As being a high school participant, I full heartedly agree. As well as not only students not learning their material, it also makes a competition that becomes negitive (especialy in AP classes), and may also reduce the moral of the students that have lower grades. I also belive that the current grading system is a way to track how willing a student is to work, not how well they are learning. They can also change one's preference for, say, large projects making them less eager to do them because of past records. Alas, the system will never get better as long as teachers still favor some students over others and base sucsess on grades.