It’s a late Monday night in the middle of January and you have been doing homework for hours. Tomorrow you have a confusing chemistry test, so you take nearly an hour to prepare for it before you move on. You still don’t feel confident about the material, but you have to complete your history reading, which, by this hour, is just a jumble of words. On top of that, you need a final draft for the paper your English teacher just assigned by tonight. You finally submit your paper on Canvas and try to get some rest. Wait! You have to study for your math mini-quiz! Groaning, you reluctantly get out of bed and get back to work. You text your friend to ask them if they’re studying too, since they’re in the same course as you, but their teacher pushed the mini-quiz back a day and the rest of their teachers don’t assign more than 30 minutes of homework a night, so they’ve just been playing video games for hours. You wish your teachers were like that.
Many students face similar situations nearly every night. Students prioritize having a good GPA over pursuing their interests. However, students may have to put in different levels of effort based on their teachers and respective grading.
Throughout my years in school, I have noticed that teachers all do their jobs differently. Some teachers decide to be very critical and not give homework assignments full credit, while others have very lenient practices with an easier path to a good grade. Some classes require much more time and thought than others that are considered the same level.
There is also such a wide discrepancy between how teachers grade, as different teachers have different beliefs on what is an A in their class. They also have different ideas of how students learn their best. One teacher might have more graded assignments and another might rely more on in-class discussions.
Teachers do not need to teach the same material, but the difficulty and the assessments they give should be standardized. This includes quiz or test retakes. If one teacher allows retakes and another does not, students won’t have the same opportunities despite being in the same course level. Similarly, all teachers of a course should collectively decide if they will offer extra credit opportunities. Retakes and extra credit can be opportunities to raise a student’s grade drastically, so a course should be standardized in these policies to be equitable.
A similar piece is grade weight: teachers should have the same percentages for participation, homework, assignments and assessments. It is much easier to get an A in a course if it is 40 percent participation and 60 percent assessments as opposed to a course with 20 percent participation and 80 percent assessments.
Students choose which course level they take, yet cannot choose their teacher, which is why we need consistency. However, it is hard to standardize grading on essays and other writing assignments. Every year, students have to adapt to the grading style of their English teacher, but this allows each teacher to instruct in the style that they appreciate the most.
Variations of grading practices within levels can get in the way of students’ grades and exceedingly heighten their stress. Teachers should still have the ability to hone their methods of teaching however they think would be most beneficial for students, yet many things need to be standardized for a just grading system.
