CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

Education is commonly referred to as the process of learning and obtaining

knowledge at school, in a form of formal education. Generally, at the start of a very

young age, children learn to develop and use their mental, moral and physical powers,

which they acquire through various types of education. The process of education does

not only start when a child first attend school. Education begins at home when the

parent started to give knowledge to the child. This will be followed up by the education

given by the teachers. In almost all societies, receiving an education in school is

extremely vital and necessary if a person wants to achieve success in life. Thus,

education is the key that allows people to move up in the world, seek better jobs, and

ultimately succeed fully in life. Learning is important, of course, but it's those grades that

are important because are the only evidence that shows we've learned.

The need to get good grades is a common topic of conversation among

teenagers and their parents. Do your talks involve threats or encouragement? There's a

big difference and one may actually be a better approach than the other.

Grading has been a part of conventional teaching practices for so long that

many people, educators and students alike, do not question its usefulness or validity.

Using grades to mark proficiency, progress, and effort, to compare students to their

peers, and to assess the success or failure of teachers and schools is commonplace.

There are growing numbers of researchers and practitioners, however, who doubt the

value of assigning grades to student work.

 From our perspective, getting good grades in school is very important. Not

only is a good grade point average important for graduating high school, it opens up

options for different colleges, different majors when you decide to go to the next step in

your life, and it also opens up different paths you can take down the road. It makes

getting into colleges easier and opens up possibilities for scholarships and also allows

you to get a decent job after graduation. Grades also matter when it comes to getting

into a specific degree program in college. You may meet requirements for the university

you prefer, but you could be denied by the department where your prefer major is

housed. Your grade point average in high school and college has a major impact on

your future. It determines a lot of major stops in your life. The higher your grade point

average is the better off you will be. Even though everyone who graduates does get a

degree, there’s a distinction that could be earned. It’s possible to graduate with Latin

honors, which include the following: cum laude (with honor), magna cum laude (with

great honor), and summa cum laude (with highest honor).

When studying in high school, obtaining good grades used to be a student’s

sole aim. The reasons vary - to impress the new girl sitting next to you, escape your

parents scolding’s, or to keep up the role of being the “teacher’s pet”! But the aim was

always the same – to get good grades.

At the same time, there were a few students who would be more interested in

playing basketball rather than studying and getting good grades. Grades were never

really a big concern for them. The mentality for many students still remains the same.

There are going to be graduates competing for the same job post-college, and the

difference in grades could differentiate the candidates.

 Our research primary focused on the integrals or importance of getting acme or

high grades in secondary education. Our goal is also to know if getting high grades in

high school is a must or required to have a better future. We will also discuss the

background of grading in education.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Will you believe me if I say that grades that evaluate students for their

performances did not exist before? As a matter of fact, in the 18th century, there were

no systematized averages of evaluating students and clearly, no student can be easily

compared to another student in a simple manner. Sometimes I ask myself, are grades

really the best method in knowing if a student is really learning? One of the major

struggles of grades is grade inflation. Grade inflation is the increase in a student’s grade

without increasing its academic achievements. In my opinion, students yearn for high

grades for the credentials of having a decent future than the actual learning. I think that

students are concerned about their grades and future career possibilities. What do you

think? Are grades really the best method in standardizing students?

History of Grades

As the number of students increased in the late 1800s, schools began to group

students in grade levels according to their age, and new ideas about curriculum and

teaching methods were tried. One of these new ideas was the use of formal progress

evaluations of students' work, in which teachers wrote down the skills each student had
mastered and those on which additional work was needed. This was done primarily for

the students' benefit, since they were not permitted to move on to the next level until

they demonstrated their mastery of the current one. It was also the earliest example of a

narrative report card.

William Farish, a tutor at Cambridge University in England in 1792, came up

with a method of teaching which would allow him to process more students in a shorter

period of time. He invented grades. This grading system had originated earlier in the

factories as a way of determining if the shoes made on the assembly line were "up to

grade." It was used as a benchmark to determine if the workers should be paid and if

the shoes could be sold. This grading method increased the salary of William Farish,

while at the same time, lessened his workload and reduced the hours he needed to

spend in the classroom. He no longer needed to burrow into his students' minds to know

if they understood a topic, his grading system would do it for him. And, it would do it just

as efficiently for twenty children as it would for two hundred. Farish brought grades to

the classroom, and the transformation was both sudden and startling. Within a

generation, the lecture-hall/classroom shifted from a place where one heard the

occasional speech by a famous thinker to the place of ordinary daily instruction.

We came up with this problem because most of students in Colegio de Sta. Rosa

de Lima Inc. are wanting to reach the highest grade with their highest knowledge. For

example, the grades that students got are not in their expected range. So with this,

students strive for greatness than good. Students want more because that can make
them somehow superior, jolly and proud. But, the question is does your grades define

your knowledge?

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Commented [U1]: Sorry but I think there is a

miscommunication with this part, for theoretical framework
what is asked are: THE PRESENTATION OF THE DIFFERENT
Our theoretical framework will use these five (5) theories/formulas, these includes THEORIES, MODELS, PARADIGMS RELATED TO THE
VARIABLES, AND THE PROBLEM STATEMENT.

the following: Slovin’s Formula, Arithmetic Straight Line Method, Arithmetic Geometric

Curve, Statistics Straight Line, and the Statistical Parabolic Method. The Slovin’s

Formula is used to calculate an appropriate sample size from a population. Statistics is

a way of looking at a population's behaviour by taking a sample. It's usually impossible

to survey every member of a population because of money or time. If a sample is taken

from a population, a formula must be used to take into account confidence levels and

margins of error. When taking statistical samples, sometimes a lot is known about a

population, sometimes a little and sometimes nothing at all. For example, we may know

that a population is normally distributed (e.g., for heights, weights or IQs), we may know

that there is a bimodal distribution (as often happens with class grades in mathematics

classes) or we may have no idea about how a population is going to behave (such as

polling high school students to get their opinions about quality of student life). Slovin's

formula is used when nothing about the behaviour of a population is known at all. The

other four (4) formulas are being classified as “Method of Projections”. A projection

method is a general strategy of approximating a true, but unknown, function by a finite

number of approximating functions. That is, the true solution is approximated by a finite
combination of simple, known functions. Specifically, so we as the researchers or

writers of this study would first to choose a basis to approximate the solutions to each

inverse-bid function. The full basis for the space of candidate solutions should be rich

(flexible) enough to approximate any function relevant to the problem (which will be

represented and approximated as a linear combination of basis functions). This choice

specifies the structure of the approximation. We will fix the flexibility of the

approximation by deciding how many basis elements to include. In short, we must fix

the order of the approximation.

Slovin’s Formula

It is computed as n = N / (1+Ne²).

The variables:

n = number of samples or the sample size

N = total population

e = error margin / margin of error (10%)

Methods of Projection:

· Arithmetic Straight Line Method

It is computed as Yc = a + Yi – 1

𝑌𝑛−𝑌𝑐
Where: 𝑎 =
𝑁−1

The variables:
Yc = Initial value (1st Year)

Yn = final value (Last Year)

N = Numbers of Years

Yi = Value for the year past

· Arithmetic Geometric Curve Method

𝑌𝑖+1
It is computed as 𝑌𝑐 = 1+𝑟

The variables:

Yi + 1 = Value for the year ahead

r = average rate of increases

· Statistical Straight Line Method

It is computed as Yc = a + bx

∑ 𝑌−𝑏 ∑ 𝑥 𝑛 ∑ 𝑋𝑌− ∑ 𝑋 ∑ 𝑌
Where: 𝑎 = 𝑏=
𝑛 𝑛 ∑ 𝑋 2 −(∑ 𝑋)²

The variable:

n = number of years

· Statistical Parabolic Method

It is computed as Y = a + bx + cx²

(∑ 𝑋 4 )(∑ 𝑌)−(∑ 𝑋²) (∑ 𝑋²𝑌) ∑ 𝑋𝑌 𝑛(∑ 𝑋²𝑌)−(∑ 𝑋²) (∑ 𝑌)

Where: 𝑎 = 𝑏= 𝑐=
𝑛 (∑ 𝑋 4 )−(∑ 𝑋²)² ∑ 𝑋² 𝑛 (∑ 𝑋 4 )−(∑ 𝑋 2 )²
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

As a Grade ten (10) student or as they call "seniors" of Junior High School in

Colegio de Sta. Rosa de Lima Inc., I struggle a lot when it comes to having high grades.

Why? Is that because I thought that if I acquire high grades, my future will be a lot better

and I can make my parents proud. There are also students that are afraid to try Commented [U2]: Can you please use we instead of I

anymore because they put in their minds that they cannot do it or they will fail because

they have low grades. So as part of this group, I highly agree in having a research about

high grades because this is almost one of the major factors of why students feel

pressured in studying. Also, nowadays high grades becomes a basis of dictation if you

will be able to succeed or not. The results will provide the students with some

knowledge on getting good grades. At the end of the study, students would finally know

the integrals of getting high grades in secondary education.

It is important to gain insight about the fundamentals of obtaining high grades

in high school, to enlighten students, especially the ones who are still in his/her high

school life. The result of this research will benefit the students and to the researchers as

well. In this way, the students will certainly be given an idea on how is grades is

essential in life. The purpose of this study is to gather information regarding the

principality of grades in secondary education. To the Researchers, the findings of this

study may provide them information about the essence of the grades in which they can

possibly make use in real life situation.

Furthermore, this study will not only give benefits to the following mentioned

above but also to the other factors that can affect each components of beneficiaries

which could be internally or externally.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study will attempt to determine importance of getting high grades in high school.

The following research questions were developed based on the rationale and purpose

of this investigation.

This study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What is the importance of having high grades in secondary education?

2. What criteria are considered? (tests, projects, effort, attitude, homework, seatworks,

recitation) Commented [U3]: We can exclude this already

3. Does the grading system provide valid measurement of student achievement?

4. What does the grade a student receives on the report card really indicate? Commented [U4]: We can exclude this already

5. Is the grades in your report card in high school does really affect your future life?

SCOPE AND LIMITATION Commented [U5]: PLEASE REVISE THIS ACCORDING TO

THE CHANGES WE HAVE MADE WITH PARTICIPANTS OF
YOUR STUDY
This study is quantitative in nature; thus the scope in our research are the

Colegio de Sta. Rosa de Lima high school students, both in Junior High School and

Senior High School Department, not including the writers or researchers of this study

which are the Grade 10 students from the section, Turquoise. Our respondents are

reaching the adolescence period which we called the teenagers or young adults; their

ages are ranging from twelve (12) to eighteen (18) years old. We limit our research to

the workers of the school administration or faculty department. These are the following:

the teachers or faculty members, staffs, administrators, maintenance, principal, the

assistant principal and the guidance counsellor of the school. Many inferences and

answers of the paper will be made with the assumption that the respondents responded

to the survey and interview with the best of their abilities and the integrity of their

personality. The high school students of the Colegio de Sta. Rosa de Lima Inc., as the

respondents will be given a survey questionnaire. However, though the study will

heavily rely on the given survey, statistical data shall be used to create a baseline for

the study.