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I definitely agree that the students can be very stressed about their grades and they need more motivation. Perhaps we should grade more based on their efforts and the challenges they faced rather than overall completion.

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I totally agree with you that the non letter grading system would be more helpful. Also, it is interesting to think about how it would be beneficial in a music classroom. I think that letter grades would be hard to determine in this type of classroom, and this would be a good alternative!

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I completely agree with your statement. I think students focus too much on the grade that they lose sight of what is truly important which is gaining knowledge from the content. Time and time again it has been proven that exams evoke such strong emotions because of how much is at stakes generally cause the exams are weighted so heavily.

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I agree with the article. I think that students focus too much on what letter grade they are getting rather than what they are learning. Students study to pass a test instead of studying to learn the information. Again, we are teaching towards a test instead of understanding of useful information.

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I totally agree that students need to be less focused on the letter grade compared to personal growth. However, since college admissions are so heavily based on these letter grades, it will be very difficult to make certain students motivated to challenge themselves. Paradoxically, doing the challenging thing is what is going to better prepare the students for college anyways.

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I believe that letter grades only define students acedimic discipline not knowledge. Letter grades can make a kid happy or break a kids spirit. Overall I think that letter grades are just part of life everyone has had to go through it.

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I think the no letter grading system is good idea because students would be more focused on the actual subject and not on the grade that they are receiving. This could be very effective in a music classroom to show how proficient they are or how knowledgable they are. I think parents would participate narrative reports over letter grades that basically don't tell them anything.

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Grades cause way to much stress. Learnign should be a fun experience and when there is stress involved it end up being not enjoyable.

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This article learning looks at letter grades as a archaic and not very informative. Very true. We have a lot of ways to assess and report student progress and a general A-F doesn't discriminate very well. I agree with Lindsey M it would be difficult to abolish, but with analytics being accepted in most industries, I think we can change this.

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I think it would be hard to abolish the letter grade system completely since so many colleges look at GPA. But i do believe letter grades entirely distracts students from their own progress. They have to wait until they have completed a test or project to see what grade they received and that's how they assess how much/ how well they've learned the material.

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I agree with Lindsay that it's important to look at learning of the students rather than the actually letter grades. There should be a balance of this by looking at the student's overall performance rather than a number. Lindsay made a good point that students should be challenged and they won't be motivated to learn when knowing that all that matters is their grade at the end of the lesson.

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I agree that people are not focused on their learning. Being so focused on the letter grade that they are getting, this could lead to cheating. I do not think that letter grades should be completely done away with because there does need to be a measurement of what students are learning. However, students need to be encouraged to learn and not just get good grades.

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I agree that finding a way to motivate our students other ways than just with letter grades is important. It is more about the students retention of the information not necessarily if they performed well in their grades. The ultimate goal of school is to LEARN and if assigning grades hinders that, then maybe we need to change something.

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I can see two sides to this article. On one hand, letter grades show how a student is doing in any particular class or subject. On the other hand, letter grades can hurt the overall effectiveness of learning. I agree with the article in that the want in having a higher grade can take away the push to challenge oneself in an effort to make earning an 'A' easier. Letter grades also factor into a student's overall GPA. The article also states that the letter grade system we have is archaic, which can be both true and not true. It all depends on the subject in which the letter grade is being given. I personally have had classes where a letter grade made no difference as it is a class or activity where if you show up and work hard, you pass.

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I can agree easily with this article when it says that students avoid the challenging tasks in order to receive the highest possible grade, because in the end it is the grade that matters to everybody else. But the truth is that they should be taking the more challenging routes and expanding their knowledge. I'm nnot sure that removing letter grades is the best way to go about it, but I believe this is a problem within students and that instead of reaching for higher grades, the students needs to reach for personal expansion. We as teachers must help in this case and better motivate our students and also help them pinpoint their biggest struggles and help them overcome that. If we went as far to completely remove letter grades, we would have to go such in colleges as well, who look at GPA based off of these grades. Also, in college the GPA is calculated strictly on the letter grade rather than the percent, aka 81% does the same to the GPA as 89% does. I don't known the best answer, but it something to consider.

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I feel like if we took this article to it's logical extreme, it would result in there being no system of number or letter grades at all. While I do feel like students would be more open to real learning if there were no measures of success, I do believe that we need some sort of compromise between standards-based grading and letter grades. I really like the system presented where they sent home two different report cards. The important thing here is that students need something to work for, a goal. If not, I think that progress can become very slow or nonexistent.

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I think that when you put too much emphasis on grades it ruins the point of learning. Instead of learning for the sole purpose of gaining knowledge people end up doing whatever they can for a grade. I understand it's important to track how well a student is learning a subject but I feel like an arbitrary grading system involving letters that are subjective from teacher to teacher. That's why I agree with the articles opinion that we need to find a new system that allows more feedback then just a letter.

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I think that when students are so focused on getting a good letter grade, they do not care as much about what they are learning. Many people do what they can just to get an A without ever learning the material. I personally have gotten A's in certain classes but did not retain any of the information. The  importance should be placed on the learning and not on the grade.I agree with the article that adding a letter grade makes students less interested in their learning and less likely to want to be challenged. Why would a student want to do a more challenging assignment when they know they will get a better grade on the easier one? When so much of the focus is on the letter grade, getting good grades becomes more important than the learning and that is an issue.

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Students seem to focus more on letter grades than their own learning progress.  Over the years, I can remember peers including myself, just focusing on getting a better letter grade than actually learning about the subject.  I agree that students may actually lose interest in the learning environment because they are just so focused on that percentage and what their grade will be at the end of the year. It's important to keep the students motivated and engaged in lessons by having different activities that keep the students on track. When students are engaged, they will be learning more and not so much focused on their letter grade because they should actually be enjoying school. I think it's also a good idea to look at a student's overall performance in the classroom, not just looking at their final grade.

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I think that the focus in our classes shouldn't only be about a letter grade and rather on our students' progress. Putting a lot of emphasis on grades can cause stress and anxiety for our students and take away from their learning. While I believe it isn't only about grades, I think they are necessary so student's will know where they are at academically on certain lessons. Motivating our students with other things may help but, our entire school grading system would have to be changed. I think it is possibly to show our students that it's not only about their grades, but about their achievements and progress, but I think measuring them in some form is needed.