A bullet chart is a type of bar chart that shows progress towards a goal or performance against a reference line1. It consists of a bar representing the featured measure, a reference line denoting a target or threshold, and a background with qualitative ranges (such as poor, fair, good, excellent)2. In this case, the featured measure is the student’s score, the reference line is the highest score achieved in that grade, and the background ranges are the qualitative categories that the student’s score falls under. A bullet chart is a good option for this use case because it can display all three criteria in one chart, using minimal space and avoiding clutter. A column chart, on the other hand, would require either multiple columns for each student to show the score, the highest score, and the category, or a separate legend to map the colors of the columns to the categories. This would make the chart less effective in communicating the information and more difficult to compare across students.

References:1: Understanding and Using Bullet Graphs | Tableau, 2: Bullet Charts - What Is It And How To Use It - JSCharting