Who invented the grading system for schools in our country?

Grading in schools isn’t as old as you might think. Ask Yahoo! covered this question back in 2006 and found that the first “A-F” grade came in 1883 at Harvard University. Up until around 1900, most educational institutions issued grades on a 1-100 scale.

From the 1900s to the 1960s, colleges became more “general in their grading.” A score 1-100 was no longer necessary, so schools switched to the current letter grade system.

Ah, but what about “E”? We could find no exact explanation for its absence, but Ask Yahoo! suspects “too many students tried to convince their parents the ‘E’ stood for ‘excellent.'” The column points out that it’s “much harder to trick parents into believing an ‘F’ stands for ‘fantastic.'” True dat.

That said, there are some educators who believe any sorts of grades are bad for the students. The second link below outlines this argument.

thanks!

Mike

actually more specifically, the way tests are created and given need to be changed…

I don’t know why we have letters. I don’t think it’s a bad system. We just need to make our studies harder.

EDIT: this section is clearly unpopular.