Functions of Grading and Reporting Systems

Grading and reporting systems have some very important functions in the
educative process. Some of these important functions are enumerated below:

1. Enhancement students’ learning through: clarifying instructional objectives for

them, showing students’ strengths and weaknesses, providing information on
persona;-social development, enhancing students’ motivation and indicating
where teaching might be modified. These can be achieved through day-to-
day tests and feedback and integrated periodic tests.
2. Reports to parents/guardians Grading and reporting systems also inform
parents and guardians of students on the progress of their wards. Likewise,
grades and reports communicate objectives to parents, so they can help
promote learning and likewise, communicate how well objectives were met,
so parents can better plan.
3. Administrative and guidance uses. The administrative and guidance purpose
of grading and reporting consist in: helping to decide promotion, graduation,
honors, athletic eligibility, reporting achievement to other schools or to
employers, providing input for realistic educational, vocational, and personal
counseling.

These are 3 main purposes of grading and reporting by no means exhaust all
possible uses of the activity. The main point, however, is that grades and report
cards should promote and enhance learning rather than frustrate and discourage
students. In many schools, report cards are given to students and then parents
are asked to sign these report cards. Such a practice is not encouraged in the
Philippine educational system. Instead, it may be a good practice to call for
parent-teacher conferences at this time in order that the report cards will
effectively function as motivation for further learning.

Types of Grading and Reporting System

In practice, we find a number of ways in which grades are made and
reported. Normally, the type of grading used depends on the extent to which
more descriptive and informative summaries are required by school authorities or
by the stakeholders in general. Thus, the major types of grading and marking
found in practice include:

a. Traditional letter-grade system. In the traditional letter grade system,

students’ performances are summarized by means of letters. Thus, A stands
for excellence, C stands for average, D stands for needing improvement and
an F as a failure. The traditional letter grade system is easy to understand but
it is of limited value when used as the sole report because they end up being
a combination of achievement, effort, work, habits, behavior. As such, they
become difficult to interpret and they do not indicate patterns of strengths and
weaknesses.
b. Pass-Fail. The pass or fail system utilizes a dichotomous grade system.
Either a student has complied and reached certain standards, in which case
 he passes or he failed to do so and he gets a failing mark. This is popular in
some courses in college (but not very much practice in basic education). In
fact, the pass-fail system should be kept to a minimum because it does not
provide much information, students tend to work to the minimum (just to
pass), and in mastery learning courses, no grades are reflected until
“mastery” threshold is reached.
c. Checklists of objectives. In this system, the objectives of the course are
enumerated. After each objective, the students’ level of achievement is
indicated: Outstanding, Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor. This is a very detailed
reporting system and tends to be more informative for the parents and pupils
at the same time. It is, however, also very time consuming to prepare. There
is also the potential problem of keeping the list manageable and
understandable.
d. Letters to Parents/Guardians. Letters to parents and guardians are useful
supplement to grades. However, they have limited value as sole report
because they are very time consuming to prepare, the accounts of
weaknesses are often misinterpreted by parents and guardians, and they are
not characterized as systematic nor cumulative.
e. Portfolios. As already explained, a portfolio is a set of purposefully selected
work, with commentary by student and teacher. Portfolios are useful for
showing students’ strengths and weaknesses, illustrating range of students’
work, showing progress over time or stages of a project, teaching students
about objectives/standards they are to meet.
f. Parent-teacher Conferences. Parent-teacher conferences are mainly used in
elementary schools. This requires that parents of pupils come for a
conference with the teacher to discuss the pupils’ progress. Portfolios, when
available, are useful basis for discussion. Such conferences are useful for a
two-way flow of information and getting more information and cooperation
from the parents. They are, however, of limited value as a report because
most parents do not come for such conferences.

Development of a Grading and Reporting System

Grading and Reporting systems are guided by the functions too be served
by such in the educative process. The system will most probably be a
compromise because of the hosts of factors to be considered in the preparation
of such. The important thing to note, however, is that we should always keep
achievement reports separate from effort expended.

Ideally, grading and reporting systems should be developed cooperatively

(parents, students, school personnel) in order to ensure development of a more
adequate system, and a system that is understandable to all. They should thus
be:

 Based on clear statement of learning objectives. The grading and reporting

system needs to be based on the same set of learning objectives that the
parents, teachers, and students agreed at the beginning.
 Consistent with school standards. The system must support the school
standards rather than oppose the school standards already set.
 Based on adequate assessment. The grading and reporting system should be
easily verifiable through adequate system of testing, measurement and
assessment methods.
 Based on the right level of detail. The system must be detailed enough to be
diagnostic but compact enough to be practical: not to time consuming to
prepare and use, understandable to users and easily summarized for school
records purposes.
 Providing for parent-teacher conferences as needed.

Assigning Letter Grades and Computing Grades

Grades assigned to students must include only achievement. It is very
important to avoid the temptation to include effort for less able students because
it’s difficult to assess effort or potential and it’s difficult to distinguish ability from
achievement. Furthermore, if achievement and effort are combined in some way,
grades would mean different things for different individuals.
Grades reflected or report cards are numbers or numerical quantities
arrived at after several data on the students’ performance are combined. The
following guidelines may be considered in combining such data:

 Properly weight each component to create a composite. The weights used

are normally agreed upon by the school officials. E.g. how many percent goes
for quizzes, unit tests, periodic tests, etc. The more scientific approach is to
use a principal components analysis which is hardly practiced in schools
because of the difficulty involved.
 Put all components on same scale to weight properly:
a. Equate ranges of scores
b. Convert all to T-scores or other standard scores.

Reference:
FUNCTIONS OF GRADING AND REPORTING SYSTEM, TYPES OF GRADING AND
REPORTING, DEVELOPMENT OF GRADING AND REPORTING SYSTEM and
ASSIGNING LETTER GRADES AND COMPUTING GRADES

_____________________________

A Written Report
Presented to
MRS. PERLITA R. MACALALAG
Immaculate Heart of Mary College-Parañaque

_____________________________

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Course

Education 10
ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES 2

_____________________________

By

FIAMETTA D. NACION
BEED-ECED III
November 23, 2016