BY MADDY FURDEK
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During the last round of midterms, I found myself in a precarious position that countless high school students consistently get themselves into: borderline grades. As I frantically tried to calculate what I’d need on the final to keep my grade, I found myself questioning a fundamental aspect of high school grading.

Most classes have a roughly similar grading system – around 20% of your grade is homework, 10% for quizzes, 60% for tests, and a 10% final. However, a couple of the classes I’ve taken in high school have a different category: participation and attitude.

While I understand it’s important to encourage students to be active in class, that’s a pretty subjective grade to give a student, especially as these can make or break a grade.

This isn’t to say I’m against the concept of grading students on their level of participation and appropriate input in class, but I think that belongs in an elementary school or junior high teacher’s gradebook. High school is supposed to be the final frontier before we enter the real world and fend for ourselves, and it seems arbitrary that I am nearly an adult and am still being graded on the “attitude” a teacher thought I brought to class.

If we’re supposed to be getting ready for college, shouldn’t the emphasis be on test and assignment performance? When in my life will a college professor decide my final grade based on my day-to-day personality?

In the AP classes I have taken I have not been graded on participation, because it is a college level course, where it isn’t the teacher’s job to keep their students on task or participating – you either do your work or you don’t, and you face the consequences.

It concerns me that a sizable percentage of my grade in a class could be decided solely on a teacher’s perception of my personality. I don’t think this is in any way appropriate for the point in my life that I’m at – just 30 days stand between me and my high school diploma.