When classes pivoted to remote instruction in 2020, some professors — even some entire colleges — moved to pass/fail grading systems. Sure, it was a short-term crisis response. But allowing pass/fail, even for a little while, demonstrated that the traditional approach to grading isn’t the only option.
Some professors had already decided as much: There’s a small but high-profile “ungrading” movement championed by professors who argue that grades are not only poor measures of learning, but also pull students’ focus from understanding the material to earning points. And there are alternative grading approaches that evaluate student work against a standard, provide feedback, and let students try again if the standard has not been met.
For other professors, grades are a barometer. If many students aren’t performing well — and if there are demographic disparities among them — that is a sign something has gone wrong in how they’re being taught or supported.
Meanwhile, there’s been a wave of worry about grade inflation. And it’s true that grades at many colleges have risen steadily since the 1980s. Grades can rise for many reasons, but the concern is that students and administrators are pushing professors to award higher grades, lowering expectations and losing a main method for differentiating among students.
Grades mean something — articulated by an instructor and interpreted by a student — in the context of a particular course. But that isn’t all they mean. Grades play a gatekeeping role, helping to sort students into colleges, majors, graduate programs, and jobs. They can shape the way students see themselves. Heck, they can get them a discount on their car insurance.
In an attempt to capture the myriad and evolving ways in which grades are perceived, The Chronicle asked a selection of stakeholders, including professors, students, and high-school counselors, to provide a short answer to the same simple question: What does an A mean? (Answers have been edited for length and clarity.)
Some respondents homed in on what an A suggests a student accomplished in a course:
“As a teacher (of both philosophy and public speaking), my philosophy of grading has always been that a B should be relatively easy to earn, assuming that the student gives an honest effort and does what is expected, and that an A should be hard to get, representing both excellent performance and depth of understanding.” — Jim Jump, retired academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va., who writes about admissions issues
“You knew what the course was trying to achieve and pursued it sincerely without trying to game the system.” — Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the Science family of journals and a former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“To me, an A grade means that a student has consistently exceeded the expected effort in a course. This could mean putting in clear above-and-beyond work on most weekly assignments, performing particularly well on the midterm or final exam, or writing a compelling and thoughtful final paper that synthesizes course topics with independent research. Most importantly, the number of A grades awarded in a class should not be artificially constrained by university policy, because that could mean many students who deserve an A could get curved down.” — Vincent Jiang, a junior in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs who has written about grade inflation
“If a student earns an A in a course, it means the student has consistently demonstrated excellence across the board in all facets of the course. This includes evidence of mastery of all the essential learning objectives as well as many learning objectives that are important but not necessarily essential. On an informal level, I should be able to look at this student’s body of work in a class and have zero doubt that they will be successful in future courses, internships, projects, etc., that my course feeds into. Notice, I put the emphasis here on concrete evidence of learning that the student produces. Not my personal feelings, or how hard the student worked.” — Robert Talbert, mathematics professor at Grand Valley State University and co-author of Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading Practices That Promote Authentic Learning and Student Engagement in Higher Education
“It depends on context and content, but I flash back to the rubric I used when teaching high school so many years ago. For me, an A should reflect five things: evidence of deep understanding, masterful application of the relevant knowledge or skills, attentive participation, creative engagement, and thorough attention to detail. These will apply very differently when it comes to a seminar discussion, an essay, a biology midterm, or a math problem set, of course, but the intuitions should consistently apply.” — Rick Hess, senior fellow and director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who has written about grade inflation
Others focused on what an A means to the recipient:
“An A, for some of my students, means that they weren’t the best. After all, they didn’t get the A-plus. But for other students, an A is a great accomplishment, an affirmation of their effort, ability and hard work. For both groups of students, my hope is that the A would let them know that they have been adequate. Not only have they done enough, they are enough.” — Chris Loo, co-director of College Counseling at the Stony Brook School, in New York
“Grades of A, especially in foundational college courses, not only predict future academic success, they also play a disproportionately positive role in helping students from low-income backgrounds stay compliant with SAP [Satisfactory Academic Progress] and hold on to grants and scholarships. As such, they can play a critical role in closing equity gaps.” — Timothy M. Renick, executive director of the National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State University
“I fear that too often grades at the high-school and collegiate levels are both pursued and awarded as little more than merit badges in a high-stakes contest. That creates a form of harmful and sometimes ruinous competition and can and often does undermine actual learning. Grades should reflect, incent, and reward learning. A grades, in particular, must reflect deep commitment to learning and substantive engagement with course material — beyond test scores and recitation of text or data.” — Jon McGee, head of school at Saint John’s Prep in Minnesota and a former college administrator
“Conceptually, an A is meant to serve two purposes: a pedagogical one and a signaling one. In the first instance, an A indicates to a student that they have done excellent work; in the second, it indicates to employers that a student is very clever and worth hiring. These two goals can be in tension, as they are now — to the extent that students want the signaling benefits of an A without doing the work needed to earn it, this undermines the pedagogical value of the mark.” — Milan Singh, a Yale University sophomore double-majoring in economics and history who has written about grade inflation
“For some, it means the student has figured out how to succeed in that particular subject or class. For others, an A means the student has put in their very best effort. We’ve probably all seen memes that we are ‘A’sians, not ‘B’sians. So yes, for some AAPI students, getting an A is expected, and anything less than an A can be embarrassing and subject to negative consequences from peers and parents.” — Li Hsiang (Lisa) Chung, college and career counselor at La Cañada High School in California
Some stressed the subjective nature of what’s often treated as an objective measure:
“Because of top-down pressure from elite colleges, many high-school teachers feel compelled to give students A grades so they are not the outliers who suppress a promising (if not truly outstanding) student’s application. And because of this, A’s lose their distinction.
“This should not be, in my view. A’s are the mark for truly exceptional work that is fluid, nimble, reasoned, inspired, original, and nuanced. I am willing to think there are teachers who have given (yes, ‘given’) A’s that fall short of this. We need to make greater use of the existing grading scale.
“Teaching is a wonderfully autonomous endeavor. Even mandated books bring ever-evolving conversations. But because grading reform can only happen with collective behavior, it does not happen. If anything, grades keep seeming to go up. And there is getting to be very little room up there.” — Tim Donahue, teacher at Greenwich Country Day School in Connecticut, who has written about grade inflation
“An A means that an individual instructor has determined that a student has made significant progress on the learning intentions/goals the instructor has established for the course, but it is not a universal signifier that the same student has learned more or less than other students in similar courses at other institutions, nor does it necessarily mean that the same student would get an A in the course if he, she, or they took it with any other instructor. It is a subjective reflection of a single moment in a learner’s academic life and is bound by the context of that particular time, place, and the interactions the student had with others in the learning environment.” — Josh Eyler, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning at the University of Mississippi and author of the forthcoming book Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do About It
“An A means academic validation, academic belonging; it is a mark of achievement, a gold star. Given the preponderance of faulty grading schemes and misalignment among course learning goals, assessments, and activities, there’s currently little assurance that an A represents what many believe it signifies: that the learner in question has attained the course learning goals at a high level by the time grades must be submitted.” — Isis Artze-Vega, college provost and vice president for academic affairs at Valencia College
“It should mean excellent mastery of a particular subject. It should mean work that went above and beyond expectations. What it means, however, depends on the institution, teacher, context, and more.” — Angel B. Pérez, chief executive officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and a former vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College
“While within a given course an A may be tied to consistent criteria, across courses and especially across institutions, it’s what people in my field of literary studies would call an ‘arbitrary signifier.’ That is, it means whatever the individual faculty member says it means. Much too often — though not always — in the postsecondary sector, it means ‘showing evidence of prior educational privilege.’” — Jody Greene, associate campus provost for academic success at the University of California at Santa Cruz
“Many different and inconsistent things: Perfection. Excellence. Privilege. Compliance. Time management. Nothing-going-wrong. Advantaged preparation. Pleasing the teacher. Figuring out the specific game. I’ve been studying this for over a decade and it is clear that in many ways, all grades are meaningless.” — Susan D. Blum, professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame and editor of Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead)
What’s your answer to what an A means? Fill out this form to share your short response and your connection to grades. (Are you grading students? Getting graded? Selecting applicants? Hiring?) It may be included in a follow-up article in The Chronicle’s Teaching newsletter.
