Parents and students view grades differently than teachers do. The former view them as a commodity to be hoarded, while the latter view them as a marker, a signal identifying achievement towards some set of standards. Grades are not--well, they should not--be candy to be handed out to make people happy. It's demoralizing when the government ignores this and allows grades to be changed willy-nilly:
High school students in California who ended up with bad grades last year now have the chance to change them to pass/fail, ensuring pandemic circumstances beyond their control don’t ding their grade point average or their chances of getting into college.
An emergency statute passed this summer requires all school districts to allow for the change, given the impact of distance learning on students.
Many high school students spent the entire school year online, some without adequate technology or support at home, including English learners, homeless students, foster youth and other vulnerable young people.
Shifting a letter grade to pass/fail means what would have been a D or F, for example, won’t be included in the calculation of a grade point average — a critical part of a college application. There are no restrictions on how many course grades or which courses can be changed...
Families can request the change for any course, even those required by the University of California, California State University system and many private colleges, which have agreed to accept the pass/fail grades.
The only reason I can think of to change a non-F grade to a "pass" would be to get a higher GPA for college admissions. Why should we in education support that? It doesn't matter what the reason was, the student clearly didn't learn a topic sufficiently if he/she got a low grade in the course. Isn't measuring learning supposed to be what a grade does? That's the case if the grade is a marker, but not if it's a commodity to be maximized.
If students got enough low grades then they are not prepared for college. Shouldn't that be considered before granting them admission?
What this shows me is that education is not valued by our government.
If we wanted to be completely objective on grades, we would test students the day they walked in class and proceed to periodically test them throughout the year to see what actual progress was made. We would also stop automatically move students up through classes based on nothing but age. We have to start requiring students to acquire skills needed for successive classes before simply labeling them with a random class rank. The theory that all kids must go to college has failed. What has happened instead is the colleges are having to dissolve rigorous classes in order to appease a social order. Merit and skill has to override agendas.
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