An excellent question and one we thought we could answer in a flash. Not so. After much digging, we found an article in The Washington Post that states the first letter grade given in the United States was a "B" at Harvard University in 1883.

Prior to that time and up to about 1900, most institutions of higher learning used the numeric system (0-100) for grading. According to the Georgia State University web site, from about 1900 to the 1960s, colleges and universities became more general in grading. Hence, the letter-grade system became popular.

Georgia State University surveyed 1,395 two-year colleges, four-year colleges, and universities, and found 89.8% use the letter-grading system with a tendency to add plus or minus.

About that "E" grade -- some schools have used the E instead of F, but we speculate too many students tried to convince their parents the "E" stood for "excellent." It's much harder to trick parents into believing an "F" stands for "fantastic."

Some academics oppose this system of grading. One Stanford University professor claims students tend to take only courses in which they can get good grades. It would be much better, he states, if students explored courses in subjects of interest to them and there were no grades. Where was this guy when we were in school?

Compulsory education requirements can generally be satisfied by educating children in public schools, state-certified private schools, an approved home school program or in an orphanage. In most public and private schools, education is divided into three levels: elementary school, middle school (sometimes called junior high school), andhigh school (sometimes referred to as secondary education). In almost all schools at these levels, children are divided by age groups into grades, ranging from kindergarten (followed by first grade) for the youngest children in elementary school, up to twelfth grade, the final year of high school. The exact age range of students in these grade levels varies slightly from area to area.

Post-secondary education, better known as "college" in the United States, is generally governed separately from the elementary and high school system, and is described in a separate section below.

In the year 2000, there were 76.6 million students enrolled in schools from kindergarten through graduate schools. Of these, 72 percent aged 12 to 17 were judged academically "on track" for their age (enrolled in school at or above grade level). Of those enrolled in compulsory education, 5.2 million (10.4 percent) were attending private schools. Among the country's adult population, over 85 percent have completed high school and 27 percent have received a bachelor's degree or higher. The average salary for college or university graduates is greater than $51,000, exceeding the national average of those without a high school diploma by more than $23,000, according to a 2005 study by the U.S. Census Bureau.^[4] The United States school system includes over 5,000 Montessorischools.^{[citation needed]}