[intro music] We all remember the dreaded end-of-semester Armageddon known as "Report Card Day," but why do we get letter grades in school at all?

[upbeat music] So, getting grades is a big part of the way we view education, with As equaling success while Fs represent the dreaded failure.

Students are taught early on that to get ahead in life and be smart and successful, the best foundation is getting perfect report cards in school.

Grades can help us get into advanced courses and competitive colleges, and certain exams can grant us licenses to practice different professions and trades.

But, outside of the nagging question about why we skipped over the E grade, have you ever wondered: When were the first grades given, and why?

Well, if you want to blame someone, it appears that the first grades date back to Yale president Ezra Stiles in 1785.

He wrote in his diary that there were 58 students present at his examination, and that their grades were "twenty Optimi, "sixteen second Optimi, "twelve Inferiores (Boni), and ten Pejores."

These are usually noted as the first college grades ever assigned.

In Yale's 1813 to 1839 Record of Examinations, students' averages were noted in the book by the senior tutor of the class on a scale of four, which may be responsible for the 4.0 scale commonly used today.

In 1817, the faculty reports from William & Mary College grouped students into four categories.

"No.

1: The first in their respective classes.

"No.

2: Orderly, correct, and attentive.

"No.

3: They have made very little improvement.

And "No.

4: They have learnt little or nothing."

Ouch.

That's a major teacher burn.

But the 4.0 scale wasn't really standardized throughout the 19th century.

Harvard tried a 100-point scale and then a 20-point scale.

Yale later tried a 9-point scale.

So, until 1850, it was normal for grades to vary in terms of number systems and weight.

And in U.S. colleges, professors used descriptive adjectives to assign value rather than relying on numbers alone.

But by 1883, there was a report on a Harvard professor giving a student a B grade, which was when letters got incorporated into the act.

And in 1886, Harvard faculty records shows that professors began grouping students into five classes based on performance.

Similar five-point systems spread to places like Yale and Mt.

Holyoke-- the latter of which adopted the first letter-grade system in 1897, but a failing grade was marked as an E and not an F. Over time, the E was dropped, and that standard system across U.S. colleges became five points, all represented by letters A through D and F. But the meaning of grades and the system for recording them often shifted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Okay, so we've established that if we want somewhere to point the finger of blame for why we receive stressful grades in school, and why a less than stellar score on a sixth-grade pop quiz gave me heart palpitations, we can start with a bunch of 19th-century college professors.

But the more important question is: Why are we still getting grades in school today?

So, they're useful for determining class ranking, and they can help students group students into categories.

And they can also be instrumental in whether or not you can enter into certain jobs, but, because I'm sure a lot of us are still suffering from post-report-card-induced stress, we have to ask the most pressing questions: Do grades really matter?

And are they actually effective tools for helping students learn?

Well, the answer to the first question-- Do grades really matter?-- is kind of complex and has to be broken down a bit to get to the heart of it because it seems that importance of your grades depends on the path you decide to take.

Although we're taught that grades are the strongest predictor of success in life, this isn't uniformly true.

The issue with grades is that they consider averages, which gives you the most usual outcome but not the full picture.

An average doesn't consider the outliers but rather the collective information from a certain group.

History is actually filled with successful people who didn't finish college or even high school-- Magic Johnson, Anna Wintour, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Oprah Winfrey, to name a few-- and none of these people did too shabbily in the life-success department.

Also, having perfect grades in high school doesn't always predict future game-changers.

Karen Arnold of Boston University conducted a study in which she followed 81 high-school valedictorians and salutatorians.

She found that the majority of them continued being successful at school later in life.

95% earned college degrees with an average GPA of 3.6; 60% went to graduate school; 90% are in professional jobs; and 40% are in the highest tiers of those jobs.

This is because a high GPA reflects skills like being prompt, working really hard, following directions, and being well-rounded-- all important skills for high-level careers.

But Arnold found that, although most of her former high-school valedictorians and salutatorians were strong occupational achievers, none had entered into roles she would consider "visionary" because the grades we receive in high school are designed to reward conformity and following the rules rather than creative thinking or specialization.

For example, if you're really great at history-- shout-out to our audience members-- but you still want to be ranked #1, you eventually will have to put that history textbook on the back burner to study other subjects and earn that coveted A in every field.

Having a high GPA is usually indicative of being a generalist, not a specialist.

Arnold posits that most people who become groundbreakers are actually rewarded for creative thinking, a unique specialization, and a focus on an intellectual passion-- things that don't always get rewarded with grades.

As a result, a lot of people who become successful later in life often struggle in school.

But a 2002 study at the University of Michigan still found that 80% of students based their self-worth on how well they were doing in school, and students with lower grades reported having lower self-esteem and health.

So, that brings us to the next question: Do grades really help students learn?

Although grades have long been considered the standard approach in education, some experts are turning away from letter-based systems.

One of the biggest critics of the fixation on grades in schools is education expert, Alfie Kohn.

Kohn notes: "The research quite clearly shows "that kids who are grades-- and have been encouraged "to try to improve their grades-- "tend to lost interest in learning itself, "avoid challenging tasks whenever possible, "(in order to maximize the chance of getting an A,) "and think less deeply than kids who aren't graded.

"That's why the best teachers and schools replace grades "(and grade-like reports) with narrative reports-- "qualitative accounts of student performance-- or, better yet, conferences with students and parents."

Teachers also report that grading is becoming increasingly stressful as "grade inflation" puts added pressure on them to deliver the grades that students want and parents expect.

Some educators are moving away from letter- and number-based grading to standards-based grading.

In 2013, Kentucky implemented a system where students received two report cards-- one with traditional letter grades and another with an individualized breakdown of what students had learned and the students' progress in school.

Virginia's Fairfax County implemented a similar process in their elementary schools in 2012 and 2013.

Parents reported finding the new system initially confusing but ultimately more helpful in assessing their child's growth and progress in school.

And classrooms around the world, including public schools, private schools, and educational initiatives funded by non-profits, are looking to incorporate new methods in the classroom that place less emphasis on memorization and focus more on innovation and how students can retain new knowledge.

So, even though grades are the oldest way of doing things, they may not be the best for measuring students' long-term success.

So, how does this all add up?

It seems that grades do have some weight in determining student outcomes precisely because we base so many systems around them, but this can vary a lot based on the individual.

While grades are extremely important in certain trajectories, like going to college, attending graduate school, or entering into certain professions, they ultimately aren't the only determining factor of success.

And although we've accepted them as the marker of a good student, a perfect GPA doesn't always represent things like creativity, ingenuity, and intellectual passions, which is why more school systems and educators are looking for ways to measure student progress outside of letters and percentages.