Some colleges are dropping the conventional A through F letter grades to ease the pressure on first-year students. Critics say this 'ungrading' amounts to coddling and could set them up for failure.
among written evaluations that only they see, results of"satisfactory" or"no credit," and letter grades — A, B or C, but no D or F.
"There's a desire to have that acclimation to the entire environment happen in a less abrupt way, where people have more of an opportunity to get calibrated." UCSC's Greene said students who come from lower-income families are the most vulnerable to anxiety from grades."Let's say they get a slightly failing grade on the first quiz. They are not likely to go and seek help. They're likely to try and disappear."
Disabatino, now a UCSC junior double-majoring in psychology and anthropology and also the first in her low-income family to go to college, said:"I kind of felt like a deer in the headlights." "I can say, 'This student did really well in their contributions to the class, but they struggled with their writing.' If it's a grade, you have to average those two," said Rogoff, who specializes in cultural variations in learning."It makes the teachers, the professors, look at themselves more as guides rather than evaluators."
Other realities also make it hard to change the longstanding tradition of letter grades. It's how faculty themselves were largely judged as they went through college. Parents, high schools and university admissions offices put a premium on grade-point averages — an even greater one as many institutions make the SAT and ACT optional. Even car insurance companies give"good-grades discounts" to student-age drivers.
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