Not all grading practices "on a curve" are performed as described by Eric
Bohlman.
OK maybe I am clueless about all of this but I often saw grading on a curve
being implemented when lots of students performed poorly on a test. Thus
test scores were adjusted (usually in the upward direction) to make up for
the poor performance that might be attributed to poor teaching, poor test
construction, bad items or whatever. I never, as a teacher, used any curving
procedure to lower students grades!
But obviously the students scores for those performing poorest on the test
had the highest increases when the curve was applied whereas those performing
well saw little if any increase in their scores. Perhaps that is the
unfairness you and others are referring to.
Or are you referring to the decision to rescale test scores so they fit a
more normal distribution? In which case, I agree that there are problems
with that approach and see no reason for why anyone should assume that test
scores should conform to a normal distribution or force them to do so.
In fact, most teacher-made tests (and here I really want to say all) are
criterion-referenced tests so why can't all students meet the criterion?
There is no reason at all for why that cannot not be done except that some
might think that one instructor grades more leniently than another and at the
university level students will sign up in droves for the class taught by the
instructor ho is the easier grader.
So am I off my rocker or what? (After developing tests as a teacher, I now
develop tests for states and local school districts so if I am missing a big
point here, please let me know. I would hate to think I was causing harm to
students.)
Deanna
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In a message dated 12/22/1999 2:16:36 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> EAKIN MARK E ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> : While I do not grade on a curve, I feel that if reasons exist,it is more
> : valid to adjust atypical grades distributions than not to adjust them.
> : My reason for not grading on a curve is more for class harmony. Grading
on
> : a curve often means taking points away from some students while adding to
> : others. I noticed that a class can suddenly become hostile if some
> : students are treated better than others. This hostile environment can be
> : detrimental to a class's performance also.
>
> To put it even more bluntly, grading "on a curve" really means
> establishing a budget of grade points and then distributing that budget
> among the students, which means that the grade a particular student gets
> depends not only on the distribution decisions but on the size of the
> budget. Where on earth does this concept of a budget come from? It
> implies at least two questionable, to say the least, underlying
assumptions:
>
> 1) That the "total" of whatever it is that grades are supposed to measure
> is a constant depending only on class size.
>
> 2) That it's possible to evaluate the collective performance of a group
> on a task *before* they've performed that task.
>
> The purpose of a budget is to make it possible to allocate limited
> resources. Since when is academic performance a limited resource, or
> even any sort of resource subject to allocation? What on earth does it
> mean to say to a student "your performance would be an A, but that would
> put me over budget so I can only give you a B" or "your performance would
> be a D, but I've got some extra grade points left over so I can give you
> a C"?
>
> The disharmony you talk about is really the result of pitting students
> against each other in such a way that each student's success depends on
> other students' failure. Why would someone want to do this? If we're
> not talking about allocating an inherently scarce resource, the only
> reason I can think of is a deliberate desire to create disharmony in
> order to use "divide and conquer" to prevent collective action. If the
> students resent each other, they won't band together and hatch a plot to
> murder the instructor, but they also won't band together and help each
> other learn (in the Real World, sharing your knowledge with someone
> doesn't "drain" you of knowledge; in fact, it often increases your store
> of knowledge).
>
