For as long as I can remember, one thing has judged me, told me that I am not good enough, stared back at me when I fell short: grades. From elementary school onward, grades are ingrained in us — woven into who we are. Our performance is reduced to labels like excellent, okay or not up to standard. But that is not the extent of our learning. Grades are not a measure of understanding; they measure how well we meet a teacher’s expectations over the curriculum they create.

Grades inhibit learning. During the pandemic in 2020, my views on school shifted. Up until the COVID-19 lockdown, I was top of my class. Stepping back on campus afterwards, my class ranking dropped significantly. I admit, with shame, that at the time, this was of great importance to me (which is a whole other flaw in itself). A million thoughts raced through my head: Maybe I’ve been slacking. Did I lose focus? Is school too hard now? Is it because I stopped eating blueberries like my mom told me to? Perhaps my brain had shrunk.

I felt a loss of personal value. Then, I took a breath and observed what had actually changed. Eureka. Students were cheating during lockdown. The universal memo of cheating hadn’t reached me, so I’d fallen behind.

The expectation is to get an ‘A,’ and, hypothetically, it is completely in your hands. If you don’t, it’s because you didn’t do everything you could. Stellar grades are attainable; you just have to work harder. If your GPA isn’t perfect, your learning isn’t “good enough.” You are not good enough. This mindset has been ingrained in us since childhood, making the COVID-19 cheating pandemic predictable. Because ‘A’s’ had always been prioritized over actual understanding, students naturally valued getting the right answers over learning.

Although it may sound odd, grades can limit a student’s potential. Here’s what I mean: When a student is taking a class they are interested in, but doesn’t get the best grades, they are unlikely to continue taking higher-level classes in that subject. Even if the student is learning and has a fascination for the subject, they will often avoid a higher-level class out of fear they will not be successful. Grades scare off curiosity.

In college, I learned the term for this: weed-out classes. In STEM, it’s practically cliché. But the intention of a class should not be to get rid of the “weakest links” or discourage students from pursuing a field. I acknowledge that some fields require a higher rigor or attention to detail, but their purpose shouldn’t be to scare off a student in an introductory class.

Grades not only inhibit learning, they stifle creativity. The pressure of getting the “right” answers keeps students in a rigid box. If thinking outside of the box risks being reprimanded with a lower grade, students are discouraged from experimenting and trying new things. In return, students play it safe, stay in their comfort zone and do not push themselves to think differently.

This leads to the question: if we don’t grade, how can we incentivize learning? Barnard College has developed three alternatives to traditional grading: ungrading, labor-based grading and specifications grading.

Ungrading eliminates grades, focusing on feedback and improvement instead of numbers. This approach has proven to reduce anxiety, fear and avoidance that negatively affect a student’s intellectual development.

Labor-based grading bases grades on the amount of labor agreed upon between students and instructors. The principle of this method is that quality can be subjective. Grading on quality does not provide room for failure, which in turn prevents students from taking risks in their learning.

Specifications grading prioritizes transparency and mastery of learning objectives. Final grades depend on meeting clear specifications, not perfection. It sets high but realistic expectations.

At the end of the day, no grading system is perfect. But, I do know that if a student is expected to be perfect and fears failure, they’ll never take the risks that lead to genuine learning, because let’s be honest: when we do get an A, it feels good. It feels validating, like you’re on the right track.

Still, maybe that’s the problem. We’ve turned letters into lifelines, and we chase validation instead of understanding. If you do fail an exam, don’t panic. It probably doesn’t mean your brain has shrunk or you need more blueberries. It means you’re still learning. Last I checked, that’s the whole point.