So, are you saying that once a student has been admitted grading becomes
irrelevant? If not, then we are discussing two different points. From
another post you seem to be talking about fixed grading curves (a fixed
percentage of the students getting A's, B's, C's, etc). I am talking much
more broadly about the use of grades. The original poster seemed to
believe that any sort of grading or ranking of students was unfair and
that we should just have better admission standards and do away with
grade. My point is that admission standards still rank student, just at a
different point in the process.
Michael
On 22 Dec 1999, Eric Bohlman wrote:
> Michael Granaas ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> : While more careful admissions processes would certainly limit the
> : variability in students, and therefor grading, how is it any different
> : from grading? If you are going to be more careful with admissions you
> : need a ranking system of some sort to determine who will succeed and who
> : will fail. This is just puts the Social Darwinism issue at a different
> : stage of the process.
>
> There's a fundamental difference between admissions decisions and grading
> decisions: the former involve allocating an inherently scarce resource.
> There's a limit to the total number of students a school or program can
> admit, regardless of how certain qualities are distributed among the
> applicants. However imperfect the available criteria for selecting a
> subset of applicants are, you're going to *have* to use *some* criteria.
> All you can do is try to make them as "fair" as possible. There's a
> genuine cost associated with admitting another applicant.
>
> But evaluating performances within a class doesn't involve any inherently
> scarce resource. There's no particular cost that increases with the
> grade a student gets.
>
>
*******************************************************************
Michael M. Granaas
Associate Professor [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology
University of South Dakota Phone: (605) 677-5295
Vermillion, SD 57069 FAX: (605) 677-6604
*******************************************************************
All views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of the University of South Dakota, or the South
Dakota Board of Regents.
