Passage 1(2018 北京 )When it comes to the letter grade on your test or homework, you might notice that there is no letter E. Have you ever thought about why that is so?A 组 2014-2018 年北京中考题组五年中考In the A, B, C, D and F grading system, the first four letters are typically considered passing grades. An F in this system simply stands for “fail”.The word “fail” happens to start with the letter F, which seems to leave out the letter E. The fact of the matter is that any letter can mean “not-passing”or “fail”. Some schools have U grade for “unsatisfactory”, or I grade for “incomplete”.Even with all this said, we should also point out that E grade actually has been used pretty com-monly throughout the history of letter grades in the US.The first college in the US to use a letter grading system like the ones we use today is Mount Holyoke College. In 1897,they began to use the following grading scale:A:95%—100%(excellent) B:85%—94%(good)C:76%—84%(fair) D:75%(barely passed)E:below 75%(failed)We can see the inclusion of E instead of F.Gradually,the letter grading system became more popular throughout the US. However, many schools decided to drop the E grade and go straight to F. There is no evidence( 证据 ) to really sup-port this, but one possible explanation is that teachers were worried that some students and parents might mistake E for “excellent”.Why do we have letter grades? Well, part of the reason is that they made grading simpler during a time of great change for schools. As the 20th century began, growing cities and an increase in im-migration led to larger school classrooms. Most teachers at that time thought this new letter grad-ing system was an easy, fair ...
