) [@Oregon\_sunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oregon_sunshine)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/3 "2004-04-11T00:19:16Z")
Not that this answers the OP in any way, but I was visiting my 80 year old grandmother a couple of weeks ago and she said that when she was a kid, there were no "F"s; kids who flunked got "E"s instead. ---
**Author:** ![Apex\_Rogers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@Apex\_Rogers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apex_Rogers)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/4 "2004-04-11T01:59:46Z")
> [@ggurl](#): > > Not that this answers the OP in any way, but I was visiting my 80 year old grandmother a couple of weeks ago and she said that when she was a kid, there were no "F"s; kids who flunked got "E"s instead. We had that in my school district. The lowest grade was E, not F. Anything below 60 percent was considered failing, though it was designated “E,” not “F.” ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/5 "2004-04-11T03:37:21Z")
When I was in elementary school, _E_ was the _highest_ grade you could get! It stood for “Excellent.” There was also an _S_ for “Satisfactory” and a _U_ for “Unsatisfactory.” ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/6 "2004-04-11T05:18:26Z")
In my elementary school also we got E, S, or U - and we also got effort grades (numerical, I think), which makes me think it’s a touchy-feely educational development. This was in the early 80’s, for what it’s worth. After that, of course, we went to A B C D F. ---
**Author:** ![remisser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b3f665/32.png) [@remisser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/remisser)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/7 "2004-04-11T12:59:51Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > In my elementary school also we got E, S, or U - and we also got effort grades (numerical, I think), which makes me think it’s a touchy-feely educational development. This was in the early 80’s, for what it’s worth. After that, of course, we went to A B C D F. all the schools I went to had the A B C D F grade scale… but non-primary subjects (gym, art, etc.) had that E (excellent) S (satisfactory) U (unsatisfactory) scale. So have I stumped everyone on this? ---
**Author:** ![Rucksinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/898d66/32.png) [@Rucksinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rucksinator)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/8 "2004-04-11T16:00:19Z")
> [@remisser](#): > > all the schools I went to had the A B C D F grade scale… but non-primary subjects (gym, art, etc.) had that E (excellent) S (satisfactory) U (unsatisfactory) scale. > > So have I stumped everyone on this? Just to add more barely-relevant data: My mother, who is in her 60’s and has been a teacher for many years said the same thing as **remisser**. My 91 year old grandmother said that they used A, B C, D, F (i.e. not E). I’m looking at my great-grandmother’s Teacher’s License from 1895, and it only shows number grades. I’ll quote part of the “Explanations” section: > [@](#): > > 1. A General Average of 75 percent, not falling below 65 percent, in anyone of the 10 items, entitles the applicant to a 6 months license. A General Average of 85 percent, not falling below 75 percent, in anyone of the 10 items, entitles the applicant to a 12 months license… [etc.] " So, at least on this, there is not indication of letter grades. Take that for whatever it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/9 "2004-04-11T16:38:15Z")
Just three WAGs, without any knowledge on where it actually came from: Either the F is supposed to stand for “failed” or something (but why did they choose to keep the alphabetical scheme for the better grades?), or at some schools there used to be six grades, A to F, and the two worst ones were merged into one (reminds me of the German rail where there used to be three classes; one day, long ago, class two was abolished and class three re-named into two, so there’s now First and Second Class), or the gap between the second worst and the worst grade is to underpin that F is reallllllly bad. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2004, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/10 "2004-04-11T23:28:35Z")
In Ontario public and high schools, 1970s to early 1980s\*, we received overall marks as either A, B, C, D, or E (but not F), or as percentages. Individual assignments and tests were often marked as two numbers a/b, where b varied all over the map, and wasn’t simply 100 to indicate a percentage. Presumably b was related to the number of markable elements in the assignment or test. I don’t seem to remember seeing the possibility of F instead of E until I hit unversity. \*I qualify by date because it’s probably changed completely by now. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/11 "2004-04-12T00:49:40Z")
My high school in Illinois in the mid-1980s gave grades of A, B, C, D, and E. At Rice University, where I went to college, they gave grades of A, B, C, D, and F. Apparently, though, from the school’s founding in 1912 to at least the 1960s, Rice gave grades of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, with a “1” being equivalent to an "A. " ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/12 "2004-04-12T01:19:08Z")
I’ll confirm that at least as late as 1990, my high school in Michigan used the A-B-C-D-E system. Hearing about F’s on television always seemed strange to me – where’s the logic in that? This wasn’t an inconsistency of a single school – Intermediate school (I guess what you’d call middle school these days? 6-7-8), first high school, then last high school, in two different districts within two different intermediate school districts. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/13 "2004-04-12T01:48:45Z")
My understanding is that because E was sometimes used to mean failure but also used for excellent, confusion on its meaning was inevitable. So the simplest, smallest and most obvious change was to have F for failure replace E for failure. There was no reason to change any of the other grades. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/14 "2004-04-12T03:09:42Z")
In New York City, during the '50s and '60s at least, elementary schools used E, S and U, while junior highs and high schools used numerical grades, with a 65 being the boundary between pass and fail. Grades were in increments of five points up to 85, when there was an 88, a 90, and then increments of one after that. MIT had a scale of 0 to 5, and I recall people saying there used to be an E for 1. iIt had vanished by the time I was there, and the grades were A, B, C, D, F. And no, we did not get irrational numbers as grades. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/15 "2004-04-12T19:03:33Z")
I went to two widely-separated high schools in the late 70s, with different grading schemes. In Montreal, we didn’t get letter grades at all – our final report card showed a number from 1 to 99 for each class. Higher was better, obviously. In Los Angeles, we got the standard letter grades of A,B,C,D,F. This was in the days before computers automated the report card procedure, so the report cards were handwritten. Interestingly, teachers were instructed to write out the entire word “Fail”, instead of just “F”. It was thought that an “F” could too easily be modified into an “A” or a “B” by a malicious student. Ed ---
**Author:** ![remisser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b3f665/32.png) [@remisser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/remisser)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2004, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/16 "2004-04-12T23:07:39Z")
I’ve been trying to find the origins of the grading system at the library, but no dice. I’m one stop away from asking Cecil. That’d be funny. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![larsenmtl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d78d45/32.png) [@larsenmtl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/larsenmtl)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/17 "2004-04-13T04:22:05Z")
Some late night googling - From the American Association of School Administrators (there’s a mouthful) site: > [@](#): > > Thomas Guskey, professor of educational policy studies and evaluation at the University of Kentucky, says the current angst over student report cards is nothing new. He traces the origins of modern grading and reporting systems to the late 1800s and the introduction of the first student progress evaluations. Those evaluations–simple lists of skills mastered as well as those that required additional practice–determined whether a student was ready to move from one grade level to the next. But by 1910, with larger and more diverse student populations and more complex curricula, most high schools began using percentages as a way of measuring student achievement. > > Guskey notes that studies early this century raised serious questions about such a grading system. When teachers from across the country were asked to assess the same two English and geometry papers according to their schools’ standards, the results fluctuated widely. The variations were traced not only to teachers’ subjective feelings about the overall quality of a student’s work but also to the teachers’ policies on spelling and neatness. To reduce such variations, percentages were replaced by rating systems such as Excellent, Good, Average, Poor and Failing, or A through F. > > By the 1930s, in an attempt to distribute grades more fairly, educators were grading “on the curve,” ranking student performance and then assigning A’s to students in the top tier, B’s to those in the next tier and so forth, Guskey says. The practice seemed credible enough because it linked achievement to intelligence test scores, which approximated a normal probability curve. [http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1997\_12/pardini.htm](http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1997_12/pardini.htm) I’d google on this Guskey fellow and his research, but my bed is calling. ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/18 "2004-04-13T11:50:48Z")
On the British GCSE and A-level papers I sat the grades were A B C D E F U. A-D were acceptable as grades E was awful F was a fail U meant it was unmarkable (ie the person wrote their name and nothing else, or pages of incomprehensible gibberish). A friend wrote her entire Latin paper in modern Italian, and got a U. She still got into Cambridge though. ---
**Author:** ![Engywook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bc8723/32.png) [@Engywook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Engywook)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-grading-system-in-schools/239384/19 "2004-04-13T14:46:07Z")
In my former school district near Kansas City, they used a variant of E-S-U. E - Excellent S - Satisfactory M - Mean-level(?) or Mediocre(?) I - Inferior F - Fail The rationale was for each of the letters to stand for something and be meaningful, while preserving the usual five-level system. The F, of course, had to be recognizable to anyone. But that was often undermined by the fact that one extra stroke could turn any F into an E, far more convincingly than an F can be turned into an A or more easily than an F can be turned into a B. While I was in high school, they changed it to A, B, C, D, F. Then they introduced various methods for getting a GPA above 4.0…