Are letter grades here to stay?
For 200 years, teachers have been using letter grades as the primary method for recording student progress in the classroom.
But how and why is it that grades came to occupy such an important position in the lives of educators and students?
To find out, it’s worth digging deeper into the background and history of grades. Doing so can help inform efforts by schools to improve how they evaluate the progress of students in the classroom. This is particularly true now that technology plays such a major role in schools and society. The use of digital portfolios as an assessment tool is a good example of the changing landscape educators face when measuring student progress.