When should kids get graded?

So it appears that Sweden has it up for debate whether they should start grading kids who aren’t yet in high school.

Of course, in the US kids are graded from their first year in school all the way until they leave for the real world.

This brings up a couple of questions. Having met various Swedish people, they seem to be a fairly well educated group, with the most advanced English as a second language speakers that I’ve met. So obviously, being graded isn’t a critical part of educating children.

On the other hand, if anything it seems to me like young children would receive more benefit from being graded than high school students. In the pre-high school grades is when you’re actually learning the main body of skills that are necessary in society: reading and writing, basic arithmetic, etc. From high school on, the emphasis in school is much more on getting people to think over issues, write essays, and such. If I write a vacuous essay, receiving a bad grade tells me nothing, while as receiving an attack on all the points which weren’t considered by the paper would be a real kick in the pants.

And if your brain never does get kickstarted in high school, well at least you can read. It’s a lot more important to make sure all kids are kept up to the same level on the basic skill set taught in the lower grades than the upper ones, I would think.

I would also note that for the majority of my high school and college life, I couldn’t have cared less about my grades. I also wouldn’t be sure that most people do (at least not for high school) if only because of rebelliousness and raging hormones. Though in my case it was a simple issue that I was personally more concerned that I was learning what I could from school, not to get high marks for what was most easily testable for the teacher.

So what say you,

  1. Should there be grades at any level in school?
  2. What purpose do grades serve?
  3. What grade levels would receive the most benefit from grading?

First question right here is whether they are referring to grading with a scale from 1 to 6, or grading with words.

Secondly, not grading the children visibly - by putting a big red F when handing back their work - doesn’t mean that the teacher doesn’t assess the level of learning the children have, and adjust the pace so everybody learns and understands the subject.

I think you misunderstand not grading. It doesn’t mean the children’s work isn’t marked and corrected. It means they don’t receive an F and get into trouble with their parents, or feel completly discouraged.

I hesitate to say this, because apparently, things over this issue have been exaggerated out of the sensible approach in the US sometimes, but self-esteem is important, esp. for young children. I’m not talking about overblown self-esteem, or not correcting children for mistakes, or praising for easy things.
But if a child gets the impression in first grade that he is “stupid” because he gets an F, he may simply subconciously stop trying and learning, because he believes that a stupid person will never learn anyhting, anyway.
Also, one of the greatest aids in learning is the natural curiousity that healthy children have all of their own - if they are confident that the universe around them is a safe, ordered place where they can learn the rules. If they are intimiated and threatened and discouraged, they feel that the universe is a dangerous, incomprehensible, place without fixed rules, so it’s not worth trying to learn and understand, because the rules change all the time.

Again, I really wonder why you think that not grading means that children don’t learn to read??? If a child gets an F, steps must be taken so the child catches up and learns to read. These steps must be taken by the teacher (and school admin., depending on circumstances, like extra classes), not by a first-grade child.
Now, a good teacher can asses how good a child can read or write without marking an F on a test, and take steps.
If the teacher passes out an F in the first grade without taking steps, grading doesn’t serve any purpose (other than to depress the child), and the child won’t learn to read.

Pupils only care about getting good grades if they have been scared by the adults that without a good grade, they will mess up the whole rest of their life (which is stupid for most of the high school, only the final grades matter for admission to college or applying to a job), if their parents make trouble, or if the grades get below D and they have to repeat a year.
Suddenly changing grades can indicate a problem, and a B indicates better understanding and knowledge than a D. But I don’t think A+ in every subject mean better understanding than B- or Cs. They show lot of work, which is good if it’s self-organized. But to stress a kid through outside pressure is very damaging.
And grades don’t reflect everything. They don’t show the many extracurricular subjects and interests a pupil has (or doesn’t have). A C grade can reflect that the pupil understands the subject, but sees no reason to learn by heart some stupid, boring bit of data he will never need again.

Depends on what kind of grades. When I went to school, the first two years of primary, we got only written comments by the teachers about how we were doing. Grading on the 1 to 6 scale started in 3rd grade, and I did learn to read and write quickly. I don’t think I got worse than a C in primary school.
Some alternative schools grade only by comments until grade 8, and that works, too.
(Applies to Bavaria, Germany. We also have far less tests. In the main subjects like Math, German, English, we have 4 to 5 big tests a year, and 1 to 2 short tests - covering only last lesson. In the minor subjects - geography, religion, history - we only have the short tests, and oral participation which make up the grade. And we have far less homework - max. 1 hour a day during the week - and thinner books. But I say we have a pretty good system - not that there’s not a lot that should be improved!)

[qutoe]2) What purpose do grades serve?
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Well, teachers give several reasons:

  • they give feedback to the teacher of how much the children have understood the subject covered, so the teacher can adjust her speed and teaching technique
  • they give feedback to the student on how well they understand the subject, can express it, solve the problems etc., so the students can work on their expression, do more exercises, etc.

But since they don’t always accurately reflect things, they need to be taken with a grain of salt; and parents making stress and trouble and getting upset over them is very, very negative. (Not that something shouldn’t done over a D, E or F, but getting upset is the wrong action.)

There is no definite answer, because it’s connected with the kinds of tests - pure facts repetition on mulitple choice, every week, or essay questions? Real problem-solving? - and with the kind of steps taken according to the grades. If no special attention is given to kids with bad grades by the teacher, if she doesn’t adjust her technique and go back to explain again what the kids missed the first time, then grading is counterproductive.

Generally, I think primary school, at least the first couple of years, are difficult enough for the children to adjust to school. Learning needs to be fun, not grueling facts and boredom. NOT in dumbing down the stuff, but showing kids the excitment of discovering the world around them. Discouraging them becasue they “only” got a C goes against this. Maybe in 4th grade, before they changed into secondary school. But then, I’m against an early career decision anyway - the Finnish keep the children together at one school till 8th grade, and the brighter kids don’t suffer from this.

Again, introducing the scale A to F later doesn’t mean not giving feedback. Writing the correct answers on the math test, and showing where the essay needs improvement can be done without writing a final grade! And if no indication is given why the essay got a D instead of a B, a grade is useless - how can the pupil improve if he doesn’t know what’s wrong?
If half of the class got the same math problem wrong, the teacher can show it on the blackboard again and give more exercises for homework, without needing to hand out D’s and F’s.

We would need someone knowledgeable of the Swedish system to say.

Certainly, so what’s the point of having a grade at all?

An F is an honest indicator of how they’re doing. Whether that’s an issue of the child or the teacher will depend on the situation, but if the kid is receiving an F that means something is wrong. While as if the kid receives a, “Little Timmy could use some improvement in following through on X part of subject Y.” That’s always going to come down as it being Little Timmy’s fault that he’s not doing well.

I was going to be held back in kindergarten for not being able to read because my teachers were trying to teach us non-phonically. My mom knew I wasn’t an idiot so she taught my herself over the summer. F didn’t mean I was a hopeless loser, it meant that something was wrong and obviously my teacher couldn’t figure out how to make it better.

I’m not sure why you say that. Childhood is all about being told you’re doing things wrong very clearly when you’re doing things that are wrong, and being coddled when you do it right finally. Nor does self-esteem based on a lie help anyone, regardless of their age.

That I have ever witnessed in schools, in general kids who felt stupid felt that way because the teacher made them feel that way. Regardless of the method for feedback used, if the teacher thinks the kid is stupid, he’s going to make the kid feel stupid. A grade, as said, could however be viewed as a method that doesn’t let the teacher put as much of his “personal” view of the situation into it.

A grade seems a much more fixed and easily understood rule than hemming-and-hawing feedback methods, if that’s your argument.

That’s not what I said. I said that learning to read is something that is quantifiable, where a grade has meaning (if it ever did.) The level of quality of an essay is subjective, and a grade can only be about as good an indicator as a movie reviewers rating of a movie. Perhaps indicative of the quality, but not necessarily.

If a teacher thinks the kid is bright, in the US, and the teacher isn’t an ass, in general he’ll say to the kid, “I think you can do better than this, and we’re going to figure it out.” He encourages the kid to do better verbally, and helps him more in class. The grade just is a report of how the child and the teacher did that one semester.

Indeed, another reason that grades don’t make less sense for higher schooling.

Millions of American kids feel that pressure and don’t have any issue. Millions of Japanese kids do feel that pressure and do have an issue. The issue is whether the parents are being asses or not. If not then a grade is just a simple indicator of where the teacher/child synergy stands.

One hour per day is what we had (US.)

I agree that would be good, but you have to remember that the beginnings of lower schooling aren’t about the amazingness of the world around them. It’s memorizing addition table, multiplication tables, the alphabet, phonic sounds, etc. Everything is dumb, boring memorization and there’s not much help for that. It’s information that needs to be memorized before anything else that is interesting can be taught. But also due to that, skill really doesn’t come into it. Anyone should be able to memorize the multiplication table. If they can’t, then that’s something that needs to be looked in to.

[quoe]And if no indication is given why the essay got a D instead of a B, a grade is useless - how can the pupil improve if he doesn’t know what’s wrong?
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Indeed, but essays don’t really start until high school. The most I ever had to do was write, for instance, a book report. All that had was a two paragraph summary of what I read.

If half the class is getting D’s and F’s there’s a bigger problem than grades.

And please note, I’m not arguing for grades. My point was just that if they serve any useful purpose at all it would be of more use for lower grades than higher. So if they’re not useful for lower grades, why have them for higher?

You need to learn how to read in Kindergarten??? We learned that in first grade of primary school. Kindergarten was for learning different things.
As for the whole phonics issue, I can’t comment on that, because I have forgotten which method was used to teach me reading. I know I learned reading and writing quickly, and had fun reading.

That’s why I didn’t want to mention it - because people so easily mis-understand it. I extra said that I don’t mean praising over small things, or lying, or otherwise flattering or exaggeritng. I am talking of a healthy self esteem, and too many children are manipulated with fear because it’s easier to use by parents and teachers. If you are afraid that everything you do is wrong because adults have standards too high too reach, you get frustrated, and stop working to your maximum, you stop exploring the world around you with wonder.

Have you read the books by James (john?) Holt, an American school teacher? He describes with a very observant eye how damaging fear and low self-esteem is, and what good teaching methods look like. Maybe you will understand better what I mean.

But the grade is given by the teacher, and because a grade is considered objective, carries much more damning weight. Esp. as an F shows up on your report card for the next class, you are branded stupid.

Where did I say hemming-and-hawing??? No, that was not my argument at all. How is a C in Math - without explanation - better to understand than the comment: “Timmy is good in addition, average in subtraction. He still has trouble grasping the concept of division, and is a bit slow in mulitplication, so he needs to practice that more”?

What? An essay has certain criteria to meet. The only thing you can measure objectivly, then, is math and reading, eveything else is subjective. Or do you propose learning science by memorising data?

Why does it matter if the child is bright? Bright children are encouraged in Germany, too, but usually, they are already interested in things and learning, that’s why they are bright in the first place. (Though they may be too lazy to learn boring facts). But it’s important to do something to help the rest of the class and slower kids to understand the subject, too.

How do you know they don’t have issues? Because your parents didn’T force you to do your homework? If schools give grades, parents will think they are important, and attach importance to that, and put stress on their kids that getting a C or B- isn’t enough, it has to be A+ all the way, otherwise…
Tell me, when the report cards at the end of the year are given, and the children learn whether they will pass or not, are there many kids who don’t dare go home because they are afraid what their parents will say or do about the bad grades?

That surprises me, I have heard different - that there is no time limit, that each teacher can give as much homework as he wants, and that reading a chapter of 30 pages and do the questions about it for each subject takes much more than 1 hour.

What?? I think you need to reform your primary school, then. I don’t know about phonics, but memorizing mulitplication tables isn’t boring and dumb. We did it in unision shouting loud for maybe a quarter hour each day, with some sheets to fill out. (We also had a fun game at at the start of each day to do math calculations in our head; the whole class stood, and who got the answer quickest could sit down. It was fun because it was a competition.) Learning to read and write was fun, because then we could read stories. We had science, so we did experiments. We didn’t sit for hours to learn boring things, we had lots of either interesting things, or did it in small increments, or made a game of it.

Hmm… we didn’t do book reports in primary school, but we wrote lots of essay - or maybe you call them stories? - in primary school - what did I do on the weekend? We were given some pictures, and had to write what happened, we were read a story and had to give a summary … that kind of thing.

Yes, certainly. It didn’t happen often, but when it happened that the whole class average was bad, the teacher was disappointed that she hadn’t seen it earlier. (Except Latin, almost everybody in my class was bad in that, because learning the vocabulary was so damn boring nobody did it.)

Because I think that in the lower grades, they discourage without helping, since a first- or second-grader doesn’t have the foggiest idea on how to improve his reading skills himself, when he gets a D, he needs help from his teachers, anyway.

But in High School, a 13 year old will know that if he gets a D in essay (with feedback) what he has to practice, and if it’s still low, he knows he needs to ask the teacher for help to explain what he didn’t understand. In High School, the pupils have to learn to learn for themselves, and meet requirements, therefore they get grades.
After all, the adult world prefers grades as better measureable, so they need to get used to it once they are old enough.

Hm…

While I’m not sure that I buy that young kids are discouraged that easily–I would generally say it’s easier to permanently discourage a teen than a tyke from a subject–I’m not sure you’ve shown why a lengthier and more involved “You suck” is any better at saving a kid from depression than a simple rating. You say that it’s objectiveness makes it more pointed, but as a kid I would generally expect subjective insults to hurt more than objective. A number is a number, but your teacher hating you is Awful.

I would also argue that real life stuff like cleaning your room, getting grades, following the rules, and dealing with the sucky bits of life is something more necessary for when you’re a kid than later in life. Those are the developmental years of your life, where the way you’re going to interact with the world come into being. Assholes come about because they were given free reign as a little kid, not because they were allowed their way as a teen.

I’m also not sure that John Holt would be the best source to point to. Going by Wikipedia, he’s against school period. Of course, that probably feeds into the idea that any sort of negative feedback, grade or other, is disastrous. Personally that rather strikes me as being fairly communistic, the best course for everyone in theory–if only humans weren’t such lazy asses.

Did you read the sample comment I gave? Where do you get the idea that a teacher who writes this hates the child??

As for discouraging a teen - many teens go through a phase where school and studying don’t seem to be important as life out there. But if good basics have been laid, there is a love of discovering new things, of reading, of being interested in the world, a feeling of “If I study, I can achieve things and understand the world”. All this will return once the phase is over, and the young person will go on to college.

If, however, a child is discouraged by fear or frustration in primary school years, or bored to tears with dull stuff, he will stop exploring, he won’t be interested, he will have a feeling of insecurity that he can’t manage unpredictable life around him. So when this child looses interest in a subject in high school, he will not return, he will stop permanently.

Did you not read my post, or did you simply misunderstand it? Where did I say anything about giving free reign??? Helping children instead of belittling them is better than the authoritarian approach.
As for assholes - there are many ways to create jerks, and I know too many who were crushed and kept down by authoritarian approach to parenting. I also don’t prefer people broken in spirit to become yes-sayers. I want children to grow up into real adults - the third way, the middle route.

I didn’t know that, and I don’t share that opinion. I recommend his books to you as useful observations on what happens in schools.

It would really help this discussion if you didn’t make sweeping and stupid comments. I DID NOT say that any negative feedback is disastorus. AND EVEN IF I HAD, this is NOT communistic. I said that a teacher needs to help those children catch up who haven’t understood everything. In other words, everybody needs to get enough help to get to the same (minimum) level of understanding of the subject (like basic reading comprehension), of course, brighter kids can go farther. Everybody gets the same chance, which doesn’t mean everybody is treated the same - of course everybody is a individuum and different, so everybody needs different approaches. That is NOT communist, unless you define the US system as “The brighest get ahead, and the rest gets left behind”?? Is that what you mean?

You rang?

They are talking about grading on a scale (the current one has 4 steps, the one used when I was in school had 5). We don’t get these grades until the 8th year, and then we get them once every semester. Grading individual essays, tests and the like comes gradually and isn’t common until the 10th year or so.

One important point that needs to be made: Absence of grades doesn’t mean you don’t know how well you’re doing. I knew what subjects were my strong points and what subjects were my weak points as early as the first year of school, and so did my parents. One mechanism to ensure this was and is recurring meetings, when you came to school with your parents and had a short talk with your teachers. By the time my little brother went to the same school, my parents were tired of hearing “Does well, knows more than he shows, talks a bit too much”.

Letter grades are the bane of American education. They have become the focus of intense efforts to maximize at all levels, a proxy for understanding the level of actual education that has occurred. They serve almost no useful purpose at any level: at lower grades they are simply an abomination.

Most schools I have been in contact with simply mark progress in subjects for lower grades through the use of “S” for satisfactory, “U” for unsatisfactory, and, occasionally, “O” for outstanding. Telling an 8-year-old that they have gotten a “C” for English simply has no redeeming value, either for the system or the child.

Not that I have an opinion…

I went to four elementary schools in MA and NH, and none of them gave letter grades to first or second graders. Even in third and fourth grades, the grades were as often the ones DSYoungEsq mentioned as letter grades. It wasn’t until 5th grade that all grades were given on an A-F scale.

Given that grading from late elementary school on is the norm in this state, which is also in a 3-way tie for the highest graduation rates in the US, I’m inclined to think that grading is not hurtful enough to the self-esteem of students to make them drop out in large numbers.

I think this might depend on where you go to school. Kids in my own K class were learning to read (except the two of us who could already going into K), and nearly 20 years later, the special needs 3-6 year olds I worked with were working on early reading skills too. 3s and young 4s were expected to recognize their names in print, older 4s learned to read and write the alphabet and the 5s and young 6s were learning to read simple words by the end of the year. And this is for kids who often are not developmentally “typical” so I’m sure this is less intensive than a normal PreK-K program elsewhere in the northeast.

Today, Kindergarten is often providing the basics of reading. This is especially true where the district has gone to full-day K.