Editing Grading in education (section)

==History==
Students were given assessments as far back as 500 B.C. but no methods existed to formally measure student performance or track mastery of the subject. In the mid 1600’s Harvard University started to require exit exams to evaluate students, but they were not scored with letter grades.<ref name=":8">{{Cite web |title=History of the letter grading system |url=https://stacker.com/education/history-letter-grading-system |access-date=2024-10-31 |website=Stacker |language=en}}</ref>

The first record of a grading scale for students was at Yale University. [[Yale University]] historian [[George Wilson Pierson]] writes: "According to tradition the first grades issued at Yale (and possibly the first in the country) were given out in the year 1785, when President [[Ezra Stiles]], after examining 58 Seniors, recorded in his diary that there were 'Twenty ''Optimi'', sixteen second ''Optimi'', twelve ''Inferiores'' (''Boni''), ten ''Pejores''.'"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pierson |first=George W. |date=1701–1976 |title=Yale Book of Numbers |url=https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pierson_1701-1976.pdf |journal=}}</ref> By 1837, Yale had converted these adjectives into numbers on a 4-point scale, and some historians say this is the origin of the standard modern American GPA scale.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last1=Schinske |first1=Jeffrey |last2=Tanner |first2=Kimberly |date=2014 |title=Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently) |journal=CBE: Life Sciences Education |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=159–166 |doi=10.1187/cbe.cbe-14-03-0054 |issn=1931-7913 |pmc=4041495 |pmid=26086649}}</ref><ref name=":8" />

Bob Marlin argues that the concept of grading students' work quantitatively was developed by a tutor named [[William Farish (professor)|William Farish]] and first implemented by the [[University of Cambridge]] in 1792. That assertion has been questioned by Christopher Stray, who finds the evidence for Farish as the inventor of the numerical mark to be unpersuasive.<ref name="chris">Christopher Stray, "From Oral to Written Examinations: Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin 1700–1914", History of Universities 20:2 (2005), 94–95.https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199289288.003.0004</ref> Stray's article also explains the complex relationship between the mode of examination (oral or written) and the varying philosophies of education these modes imply to both the teacher and the student.<ref name="chris" /> 

The A-D/F system was first adopted by [[Mount Holyoke College]] in 1897. However, this system did not become widespread until the 1940s, and was still only used by 67% of primary and secondary schools in the United States in 1971.<ref name=":4" />