As students and teachers attempt to adjust to life in quarantine, learning plans have been modified so students will only be assigned 2-3 assignments per week in each class, according to Echo.

While the style of learning and teaching has been altered, no real changes have been made for the grading system, which are necessary for students to succeed during distance learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been called the 9/11 of our generation by the likes of Surgeon General Jerome Adams. In times of tragedy and fear like this, it is hard for anyone to continue with their normal lives, especially students. Although the workload has been reduced, it is still tough for me and a lot of my peers to focus on our work because of boredom and lack of interaction with teachers. Because of this, the work students turn in could be of lesser quality work from what they usually turn in. It is only fair to students if the grading system is changed for the time being.

Keeping the current system of grading by letter grades is simply unrealistic in these times and other systems should be taken into consideration. More specifically, two options that should be considered are either freezing grades or switching to a pass-fail system.

Freezing grades means a student’s grade cannot go down from where it was before distance learning, but it can still improve. This is the easiest solution for students, as students with lower grades have an opportunity to vastly improve their grades. Also, those who had high grades prior to distance learning do not have to worry about their grades dropping. However, this could prove to be an issue as those students could blow off all their work and not participate at all.

The second option is having pass-fail classes. This is the most sensible option, as it doesn’t have a letter grade component that causes stress among students and can’t be detrimental to their grade point average. This also eliminates the issue of students with good grades blowing off their work.

Implementing pass-fail classes is the best option for schools right now, as it relieves students of unneeded stress in an already stressful time, but still motivates students to do their work and learn.