It’s been ages since I’ve been in school. But every so often – usually when I’m stressed – I’ll have a dream where I’m back in high school and I’m frantically searching through my backpack trying to find the previous night’s homework assignment.

That was the thing about high school that could become quite stressful – especially when you got to your junior and senior years. If you missed a few assignments, struggled with certain subjects, or bombed one of the tests, it could greatly affect your final grade in the class. Of course, this, in turn, had the potential to drop your GPA which meant that it could hurt your chances of getting into certain colleges.

Photo: Unsplash/Taylor Wilcox

However, change to the grading systems might finally be coming. A few California school districts – such as the Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified, Sacramento City Unified, and San Diego Unified school districts – are looking to potentially phase out D or F grades. Not only would this help to change the acceptances into the University of California and California State University school systems, but it would also shift the learning focus from being entirely numbers-driven.

As Nidya Baez, assistant principal at Oakland Unified’s Fremont High, explained to Bay City News KRON4, “Our hope is that students begin to see school as a place of learning, where they can take risks and learn from mistakes, instead of a place of compliance. Right now, we have a system where we give a million points for a million pieces of paper that students turn in, without much attention to what they’re actually learning.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Rather than handing out zeros on missing assignments for giving D’s and F’s to poor exam scores, students would instead receive an “incomplete.” This would then give students a chance to either make up assignments or retake certain tests when needed. According to WOWK, this new system would focus on competency rather than execution – meaning that instead of asking students to master the content and memorize it within a span of time, the main goal would be for students to actually understand what they’re learning.

Granted, not everyone is thrilled to see the new changes. Some teachers believe that not having failing grades might warp a student’s sense of progress or knowledge. As one math and science teacher from Oakland’s St. Theresa School, Debora Rinehart, shared with Bay City News, “I will work with any student before or after school or even on the weekend to help them learn. However, I will never lie about their knowledge level.”

Photo: Pexels/Max Fischer

Personally, as someone who did struggle within the confines of the high school grading system, I think this progress is fantastic. I think students should be able to learn without the pressure or expectation of learning it by a certain date or else you’re seen as a failure. I also think it’ll finally give a chance to those students who want to go onto higher education but otherwise might not have the grades on paper to prove that they’re “prestigious” university material because their GPA’s might not reflect their true intelligence. But I know not everyone will see it the same way.

So, what do you think of the new grading system that is being considered by some California school districts? Are you happy about the changes or do you prefer the old method of grading? Let us know!