"What Is a Grade?" by Pat Belanoff

     Grades are not easily defined, especially in English and writing classes. While the difference between an A and B might be clear cut in a science or math class, grades get much trickier in a more subjective class, such as English. This article explains many of the difficulties that English teachers face when grading papers, and discusses how to improve the system.
     In this article, author Pat Belanoff describes many of the issues with the traditional grading  system, especially in regards to English and writing classes. She explains the traditional view that says that a student receives a grade depending on what he/she learned, meaning that A students learned more than B students and so on. However, problems arise in English classes because every student writes differently, and different teachers look for different things, meaning that grades mean less. Belanoff says that grades are all subjective to the material, the way in which the student interprets it, and the person who grades it. Because of this, she argues that a teacher must embrace the subjectivity of a teachers' given subject and grade relative to these differences rather than comparing them to the prototypical 'A' paper. Also, she argues that a grade truly is meaningless if a teacher does not first describe to the students what his/her standards for grading are. Finally, she states that the problems that students tackle in their writing classes are more like the real world than the problems in a typical math class; there is usually no clear answer or clear path to success. Students must realize what their grades are based on and that a grade on one of their papers is not a sweeping judgment on all of their writing.
     Much of what Belanoff wrote in this article stood out to me because I have experienced it all before in the various writing classes that I have taken over the years. There were many times in my high school english classes when I received a lower grade because I did not fully understand the teacher's standards for grading. I was frustrated, because it seemed as though my teachers were more interested in making me conform to their standards than truly teaching me how to write. However, Belanoff says that when a student takes a teacher's standards into consideration, it is the same idea as tuning into an audience and that students can then "decide whether to play to it or whether to try to influence these standards themselves" (216). While a certain amount of conformity is almost required in any application of English, a person can still find ways to be creative within those established boundaries.

Have you had issues with the way that a teacher has graded your work in the past? What changes would you make to the grading scale?