The blog I read discussed the practice of averaging grades in the classroom. The blog is written by Dr. Justin Tarte. One thought he included in the blog is that through averaging grades we as teachers are saying that our teaching does not have any impact on student learning. While this is a rather bold statement, it does hold some validity when discussing averaging grades. If a student is able to average a B letter grade, but does this through failing one assignment and mastering the others, we are saying that the concept learned on the assigned an F was given is not important.

Also included with this idea is that students can all earn the same letter grade, but each can get there in very different ways. Dr. Tarte posted the following graphic in the blog:

This graphic shows how each student earned the same letter grade and even percentage, but they all got to that grade differently. Student 6 is able to completely not do an assignment and still earn the same grade as a student who performed average throughout the semester, as shown with Student 3. Is this fair?

As educators, we have to think about the message this sends to our students. We are telling them it is acceptable to fail or not do an assignment, if the average grade is still high enough. As educators, each assignment our students complete should be viewed as valuable and therefore we should make sure each grade matters.