> [..] As a fairly shy kid, this already annoyed me in first grade. (I suppose the cons outweighted the cons.) Did you perceive any pros? I suppose one way t

> [..] As a fairly shy kid, this already annoyed me in first grade. (I suppose the cons outweighted the cons.) Did you perceive any pros? I suppose one way to do grades is first read through all papers to get an idea of the levels of the students. Though you still have bias/nepotism and such then. Perhaps a teamwork or commitee would work, or teachers swapping classes/schools? I had a French teacher on high school who dropped a pen on list of students and then where it landed that person would get rehearsal. People in mid (waves) were fried. Plus, there is also the issue of certain last names being common in certain cultures, leading to skewed statistics.