Renaissance Reveals a Deeper Problem in School’s Culture

Will Jones, Design Editor
December 16, 2011
Filed under Opinion

I fear the school may be losing its way.

The administration has decided the best way to increase academic achievement is to reward people accordingly to their GPA. In a high school where checking one’s grades on Aeries is a daily ritual, this grade-centric approach will only worsen an already intoxicating culture of GPA obsession.

The administration is seriously considering a system called Renaissance, in which rewards such as the current semi-annual honors roll breakfast will be extended to a GPA-based tier system, segregating students based on grades. Students who have a GPA above 4.0 will be put in the “Gold” level, with which one can get special discounts and honors. Subsequently, lower tiers will receive fewer privileges and discounts.

The objective of Renaissance is clear and simple: improve our school’s academic performance through a grade-based rewards system. However, the use of incentives will do little to change how students perform in the classroom.

These incentives are meant to encourage students to raise their grades. But it is incentives that students lack?

Many parents strongly emphasize good grades. Starting when kids arrive at school, students are ingrained with the weight of their grades on the future. Those students who want to go to a four year university study closely the grades that their dream college’s admissions department is looking for. With all of these influences, it’s hard to imagine the average kid dismissing good grades so easily.

For those who currently lack incentive to put more effort into school, how can any small amount of resources the school could offer as rewards succeed in encouraging better grades where currently present incentives have failed? Students have many obstacles to academic success, such as domestic conflicts and schedules busy with work outside of school. Often students who are failing academically also feel disconnected from the school. As a result, incentives like discounted dance tickets or meals with their peers are of little interest to them.

Beyond the problems with the methods of Renaissance lies a deeper problem: the goal itself is distorted. Grades are a measurement of a student’s performance in a class. Teachers do their best to make the grade an accurate reflection of this, combining various percentages of test grades, homework, and behavioral assessments. However, the true goal of school — the one that grades attempt to measure — is for students to learn.

When the goal becomes the grade, students tend to cater their efforts to that goal. Copying homework becomes a riskier way to be successful in school. Begging a teacher for a one percent increase in one’s grade is a regular routine before the end of the semester. The automatic response when a teacher asks a student for a favor becomes “do I get extra credit?”

Grades and GPAs aren’t necessarily bad. They are invaluable data used to assess student performance. What is essentially wrong with Renaissance is that achieving high grades is set as the stated goal, which worsens already rampant problems with students’ academic integrity.

Measurements like GPA have their uses, but there is a point where they can be abused. Caloric intake is an important factor in analyzing one’s diet, but it would be unreasonable to use that as the standard for judging one’s diet. Three hundred calories of hamburger differs from three hundred calories of fresh vegetables, much in the same way that an A+ on an copied assignment differs from an A on an assignment completed independently.

If we really want a way to recognize students who truly deserve awards, teachers could give awards to students themselves. They know far better than any number or letter on a report card how well the student did in their class.

Awards wouldn’t necessarily have to be of material value either. A “strongest voice in writing” award, for example, would instill a greater pride in a student, and is more directly related to learning than GPA-based awards.

This distorted view of the school’s goals is not just something perpetuated by the school administration — it is embedded in the minds of students and parents. Realizing the goal of real academic success requires a change in perspective and a higher standard in moral thinking with regard to schoolwork from the entire LCC community.

Parents need to ask their kids, “what did you learn in school today?” not “did you raise your grade in math class yet?” Students need to think of the worth of their assignments in terms of insights achieved, not grade points earned. Teachers need to evaluate their students with detailed criticism, not just percentage points. And school administrators need to learn to lighten their infatuation with test scores and GPA, while finding more meaningful ways to recognize high achieving students.