recent references to grading on the curve don't quite jibe with my substantial
amount of experience being graded this way. in the (good) engineering schools i
attended in california, the instructor would typically try to write an exam of a
level of difficulty that would produce a good spread of total points among
students, the idea being that relative achievement would be easier to see, not
lost in the noise. i don't recall anything about taking points away from good
students or giving them to poor ones. i also don't recall that they were held
to the normal distribution of grades.
and i believe it is widely accepted that teaching someone else how to do
something is one of the best ways to ensure that one actually understands it.
muriel
Eric Bohlman wrote:
> 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).
--
Any resemblance of any of the above opinions to anybody's official position is
completely coincidental.
Muriel Strand, P.E.
Air Resources Engineer
CA Air Resources Board
2020 L Street
Sacramento, CA 59814
916-324-9661
916-327-8524 (fax)
www.arb.ca.gov
