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students into various groups. For example, some students could be promoted to the next grade
level based on their grades, while others may be held back. Some students may earn a
scholarship or get accepted into a good school because of their “good” grades, while other
students who did not perform as well may not get those same opportunities.
Knight and Cooper (2019) found that while purposes for grading may be well intended,
many policies are missing the mark, for example, schools may use grades to determine whether a
student has met the required academic standards or not, but there are many non-academic
components to grades that educators also target, such as class participation, compliance with the
rules and expectations, attendance, work completion, and work timeliness. Knight and Cooper
(2019) argue that behaviors and academics should be treated separately, because they are two
separate things. Classroom behavior does not dictate mastery of standards, and mastery of
standards does not control classroom behavior.
Many additional studies, such as (Dueck, 2014; Boleslavsk & Cotton, 2015; Castro, et al.,
2020; Bosch, 2020). have found that grades are often a measure of student behavior, and not
based solely on mastery of concepts. For example, if a student does not participate in class, they
may earn a low mark for the day. If a student was having a rough day, and that was the reason
for them not participating in a classroom activity, the gradebook may reflect that the student did
not meet the standards—however, it would not consider other factors (such as the student having
a bad day), thus, misrepresenting to stakeholders (employers, college admission reps, etc.) what
the student is academically capable of.
Using grading to manage student behaviors also does not take into consideration that
students’ minds are still developing, and neglects the fact that students often act out of impulse,
because they cannot fully understand the long-term implications of their actions (Dueck, 2014).