cold days

Certainly, grades do serve as a powerful motivational tool for students. The fear of failure gets otherwise disengaged students to complete their work, and the desire to receive excellent marks (A's) motivates good students to push themselves to do their very best work. It is also true that grades contribute to a productive classroom environment that benefits the entire group; students who know they will be graded down if they don't have their homework done tend to come prepared, thus improving the quality of class discussions. On the other hand, the positive motivational effects are overpowered by the negative impact of competition between students. Students who don't earn those A's often feel like failures, even though they have learned a great deal. What is gained from the B is often lost in the desired an A. Often students compare their grades with others in an effort to see how tthey rank. This relative status has little to do with how much an individual is actually learning. In short, we must find another way to motivate students that puts the emphasis on learning rather than on the delineation of winners and losers.

Grades, on the whole, are detrimental to a student's education.
Topic Sentence: The grading system leads students who receive sub-A grades to see themselves as failures. Parents and students both see an A as the mark of success, and any grade lower than this as an indication that praiseworthy work has not been accomplished.
Progress in a subject is thus often tracked as "whether or not a student has improved to A-level," as opposed to being viewed on an individual basis; the student who improves from a B- to a B+, for example, often still feels disappointment for not having succeeded. Students who receive A's are not always the students who have brought the most enthusiasm or engagement to the subject matter; in many cases, a B or even C student is more engaged and enthusiastic about the material.

Grades on specific assignments