Flawed Student Value

Grade inflation is a reality throughout the United States. This means that students are being awarded with higher grades than they deserve or worked for. This phenomenon is affecting the quality of education throughout the country. Students insist on getting ‘’their money's worth’’ when it comes to receiving grades. Teachers don’t want to be nagged by students and administration for low grades.

The David Malcolm Scholarship Essay Being the first one in my family to graduate high school and go off to college is already a big achievement for most. However, as I continue going into high education and my college journey, countless obstacles continue to hinder the dreams and aspirations of many individuals. As a first-generation Asian-American college student, I have faced numerous challenges, particularly the financial strain that threatens my educational journey. Guided by a passion for healing and service, I aspire to pursue a career in medicine. However, financial constraints have posed a significant obstacle to my path to achieving this dream.

Not being able to keep up with my classes lead me to having to take incompletes in a couple of my classes and making them up at a later date. Through my freshman and sophomore year I struggled to heal and spent most of my time with doctors rather than teachers at school. Once my junior year came, I started to return to my old self and began being able to handle

In Alfie Kohn’s essay, the argument of grade expectations being too overvalued rests on a chain of assumptions, but can be argued. Alfie Kohn’s essay portrays that he wants students to find a variety of different purposes in school, and questions the idea of grades being too centralized. In detail, Alfie Kohn explains how students go to school not for the right reasons, but for the wrong reasons instead. For example, the author writes, “They’d scan the catalogue for college courses that promised easy A’s, sign up for new extracurricular-activities to round out their resumes, and react with gratitude when a professor told them exactly what they would have to know for the exam so they could ignore everything else” (para. 8).

A recent study released by Pearson that questioned over 400,000 students in grades 6-12 shows that only “48% of students think their teachers care about them…and only 45% of students think teachers care if they are absent from school” (Hare, 2015). This shocking statistic demonstrates what American students think about their teachers. Most students are under the impression that their teachers don’t care about them. When teachers don’t care about their students and allow them to fail, many students with unrealized potential give up on education. Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” describes his journey through high school on the vocational track after the results of his “tests got confused with those of another student named Rose” (Rose, 1989, p. 2).

In Kurt Wiesenfeld’s article “Making the Grade”, he address the issue that students want a higher grade than they deserve. He goes on to prove this be by giving examples of previous students that he has had and what can happen when students get the grades that they want and not what they deserve. In Wiesenfeld’s article he states that about ten percent of students that take his class do not care about their grades until final grades are over. “You might groan and moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof,” Wiesenfeld stated.

My academic achievements throughout my high school career show that hard work and dedication truly do pay off in the long run. All throughout my sophomore

One of my biggest goals is to graduate college. My Type 1 diabetes certainly makes this difficult at times, but I will not let it stop me. The main reason diabetes is a barrier for me attending college is the stress and demand it adds to my life. Just like every other college student, I have the stress of classes, homework,

After all the years I have worked hard it has paid off which is why I am where I am today with a 4.236 weighted GPA and a 3.727 unweighted GPA. Another quality I have that will help me contribute to your community

While I was thoroughly committed to the extracurricular activities, I have decided that my academic career was the best way to focus my abilities in order to reach my goal. Doing well in all of my IB classes has been my number one priority. With education being my number one priority, I strive to maintain a high grade point average. At the beginning of the junior year, I struggled with finding a manageable balance between all my activities. My GPA dropped due to my struggles in the beginning of the year.

In life, you can go through a lot but only a few people actually can bounce back. In High School I’ve gone through many trials and tribulations to get to the point I’m at now. I’ve been held to high standards based on the classes I’ve taken. My Honors classes built the foundation for me to start challenging myself and kill the procrastination problem I possessed in my young academic career. The Honors classes prepared me for the Advanced Placement classes that were offered.

This article also outlines how motivation can push someone further his or her academic career. Richard Rodriguez describes the difficulties balancing life in the academic world and the life of a working class family. As a child, Rodriguez was the exception to the stereotypical student coming from a working class family. He was always top of his class, and rather than spending his time out with friends or with his family he spent his time with books and notes. Initially, this approach makes Rodriguez stand out as an exceptional student, but as time goes on he becomes an outsider both at home and in school.

Attitudinal and behavioural benefits - Acknowledging student’s positive achievements in reading, language and mathematics

Nevertheless, it can be hard on students if they feel that they didn’t perform as well as they’d like. ”(page 4). This shows that even if kids understand their subject, only their test-taking abilities will influence their grades. Evaluating a student based on their performance on a test that they might have done badly on will lower their self-esteem, and in a grade book will show low skill in the subject.

In "Are Grades Really Necessary?" Catherine Rampell discusses elite prep schools' interest in terminating the traditional, letter-based grading system. She explains these schools' desire to support a less punitive scheme which displays "qualitative, soft-focus descriptions of skills that students have 'mastered.' " Rampell agrees that this desired system may make students more appealing to colleges; however, she believes that without displaying a student's GPA, the new language will prove insufficiently "informative." Therefore, I am in entire agreement with the author that students should be given letter grades to inform them of their respective strengths and weaknesses and to promote fairness in the school system.