The defining variable for academic success is a student's GPA. However, the measure puts educators in an impossible dilemma.
Grading with a cumulative GPA system generates a number of structural issues that negatively effect educators, students, and educational institutions.
Grade curving, extra credit, increasing grades by meeting with educators during office hours, dropping the lowest grade, etc, and the numerous other procedural realities that compromise the standard of American education can be seen, at least in part , as a function of measuring academic ability with a cumulative GPA.
Educators are painfully aware of the ramifications for a young person life chances if they make poor grades in any classes. Consequently, educators are put in an impossible quandary of having to enrich the minds and increase the opportunities of the young people who sit in their classes, which requires holding them to a certain academic standard, while knowing that holding students to that standard could be prohibiting those students access to better academic and life options.
It is not uncommon therefore, to see educators who give endless extra credit assignments, so that students can make the grade; something that’s unheard of in other countries. In doing so they compromise the quality of the class work. However, this is not to criticize educators, their intent is clearly a noble one. A student who clearly has potential, but has not yet matured or is taking a class that is not within their area of interest, or whatever the situation may be, can easily have the transgressions of their former years come back to haunt them when they have finally decided to attend college or graduate school.
However, such compromises in standards take their toll. Despite the community college system, four year colleges are bulging at the seams with remedial classes and support programs in attempts to bring students up to the appropriate level that a high school diploma ought to confirm they have already attained. Low standards are thus perpetuated because educators at the college level are forced to teach and grade courses that accommodate the wide range of ability and the many students who clearly aren’t academically prepared for college, hence grading on a curve, another American phenomenon.
However, where does the buck stop? At every level educators are compelled to make impossible choices. Obviously, they know that their colleagues at other institutions are in the same predicament, and are likely making the same compromises. So, for the educator who elects to take a stand, be cruel to be kind, and ensure their students truly understand the work and what the appropriate level of achievement is, they run the risk of unfairly limiting the advancement of they very students who actually have made the grade.
Surely it’s not too much to ask the highly educated policy makers to put their heads together and rethink educational assessment so that a system can be implemented that doesn’t compromise the very standards they are trying to uphold.
