When it comes to the question of what makes an assignment worthy of an “A” grade, it seems that there are two central schools of thought. One, that an “A” grade is given to students who go above and beyond on their assignments; students who exceed expectations and demonstrate exemplary work. The other, that an “A” grade is awarded to students when they meet all standard requirements of an assignment; students who demonstrate sincere effort and satisfy expectations.
I subscribe to the latter. If teachers give assignments with clearly explained instructions (i.e. word count, formatting, number of sources, etc.), and students are to meet all of those requirements, they should receive an “A” grade. If all students are to “exceed expectations” in order to earn an “A,” does that not imply that a certain standout quality is necessary? And if all students are encouraged to strive for excellence, then at one point does “going above and beyond” not just become the new standard?
As I understand it, teachers give assignments to allow students the opportunity to prove that they have learned materials, and “A” grades represent that the desired level of comprehension has been achieved. However, if a student proving that they can apply what they’ve learned requires “exceeding expectations,” then how can we expect students to entirely succeed when it requires demonstrating capabilities that have not been explicitly taught to them?
Of course, there are expectations: if an assignment has a rubric in which the 90-100% range specifically requires students to “go above and beyond” or to “exceed expectations,” then students who only “meet expectations” could reasonably be subject to the “B” category. But if this is the case, what “exceeding expectations” looks like needs to be defined. Otherwise, how can we expect students to earn “A” grades at all?
Now, this is not to suggest that anything below an “A” is not a good grade. What a “good” grade is can be quite subjective based on a student’s strengths; a “B” on an English assignment may be a great grade for a student who excels in mathematics, but a similar grade could be less gratifying for a student for whom the opposite is true. It is also important to note that earning “A” grades can be significantly more important to students who need to maintain a certain GPA or upward trajectory in order to get into more prestigious colleges.
It can reasonably be argued that, for this very same reason, it is important that teachers expect a greater level of excellence from students who strive to receive “A” grades, because these higher education institutions pay attention to grade inflation at schools. However, I would argue that it is still possible to prevent grade inflation without creating unreasonable expectations as to what makes an “A” as long as these expectations are clearly outlined and the proper tools necessary for meeting them are demonstrated to students.
The bottom line is that maintaining a good GPA is invaluable to many students––especially at a college preparatory school like Seabury. An “A” grade should reflect a well-developed understanding of materials and a certain capability of application––not an ability to “wow” teachers by going above and beyond what reasonably should be expected of them.
