I'm not terribly consistent in my internal understanding of what I'm doing when I grade. In general, I tend to imagine the B as the default grade, and an A as a grade that says, "You did something considerably better than ordinary". The C means, "This is really not as good as ordinary work". Failures are either, "This is dramatically worse than the norm" or "You blew this off, and I can see that you did".I freely confess that I tend to have a slightly different understanding of how this scaling works out based on my understanding of what a student is capable of. The more I've graded a student, the more I form an expectation about what they can do. A student who has done consistently excellent, original work for me is likely to draw a much more negative reaction from me for doing ordinary work than a student who has done fine, decent but undistinguished work consistently. If I graded blind, I suspect I'd still have some pretty good guesses over time about the identity of writers, but maybe that would help shake up some of my assumptions. I'm weighing trying to do that next year for the first time.
I'm of two minds on this. The purpose of a grade is to show mastery (or not) of some volume of material. Is it fair to set the bar higher for me than for someone who isn't as capable? Or vice versa? Is it fair to send the signal to employers that I wasn't up to scratch even when I did objectively better work than some other student?
Maybe. After all, one of the things that employers and graduate schools are presumably looking for is ability to exert oneself consistently. Still, doesn't this penalize students who develop a relationship with a professor?
If an adjustable scale makes you push yourself to learn more, then it's probably a good thing.
Well of course it penalizes students who don't develop a relationship with the professor. But hey, that's life.
People get promotions because they've developed relationships the higher ups who then say, "I know him. He's a good guy." Actors get cast in a part because they know someone who knows someone who knows the director. A current employee will recommend a friend they used to work with, saying, "She's a real team player. She was great to work with." All that is done via relationships.
You develop a relationship with someone, you have a better shot at getting the job, being given a break and so forth. No reason it can't apply in the teacher/student relationship as well. Unless all tests are multiple choice (and don't get me started on the finer points of developing multiple choice tests that accurately assess the topics you wish to be tested), there will always be some form of grading bias. Even things such as handwriting, pen color, font choice, thickness of paper stock, positioning of staple, can lead to grading bias. It's human nature.
As good teachers we strive to avoid such bias as much as possible. But it's there. It's only honest to recognize it.
B instead of C as the default grade. Well.
I took two courses in which I had the highest grades, but did not get an A. In each case, the teacher told me that I had obviously known the material before starting the course (true), so I wasn't going to get an A because I didn't improve during the course.
Since my only goal was to get out of the damned place and get on with real life, I didn't even argue. I did, however, note that it might not be a good idea to demonstrate my existing knowledge early in the course. :-)
Well, you can have it be a subjective rating personal to the student, but then class ranks mean what exactly? You've got guys with B's who know the material better and consistently worked hard than the guys who got A's because they showed the best improvement?
If you're going to make grading intentionally subjective, you also need to drop the pretense that GPA means a damn thing.
Texas Girl: "No reason it can't apply in the teacher/student relationship as well. Unless all tests are multiple choice (and don't get me started on the finer points of developing multiple choice tests that accurately assess the topics you wish to be tested), there will always be some form of grading bias."
Nonsense. Grading is supposed to be an objective measurement of mastery of the specific material, and a teacher who gives bonus points to the students they have relationships with is not doing their job. It's just corruption/cronyism.
Incidentally, I rarely did multiple choice back in my academic days. I just did stuff like this: "integrate by parts, 2 pts, choose correct u/v 1 pt, integrate sin(x) 1 pt, +c 1 pt."
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that any teacher who doesn't do this is not doing their job.
I am totally against grading on the basis of a students prior results.
A grade should be an objective measure of your performance. Anything else is dishonest.
If a teacher needs a place to record a student's effort, then have a separate "Effort" box on the grading form. To corrupt one measure in an attempt to communicate another measure in a way that the standard tick-a-box grading form doesn't cover is just wrong.
And I though Texas Girl misinterpreted the point. He saying that a student that develops a good relationship with the teacher/prof can end up with a LOWER score, because the prof expects more from them.
I've always struggled against this B.S. One of my most indelible memories from high school, sadly, is getting back a paper graded at 94 points out of 100 with the message "This is not acceptable effort" written across it by the teacher. That's right, it was a solid "A".
The expectations game is pretty inherently unfair, considering the student has no way of controlling for unrealistic or even malicious expectations on the part of the grader. And it amounts to an extra requirement, a handicap, only for certain students. And in many subjects, what do you think the odds are that those expectations might fall on certain identifiable types of students? Yes, I'm frickin' Asian.
Depends on your goals.
Demanding exertion is best if your goal is to motivate the student.
Demonstrating proficiency is best if your goal is to ... eh, certify proficiency.
Maybe we should have two sets of grades :-)
I guess there is a training/teaching dichotomy.
As I recall, back in 1st grade we had separate grades (or gold stars?) for effort and comportment. Then those vanished sometime before 3rd grade.
In retrospect they should have kept the effort and comportment grades as a separate category right up through college. Hell, post-grad, too.
In the absence of giving gold stars for effort to college econ majors, which might be viewed as infantilizing, another way to factor in a sufficient "performed to the top of their ability" assessment is to do less knowledge/test/essay-based assignments, and more project-based assignments that involve an inextricable component of sheer organization, creativity and labor. I think this is part of the reasoning behind the Montessori system, and it's also one reason why ALL biology majors know how to work hard, and SOME English majors do.
Matt,
Would you agree that you would want to hire the person with the highest grades and the lowest effort?
Do you want the doctor who barely got through med school by studying 18 hours a day, or do you want the doctor who got an A in A&P by paging through the book for an few hours?
Grades should be based, as much as is feasible, on clear and objective criteria- criteria that are invariant with the relationship one has with the students. If you wish to encourage greater effort from some students, do so in some other way.
I'm with Jens. If you believe that teachers essentially work for students -- sort of like personal trainers work for exercisers -- then you'll believe they should adjust grading to get the most out of each student, irrespective of how other students compare to them.
If you believe that teachers and schools work for society, you'll think they should grade objectively so that outsiders can look at a student's grades and get some sense of his capabilities.
I tend to side with the first argument -- until I consider what a monkey wrench it would throw into society. College admissions, for example, would become very tricky, as would hiring people out of school. So I'm of two minds and, thus, right back where we started.
A good education will be worth more over the long run than a good grade.
Evaluating and rewarding by effort, rather than by results, is a common and maddening pattern in human beings -- until and unless we're directly affected by the quality of the results. If you were under trial, accused of some crime, for example, would you prefer to be defended by a lawyer who you know always wins his cases (maybe with no real effort: would you CARE?!), or by one who you know will exert himself to the utmost... but loses more often than not, because he's just not particularly talented?!
I wish there was some mechanism to ensure that anybody who judges by effort gets the earnest but talent-deprived lawyers, doctors, engineers designing the bridges over which they drive, actors in the movies they see, composers for the music they listen to, cooks for all the meals they eat, and so forth. Maybe, just maybe, a few months of such penance would shake some common sense, justice, and rationality into them.
Being a lucky person, myself, I most always got teachers, managers, clients when I free-lanced, etc, etc, who cared about my results, not my efforts. Ensuring my motivation was never a problem for them -- reward my results with A+, extra unexpected spot bonuses, renewal of consulting contract at higher rates, etc, etc, when the results are exceptional rather than "merely good", and you will encourage me to keep reaching for the stars. Had I ever observed my rewards being lower than those of a plodding performer's (for equal results), e.g. because the latter had pulled 80-hours weeks while I stuck to a sensible 40, I'd be out of such a dysfunctional college, firm or consulting contract very VERY fast.
"In general, I tend to imagine the B as the default grade, and an A as a grade that says, 'You did something considerably better than ordinary'. The C means, 'This is really not as good as ordinary work.'"
You gotta love the establishmentarians. Inflation is their answer for everything, even grades.
No, no, no. In the real world, you are rewarded for results, not effort.
If you believe that teachers essentially work for students -- sort of like personal trainers work for exercisers -- then you'll believe they should adjust grading to get the most out of each student, irrespective of how other students compare to them
No. Setting them up to fail in the future does no favor to students. They should be taught that results matter.
Grading scales in grad school (in my learned experience) are different from ugrad.
College engineering classes were generally pretty clear-cut numerical scales. College math & physics were more flexible, but not necessarily easier (it's harder to calibrate the tests).
The rule I saw in grad school (engineering) was
A: average
B: bad
c: catastrophic
Because in g-school (1) your focus is no longer coursework (2) you've already busted your hump and proven yourself to get in and (3) schools typically require a better than three-point-something average to qualify for your dissertation. Any harsher grading scale would *require* half the students to be kicked out prematurely.
Do you want the doctor who barely got through med school by studying 18 hours a day, or do you want the doctor who got an A in A&P by paging through the book for an few hours?
Is this a trick question? Am I supposed to answer, "the dumber one?"
So there you are, flat on your back on the operating table with a nasty tumor you want removed.
Who do you want wielding the scalpel:
A: The A for effort kid, who tried hard, made connections, improved greatly, and can barely find his own toes.
B: The B for slacking kid who knows the material cold, never went to class, never improved - and aced every test.
I know that I want B, as does everyone else when push comes to shove. Liberals like to talk about diversity when they live in the city, but when it comes time to decide what neighborhood and school to send their teenage daughter to, it always ends up being some place rich and white. Similarly, if it's your kid on the operating table, or your kid sitting in 16C going over the Pacific, who do you want in control of her life?
In ninth grade, many years ago, I had an English teacher (also the PE coach, amazingly enough) who for the first quarter gave me an "F" report card -- along with a "see me after class" note.
He told me anyone else in class would have gotten a "C" for my work. But I was obviously better than that, and deserved an "F" given my aptitude.
I never again got anything less than an "A" in any English class, including college-level courses, and I am eternally grateful to the man.
Of course now, he wouldn't have dared, and I'd be limping along doing "C" work.
"Do you want the doctor who barely got through med school by studying 18 hours a day, or do you want the doctor who got an A in A&P by paging through the book for an few hours?"
From what I hear about medical school, it doesn't matter how much of a genius you are, you are also going to have to work your tail off to even get a passing grade. It isn't enough to know the stuff in theory, you have to be able to apply it without error when under pressure, exhausted, and hearing someone screaming in the next room. Reaching that kind of competence takes a whole lot of practice, which means a whole lot of work.
I'm not speaking from personal experience, but I am an engineer, and that certainly describes engineering school. When a homework problem takes ten pages of equations to work out, a math genius can work it a little faster, but it still takes hours. And note, these assignments aren't busywork. They're greatly scaled-down and simplified versions of what you do in a real job, and after graduation you will be damned glad for all the practice.
I value effort, but I grade on results. The good thing is, that the incentives still turn out just fine.
(It's a totally American thing this whole discussion. It doesn't even come up in Europe: grades are supposed to reflect results, always).
I don't view grading as particularly useful for anything other than delivering feedback and motivation to a student. I give whatever grade I think will encourage the student to improve.
If you're a parent, you grade based on effort. If you don't, you limit a smart kid and you destroy the esteem of a dumb kid.
If you're an educator (as I am), you grade on results unless you are completely insane. The world obviously can't judge people on their efforts for all the reasons posted before me, but I would like to add how this 'effort-based' approach can screw kids up even more.
I've had students who actually told me they were upset because they got a 'B' in a class even though they worked hard. When pressed, they told me they always got as when they worked hard so they must deserve an A this time as well. They actually thought this was how the world worked even though they were 21 years old.
May I suggest another approach to teaching that avoids this trade-off?
Don't measure every student by the same yardstick. Have multiple courses/lessons/etc by which students are put in a more homogenous group. If one student is struggling to write complete sentences, they should be in the class/lesson on "Basic Grammar and constructing single paragraphs" (or whatever other title you want to do it). If another student is streets ahead, they should be in the class/lesson titled "Advanced persuasive writing techniques" (or whatever is appropriate). Then mark both students appropriately for the class/lesson they are doing.
This admittedly is not something most teachers can implement by themselves, it's a school or university-wide solution. But it seems more sensible to explicitly group students by what they are already capable of rather than some hidden methodology.
I also don't know how you would apply this to measuring creativity in the arts, but then I don't know how marking works in the arts anyway (with the exception of purely technical skills like making pottery).
I'll repeat what I tell my daughter all the time "life isn't fair, get over it."
Grades don't matter, with one exception - getting your first job (OK, two - getting into grad school).
And they probably don't really matter when getting your first job. But after that - no one cares, it never comes up.
I'm quite surprised by how many people on this thread -- jmo and many others -- instinctively react to grading for effort as if it's some kind of postmodern socialist crutch for those who can't hack competition. I'm not viscerally opposed to that response but I really am surprised, because I think of pure grading for results as a kind of coddling of those who have talent, and particularly a talent for writing or taking tests. If you can ace the exam without studying much, you never learn to study much; if you can learn it all the night before the test, you never learn to plan and execute study plans. People who say that in the real world one is "evaluated on results, not effort" are overlooking the fact that in the real world, the kinds of results one needs to generate are usually quite different from taking exams.
Real-world success usually involves delineating goals well in advance, creating strategies and plans for achieving the goals, and usually working in teams and delegating responsibilities (and fulfilling them on time). These kinds of skills are taught in our high schools, but often in drama club rather than math or English class. These are the kinds of "effort" I'd like to see valued more highly in the way we grade. Beyond that, it's critical to push people with gifts to perform at the level they're capable of, not the level they can get by at. A high school football coach who congratulated a potential star quarterback when he coasted through a game, rather than berating him for failing to give 100%, would be considered a bad coach; that player has a responsibility to his team to be as good as he can be, not just good enough. The same ought to hold for top students.
If you take a class for a grade, this system sucks. If you take a class for an education, this system is wonderful.
Kudos to Markm for puncturing some of the idiotic examples about medical school. The writers may have a point about effort vs ability, but based on reports from acquaintances, including my daughter, med school isn't the right example.
As to Tim Burke's "B is the default grade" Swarthmore students have a t-shirt that says something to the effect "I got a B at Swarthmore. Anywhere else it would have been an A." As a college professor who has seen these students in my graduate courses, and as the parent of Swarthmore students, I always believed this. Not anymore. So Tim, be prepared for some annoyed former students banging on your door.
As for grades, I try to push all my students to improve. I believe most profs do. But while I respect effort and reward it up to a point (i.e., if you try you will get at least a B -- which I can do in good conscience because I don't teach future pilots, engineers or doctors, just people who may someday have a chance to ruin the US banking system), I really do reserve A for consistently excellent work.
Put me in the "two sets of grades" camp.
This isn't all that different from economics - you measure what you get and you get what you measure.
If grades are to be used as an indicator of proficiency (e.g., for a future employer), then they should be against an objective scale (to the extent possible), so they can be compared against each other.
On the other hand, if the grades are to be used as a feedback mechanism for the student, then they should be tailored based on the student's performance/capability ratio.
It's the difference between saying to one student, "You got a B - great job!" and telling another "You got a B - but you should be getting A's. Study harder!"
Given the practical realities of the world, where high school transcripts are an input to college admission, and college GPA is an input to grad school and/or employment, I believe the grades should be more objective, and the student feedback should come in the form of personal interaction between student and teacher.
Just an opinion, of course...
"From what I hear about medical school, it doesn't matter how much of a genius you are, you are also going to have to work your tail off to even get a passing grade."
If you took 1000 med students and gave them 50 pages of material and 2.5 hours to study it, then tested them. I would imagine the plot of the grades would fall into a pretty standard bell curve. However, at the right of that bell curve would be students who could have aced it with 45 min. of studying and on the left are people who would need 8 or 10 hours of studying.
Matt: "A high school football coach who congratulated a potential star quarterback when he coasted through a game, rather than berating him for failing to give 100%, would be considered a bad coach; that player has a responsibility to his team to be as good as he can be, not just good enough. The same ought to hold for top students."
Nonsense. The purpose of football is to entertain spectators. The spectators are the customers, and the football players are the producers. If the producers fail to do their jobs, the customers are less satisfied.
The purpose of teaching is to teach a student a body of knowledge, and evaluate their knowledge of said material. The student is the customer. Just because some of your job (the teaching part) is already done before you showed up is not a reason to fail to do your other duties properly.
"The student is the customer"
I'm sorry but that's where many of us disagree. The student is not a customer buying a product, the student is there for the chance to earn a degree. The "student is the custmer" logic would mean that everyone who goes in for a driving test is guaranteed a pass since they (the person taking the test) is paying for it.
Likewise the student is responsible for learning the material. If he or she doesn't, it's much more likely to be his or her fault than the teacher's.
@Ninja Zombie: "The purpose of teaching is to teach a student a body of knowledge, and evaluate their knowledge of said material. The student is the customer. Just because some of your job (the teaching part) is already done before you showed up is not a reason to fail to do your other duties properly."
While I highly agree with your use of a rubric to improve the standardization of grading (mentioned previously), it should be noted that it's much easier to do this with material such as intro calculus, which you were obviously teaching. Indeed, most intro material can and should be taught to a rubric, but it becomes next to impossible to do any kind of project-based work that way.
Nonetheless, I have to object to the "who's the customer?". The students as individuals are one set of customers, but a teacher---certainly a teacher at the collegiate level and definitely at the graduate level---has several constituencies. Not all incentives work in the same way. There are the other students, past, present and future, whose degrees you will value or devalue depending on how you do your job. There is the institution you work for. Your institution will often want grade inflation in that St. Augustininan fashion "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." And there is one's profession, which benefits by having new entrants be as good as they can be, but also by not having new entrants chased off. Even within a profession there can be substantial disagreements about things like what the proper body of knowledge is.
I think this piece of advice to new teachers by mathematician Bruce Reznick is pretty good: http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~reznick/ciu.html
"Likewise the student is responsible for learning the material. If he or she doesn't, it's much more likely to be his or her fault than the teacher's."
Oh no, no, no! It is much more likely to be the teachers fault.
Considering schools give out degrees in fake subjects like women's studies, ethnic studies, and sociology;
and considering we've dumbed down real subjects like English by taking out superior writers and replacing them with inferior writers based on race and gender, so that you're reading fake sources;
and colleges have jacked up prices well above inflation rates with fake excuses and lies;
asking for fake grades in return for $40,000/year of fake education is perfectly reasonable.
Considering schools give out degrees in fake subjects like women's studies, ethnic studies, and sociology...
Christ. That's not the half of it. Did you know there's an entire branch of mathematics dealing with imaginary numbers? Ridiculous!
Life is full of surprises. I'm a former English teacher and about as socially 'liberal' as one can get, and yet I find myself agreeing with the more conservative point of view here(ie. we must use results rather than 'effort' to measure competencies, just as we do for adult jobs).
In fact, I would like to propose that we abolish the old-fashioned A-F grading system, because as we see in this thread, it's too vague and arbitrary to mean the same thing to every teacher, and therefore not of much use to anyone trying to interpret what an 'A' versus a 'C' means. Instead, especially now that we have electronic systems to make the expense of paper less of an issue, we need to have a standard template that would list one's performance in particular skill areas, rather than a lump sum grade(or if you insist on having a letter grade, at least have it linked to specific standard criteria that everyone can access and view online). What I am thinking of is something similiar to a performance review form that one gets at a job. An example for kids: 'The student demonstrates the ability to write a couplet of fixed iambic pentameter'. Or 'the student demonstrates the ability to write a complete sentence'. Now, you may not agree that being able to write in iambic pentameter is important, but at least as a prospective college or employer you know what criteria the teacher was using. Those who would argue that this is a bit pie-in-the-sky should consider the fact that employers don't just ask for grades when one submits a resume', and for very good reason.
Gene: "I'm sorry but that's where many of us disagree. The student is not a customer buying a product, the student is there for the chance to earn a degree. The "student is the custmer" logic would mean that everyone who goes in for a driving test is guaranteed a pass since they (the person taking the test) is paying for it. "
Nonsense. The service (besides teaching) that a teacher sells is evaluation/certification. That's different from selling grades.
I'll sell you grades too (Paypal me $5 for an A), but that's a different service. Less valuable also, since the grade transmits less useful information ("Gene sent me $5" vs "Gene passed my calc test").
MattB, comparing a real subject like mathematics to the ephemeral fluff of victimology offered in the humanities these days is like comparing a punch in the face from Roy Jones, Jr. to a spell cast by Wiccans.
It's been a while since I graded anything, but I think the grades I used to award were pretty close to the quality of the work that was submitted. On the other hand, I made copious use of the red pen - when a good student handed in a piece of work that was only worth a B, it was returned with strongly-worded suggestions to exert some effort in the future. A poor student turning in the same work would get the B, with attached praise and encouragement.
If the smart student wants to, he can coast through life exerting no effort and make Bs. He can then find some uninspiring office job and end up as a poor middle-manager doing barely enough to avoid getting fired. Or he could make a choice to exert himself a bit, and do better. His choice.
In other words, MattB, wishing for power is not the same as possessing it.
"... react to grading for effort as if it's some kind of postmodern socialist crutch for those who can't hack competition. ... pure grading for results [is] a kind of coddling of those who have talent."
Well, then change the name of the course from "Chemistry 101" or "Absurd Victimology 101" to "Trying Really Hard in Chemistry/Victimology". And then we can all know what the requirements of the class and the criteria of grading are.
And the excuse of "people who try but get bad grades are really the ones who will be effective in the real world" is awfully convenient. It's like saying "I can't do math because I'm simply too awesomely creative." What evidence do you have that those skills can't go together? Gosh, maybe it's conceivable that someone who can study efficiently can also handle teamwork and creativity and doesn't have to be punished in grading?
And if teamwork and creativity are what you care about instead of, you know, mastering material, aren't you going to grade on teamwork and creativity rather than laboriously attempted but ultimately unsuccessful creativity and teamwork?
It *is* a crutch.
My college gave letter grades, but would also provide, right on the transcript, the precentage of people who got "A's" in that class. In other words, was it a fluff course or real? Was it a real A or an A=C?
Of course, that put me at a disadvantage to those from colleges that didn't do it. Their grades looked better.
And let's not forget that at Brown, where P/F has been the norm for decades, academics have become a joke. "My son doesn't go to college, he goes to Brown" becomes more and more true every day.
Colleges aren't equipped to stop grade inflation because if they did, students might start demanding classes that actually meant something in the real world, instead of feminism 101. If I'm getting fluff, I'd want fluff grades. And then students might actually ask if paying $40,000/year for classes that don't mean crap in the real world and yet make you look bad by giving you a "C" is really worth it.
The death of college is coming. stay tuned.
I quote the great movie Clueless again:
"You mean you argued your way from a C plus to an A minus? Honey, I wouldn't be more proud if the grades were based on actual work."
Megan,
Another good post. The problem is that grades are asked to do too many jobs and that some of those jobs are in conflict. They are supposed to tell students how well they are doing compared with their peers, tell prospective employers and grad schools how well a student has mastered a particular subject, and to encourage students to make the most of their natural abilities.
As an employer, I make decisions all the time based on grades. We get dozens of resumes for every opening from students looking for their first "real" job. GPA serves as one of the primary screens we use to reduce the number of applicants to a manageable number. If a student's GPA is not high enough (which depends on the institution AND on the year), he or she won't be invited for an on-campus interview. Once the on-campus screening interviews have been conducted, we typically invite about 10% of those interviewed to a series in-office interviews. (The candidate will meet individually with 4 - 5 executives in our office for about 30 minutes each.) Even after those interviews, individual grades and GPA still are important factors in determining which of the candidates will receive job offers. For example, we might favor a student who did well in a particular course or subject area even though his or her GPA is somewhat lower than another candidate who did not take those courses or did not do as well in them.
My point: Grades are an important tool for us in making one of the most important business decisions we make every year. Teachers who bastardize their grades degrade the value of this tool. They don't do their students any favors. Over time, we'll come to recognize we cannot rely on the grades from that school and will quit considering candidates from there.
The thing that always cracks me up is when people complain that exams just measures test-taking ability, rather than mastery of the subject. I used to hear this sort of thing all the time -- students would say that they knew the material, but just didn't write it down.
WHY didn't they write it down? If they knew it, and if they knew it was the correct answer to an exam question (two distinct things), what were they doing in the exam room besides writing it down? I've never figured this out.
The opposite is the top student who studies constantly and reads widely in the subject, but then dismisses his or her string of A's by saying "I just test well." What's that about?
In the word-y subjects, you have to be able to write about what you have learned. In the math-y subjects, you have to calculate and prove things. In all subjects, you have to be able to figure out what a question means and how to use your store of knowledge to answer it.
How is this different from mastering the material?
I've read the first half of the comments and skimmed the rest, and it seems to me problematic that no one is making a distinction between grades at different levels of school. In middle school/elementary school, there should ABSOLUTELY be a sliding scale, and teachers should use grades for the sole purpose of trying to motivate students to work-- because the grades at that level don't matter long-term. Starting in high school, grades should become more objective, since the impact on the future is higher. But let me hasten to add that grades in HS are becoming increasingly meaningless. 4.0s are a dime a dozen, and having one doesn't guarantee you admission to an Ivy League school.
By the time a student gets to grad school, we should no longer by 'trying to motivate' them. By that time, if the student isn't already working hard, then either they are at the bottom of the class, or they are such a genius as to constitute a special case. But people in this thread are really talking past each other because some are talking about high school, some college, some grad school, and some are talking about grades in the abstract.
David Walser writes: Grades are an important tool for us in making one of the most important business decisions we make every year. Teachers who bastardize their grades degrade the value of this tool. They don't do their students any favors.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, taking this a step further, I wish there could be more of a partnership between business and education at all levels. Businesses might be able to suggest at least specific basic competencies that are most desirable at a grade-school level, while working with college departments in certain field to meet current demands. Not sure if this is possible under the current climate, though.
David, I couldn't agree more. I teach at an alternative school, which simplifies things -- none of my students are looking for a prestigious university's admission, etc -- so I grade on a combination of effort and work. And only on the work they've done -- if they haven't done enough of the quarter's work, they simply don't get credit, rather than a C or a D. For most of them, this system works well.
But were I teaching in any sort of traditional school, yeah, I have no idea. No matter what you reward as a teacher, some part of the learning process suffers.
Someone said "If you can ace the exam without studying much, you never learn to study much; if you can learn it all the night before the test, you never learn to plan and execute study plans"
I hear this all the time and while I understand it is true in many cases, it really depends upon the instructor.
A lot of the bad exams are influenced by the laziness/incompetence of the teacher. At the university I teach at, 95% of the exams are multiple choice which is a very poor way to test but it sure is easy for the computer to grade those scantron forms.
If you give it some serious thought, you can design tests which provide pretty good assessments of knowledge even if they are not perfect. I fear that laziness/incompetence prevents many teachers from doing this.
OGWiseman: "In middle school/elementary school, there should ABSOLUTELY be a sliding scale, and teachers should use grades for the sole purpose of trying to motivate students to work"
And how are you going to motivate me once I learn that demonstrating superior ability means I will be penalized in the future?
Through most of elementary and junior high schools, I did the minimum required to pass, and spent the rest of my time working out ways to torture teachers who thought like that.
M.C.: "The opposite is the top student who studies constantly and reads widely in the subject, but then dismisses his or her string of A's by saying 'I just test well.' What's that about?"
I test well because I think better under stress. That seems to be a very rare ability, although I can't imagine why evolution would have not selected strongly against making stupid decisions while running from a hungry bear. I won't be falsely modest about my very good real abilities in day by day work when I'm not on an adrenaline high, but I test even better than that. Not to mention what it looks like when I'm graded on a curve with those that panic at the words "test", "quiz", and "exam" and get brain-freeze from adrenaline.
OTOH, quite often those students really mean that they're too lazy to keep working at their highest level for more than two hours. And I've been there, too. Engineering school's first year weeder courses cured that - but first I had to drop out of college and scratch a living for a few years. After you've tried to live on wages from washing dishes, farm labor, etc., you might learn why it is worthwhile to spend six hours on one homework problem.
The fact that there is actually a debate on whether a grade should be for 'effort' or 'results' shows how far our standards have fallen in the last 30 years.
Once upon a time in the distant past, 'effort' was the baseline that was expected, and if you didn't put in the appropriate 'effort' in terms of attending class and doing coursework you would fail, the grades from F on up to A measured the quality of that effort, from sub par through average and up to excellent.
Getting a A or even a B for effort perpetuates the false notion that everyone can be whatever they want to be simply by working hard and putting in the effort. This is not true. Everyone cannot be a brain surgeon or a top lawyer or a ballerna simply by trying really, really hard. They have to have aptitude and talent.
It is a crime that we have brainwashed so many generations that equality of opportunity was the same thing as equality of outcome.
Kudos to Brian Greenberg (http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi#comment-1294981 ) for being the only one in the discussion to recognize that the first step (which everybody else pretty much ignored) is to state explicitly what the purpose of a grade is. Only then can you say something sensible about any particular grading system.
If the purpose is to rate knowledge of the material covered by the course, then effort is, and should be, irrelevant. If the purpose is motivation of the student to do his best, then actual, objective accomplishment is irrelevant. You can make valid arguments for either approach -- and equally valid arguments against -- depending on what the grade is being used for. Both in class and for the future of the student.
Sideshow Bob: "Attempted murder, now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?"
Apparently some people are in favor of it.
Anybody can get an A. If you get an A after taking the test hungover from a 5-day binger where you were too busy downing shots to study -- now that's impressive!
If you want standardized grades which show proficiency rather than effort then use standardized tests. That's what they're there for.
"A student who has done consistently excellent, original work for me is likely to draw a much more negative reaction from me for doing ordinary work than a student who has done fine, decent but undistinguished work consistently."
I think what Burke is saying is that he is conscious of behavioral confirmation in his grading. He knows that his expectations for certain students create a self-fulfilling prophesy in leading him to behave in ways that cause them to confirm his expectations. He wants to try blind grading to compensate for his reaction to unexpected performances. What a good idea.
So the key is to perform well and appear to be putting a lot of effort into it. Don't do your best initially, but gradually improve your performance over time. If you are talented or intelligent enough, this will garner the best grades.
In the "real world" of business, it is best to do a good job and seem to be working hard.