Do Grades Equal Intelligence?

By Serena Bennett

 

 

 

 

Intelligence. The dictionary defines it as “a capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings.”

However, schools define intellect with number and letter grades based on the amount of homework and classwork turned in and how well a student performs on tests or assessments. But, do grades actually tell us whether or not a person is intelligent?

Ask a Teacher

I interviewed five teachers from Mahanoy Area High School to see if they believe that high marks mean high intelligence. Mr. Kieran Cray, a 9th grade English teacher at Mahanoy Area, said, “It [grades] all depends on the student’s work ethic. Obviously to get the grades, they must be intelligent enough to understand [the subject]. But you can only measure the results. You can’t measure the work put into it.”

Mr. Kristopher Bet, a 9th-12th grade Math teacher, said, “There are so many variables that go into grades. It’s hard for them to truly measure intellect. If a student has trouble taking tests or has outside problems distracting them, it can lower the effort put into it and lower the grade.”

Out of all the teachers I interviewed, none believed that grades actually tell whether a student is intelligent or not.

Alternatives to Grades

There are some schools that have developed different ways to assess their students, like Goddard College located in Vermont and Washington state. The college is modeled after John Dewey’s progressive education philosophy that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.

According to the school’s website goddard.edu, Goddard “does not make use of letter or number grades and cannot compute grade point averages.”

Instead, “At the end of each semester, students and faculty advisers write evaluative reports. On the basis of these reports and, when necessary, in consultation with their program director, faculty advisers judge whether their students have completed the semester in such a way as to warrant credit or, in the case of graduate students, are making creditable progress toward meeting degree requirements.”

I had the chance to talk with Dr. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, a poet, writer and professor in the Goddard Graduate Institute, about her thoughts on intelligence and non-traditional grading systems. She said that Goddard’s “narrative transcripts tend to evaluate what a student did, looking at both the student’s study plan for the semester, and at how the student did in fulfilling his or her study plan.” A study plan is an individualized timeline and task list that guides the student in meeting degree criteria.

Mirriam-Goldberg said narrative transcripts work best in a situation like Goddard’s “in which students design their own studies in concert with degree criteria.” In general, though, she does not think letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) tend to be all that helpful “when it comes to the kind of deep learning that changes our lives and helps us live with greater meaning.”

She acknowledged, however, that narrative transcripts are a lot of work for the teacher. “If someone, for example, was teaching six classes of 30 people each, writing a narrative transcript for each of those students would be an outrageous amount of work.”

What About IQ?

An intelligence quotient or IQ score is another way that society measures intelligence. Mirriam-Goldberg said, “IQ tests give us a vague approximation of some kinds of intelligence, but they surely don’t measure all kinds of intelligence.” The approximation could be helpful in some ways, however, when it comes to seeing where someone may need more assistance.

Although letter grades or IQ scores may not measure every kind of intelligence, they make assessing academic performance easier for teachers and simpler for students to understand.

Measuring intellect—whether by grades, IQ, or narrative transcript—is a hard thing to do. How do you define intelligence?