Grades should incorporate effort, not just mastery of tests

Tests and quizzes: 90 percent. Participation: 5 percent. Homework: 5 percent. Junior Ramya Swami stared at her AP Biology syllabus the first day of school in dread, realizing that this year, performance on quizzes and tests was going to be more important than ever before. This was not only the case in biology; practically every other class on her schedule had placed a significant weight on test scores.

As students advance through high school, teachers increasingly place a stronger emphasis on a student’s ability to perform well on tests and quizzes. While testing is vital as an assessment of the progress of a student’s learning, homework and participation should be recognized just as, if not more, crucial in a student’s understanding of the material.

“Test scores don’t accurately represent how I am doing in the class because there are too many factors that affect how you do on a test: what time of day it is, whether or not you got sleep,” Swami said. Testing also requires the ability to call upon a vast quantity of information, which is extremely difficult for some students.

The fact remains that some students simply do not perform well on tests, no matter how hard they study or prepare for them. Everyone has a different style of learning and displaying how well they know information, and tests in particular limit the amount of people who can succeed on them to those who can quickly fill in bubbles on a Scantron or fill-in-the-blank.

Perhaps the most problem is that a test score fails to indicate the amount of work and time spent on understanding concepts. One student might have studied for hours and asked the teacher for clarification numerous times to receive a B on a test, while another student may have gotten the same grade by copying others’ homework and cutting class, relying on a good memory or natural ability to figure out questions. While both students demonstrated the same level of performance, one clearly showed more commitment and effort than the other.

This and many other factors may have been the rationale to implement the Success Equals Effort program at Benedict College in South Carolina, which weighs 60 percent of a grade on effort for freshmen students. This policy, designed to help students “adopt the behavior and habits that are most likely to bring academic success,” is based on the fact that if you put in effort, you are more than likely to have greater success and content mastery.

This is not to say that tests are completely pointless; they can provide valuable information to both the student and the teacher about a student’s progress in the class. However, this is only a snapshot of an ongoing process; many factors such as sleep and stress can affect a student’s score on any given day and are not fully representative of his or her potential. While tests should be administered frequently enough to gauge how well a student knows the material, they should not make up the majority of a student’s grade.

In addition, standardized tests like the SAT and AP tests are already in place to give colleges a measure of how well a student can perform at a given time, and can provide more accurate information about a student’s test-taking skills than a grade might. The class grade should be a representation of the student’s effort and commitment to the class, not of how fast he or she can spit out a string of memorized facts.

Twenty years from now, it probably won’t matter if someone can recite the molecular formula of acetic acid or recall when the French Revolution began. What will matter are the organization, work ethic and other skills learned in high school that can be carried with him or her to any future endeavors. While the ability to perform and demonstrate mastery matters, effort and commitment are just as important.