Re: grading schemes

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 19:41 -0500 12/17/01, Joe Heafner wrote:
> How many of you assign (test) grades based on a "raw" score vs. some
> kind of "scaled" score? By "raw" score, I mean the ratio of points
> earned to total possible number of points. For example, if there are
> 60 possible points on a test and a students accumulates only 15
> points, the raw score would be 25%, which is clearly a failing
> performance (isn't it?). How many of you take these raw scores and
> scale them somehow?
I did when I was teaching (now retired). That is, I used a shifting
grade scale. The student got the raw score on the test, but the
letter grade associated with it varied from test to test, usually not
very much, but enough that a student who worked hard had a reasonable
shot at a good grade.

I did this for two reasons. First it was the way it was done when I
was in college, sort of. There all grades were on a Gaussian curve.
First the prof took the failing grades out of the mix, and of the
remaining grades, the top 15% were A, the next 35%, B, the next 35%,
C, and the bottom 15%, D. That always seemed fair to me, and so I
adopted a modified form of that scheme when I started teaching.

The second reason was that I never felt that I could make up a test
that was such a sensitive measure of the students achievement that I
could pick an arbitrary point and call that an A and one point less a
B. Furthermore, I always felt a certain responsibility for what they
learned. If I asked a question that 80% of the students in the class
got wrong, I would assume that it was at least in part my fault
because whatever I did or didn't do on that subject somehow inhibited
the students' ability to learn it. and I couldn't penalize the
students for my failure.

I thought the grades I ended up with were a fair representation of
the achievements of my students. The spread was typically about 25%
A, 50% B, 25% C, and an occasional D (D was a failing grade at our
school). That was not inconsistent with the grades of my colleagues
in physics.

On more than one occasion I had students tell me that I was thought
of as one of the easier teachers at my school, but had I been
teaching at their home school, I probably would have been one of the
hardest. We are a residential, restricted admission school that takes
only juniors and seniors, so the students all had two years
experience in their home public high school before they got to us.
Most of them saw their grades take a significant dip when they came
to us.

Since all of our students go on to college, I felt that I had a
responsibility not to significantly reduce their possibilities for
college because they chose to come to our school rather than remain
home in the much less stressful environment, so I tended to give most
students the benefit of the doubt, unless they demonstrated clearly
that they didn't deserve it. I told the parents of my students that
the students came into my class with a B. If they did their work and
made a reasonable effort, they could keep that grade, or by virtue of
their effort or lack of it they could work their way up or down.
Since we are pretty selective, Almost all of our students were
capable of doing B work, so it seemed to be mostly the effort that
they put in which moved their grades up or down. Some students put in
the effort, and although they were not a bright as some other, got
good grades because they did what was required of them. Others
decided they would put their primary effort elsewhere, and their
grade in my class suffered as a result. I never had a student
complain about the grade they got from me, even those who failed.
Since a D was failing, our C- became the de facto D. I did have an
occasional student who would complain about his grade because his C-
made him ineligible for sports. They never said they didn't deserve
the grade they got, only that they wanted me to change it so they
could play sports. I never did. I figured anyone who got a C- from me
had fully earned it.

I haven't kept a detailed count, but I think that over the years
(17), I had about 20-30 students go on to major in physics or a
closely related field (like applied math), and about 10 or so who
either got PhDs or are still working on them. With that record, I
doubt I did more harm than good during my tenure, and I guess that's
about all one should reasonably expect. Unfortunately, I also
produced about 10 lawyers. I'm not proud of that.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
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