What’s up with school grades? Seriously. The bedrock of the entire education system is the letter grade system that has been in place for well over 100 years. But, because it’s old doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. I believe it’s bad. And I believe that all educators and students deserve a better system of feedback.
History Lesson
It’s time for a quick history lesson about our grading system because I think it’s important to know where we came from if we’re going to change directions and go somewhere new. Our modern system of grading didn’t materialize until the late 1800’s at Harvard University. Harvard developed the system of grouping percentage scores in Classes 1 through 4, where 1 was excellent and 4 was poor. And probably because the people at Harvard are really smart and seem to know what they’re doing, schools across the country started to similarly rank and group students. By the 1940’s and 50s, think WWII, most schools across the country had shifted from numbers to letters, with A-E or A-F becoming the national norm. I’ve always loved the way that we get to skip over E in favor of the harsh F for failure!
To conclude this little history lesson, grades didn’t always exist. For most of the history of the world, learning, even in formal settings, was measured by oral discourse, narrative feedback from teachers, and mastery of skills through apprentice-style work. But as educational systems grew, and institutions such as the United States military needed easy and quick ways to evaluate students, the system of evaluation that we currently have was born. This was the product of necessity and industry, creating a way to evaluate students, reducing complex evaluation to a simple letter.
It’s all about the Grade
So now let’s fast forward to 2026 and take a peek at how our evaluation system is working. It’s still simple. It still gives an easy evaluation. And, it’s still really bad at providing feedback to learners about the complexity of the experience. One nice thing to note here is that we now get the letters and the numbers. Almost all letter grades are converted to a 4-0 scale to report grade point average. Those smart people at Harvard are wondering why we need the letters in the first place, and so am I.
I’ll share why we need the letters and illustrate what the exact problem is. We need the letters because people have been comfortable with them for over 100 years. School is about earning grades. And grades come in the form of letters. Everyone thinks they know what an A, B, C, D, or F represents. If we just do something as simple as sliding those letters to numbers, many people get really uncomfortable to the point where they complain, protest, or leave school.
What’s in a Grade?
A school grade represents how well a student is at the game of school. There’s some learning in there, some compliance, some behavior, and maybe even some does the teacher like you or not. That’s the truth. This letter grade system that everyone uses, is attached to, and would never get rid of, does not measure what we need it to measure or give students and teachers the feedback that they need. How is it, with all of the advances of the modern world, that a report card in 2026 looks exactly the same as it did in 1926? It does, which is an actual travesty and the root of many of education’s worst problems.
Changing the Game
Some students get really good at playing the game of school and earn great grades. Others are ok at the game and get by. And still there are others who learn to hate the game and don’t care what letter shows up on the piece of paper. I’m suggesting that we change the game for the sake of students and teachers. We owe both the respect and care to develop and use a modern system of feedback that honors the complexity of learning and helps students grow. We need to ditch letter grades completely and provide real feedback to students, families, and teachers. Yes. That’s the answer. Are we up for the challenge? If we aren’t, we are all forced to keep playing the same rigged game with the same poor results. But if we are, we can use assessment as a tool to drive real educational reform that everyone is waiting for.
A New Way
Grades are a game because once you know how to earn the grade, that becomes the goal, you learn how to get the goal, and you move on. The grade is not and should not be the goal. It’s a letter that means very little. I’ve received A’s in almost every class that I ever took, especially in those taken after about the 11th grade, when I decided to care about the game. And, in some of those classes, I learned a lot and grew tremendously, and in others, I gained nothing. But the letter on the paper is the same. It’s time to ditch the letters and provide real feedback.
I keep using the term feedback because that’s what I think needs to be at the heart of modern education systems. Most would use the terms evaluation or assessment. Those terms imply that we are gathering data for rank. We should not care about evaluation or assessment for the purpose of comparison or ranking. That reduces the educational experience to numbers that don’t honor the humans they represent. Instead, we need to focus on real, honest feedback that is given to students so that they can understand where they are on their learning journey. This feedback is not in comparison to others. It does not compare them to like-aged peers on a bell curve. It instead shows them how they’re doing and where they can go next.
The Best of what Is
The best system for providing meaningful feedback that currently exists is standards-based assessment. There’s a lot out there about this system, and if you’re looking for a new way to provide meaningful feedback to students, I’d strongly encourage you to check this out. Standards-based assessment is a different way of providing feedback to students that takes steps to honor them as individuals and provide paths to future growth. I like this system and would recommend that everyone check it out and apply at least some aspects of it in their classroom.
What is to Come?
While I like standards-based assessment, I don’t love it. I don’t love it because there are still elements of the game that I’ve always detested. We need a new way to give our students real feedback. But the system that I envision aligns directly with a new way to teach. Because I believe that assessment and learning go hand in hand. The final goal will dictate the learning experience. If the final goal is flawed, like the letter grade system is, the learning game will be flawed as well. New learning and new feedback go hand-in-hand. I’ll continue to explore these ideas in future posts.
Miles O'Shea 