Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study
First, on the history, I believe that grades of A, B, C, etc. are a descendant of the older 1st class, 2nd class, etc. Second, on lost information, I doubt very much information is lost at all because no teacher can actually reliably distinguish between 100 categories. Five to seven is about right. It is mostly noise that is lost. When you include pluses and minuses on just As, Bs, and Cs (plus a D and F with no E) that gives you eleven categories, which is too many already. What about numerical, multiple-choice tests? They aren't (and shouldn't) be given in every subject. Third, on redundancy with SATs, even if it were true that the content of SATs overlaps completely with that of school grades, the quality of schools varies far too widely to take school grades entirely at face value (especially in the US, where schools are (insanely) supported by highly variable local property tax bases, rather than by more stable state or federal levels of gov't). SATs allow you to compare apples to apples (even if it is, sadly, a few narrow slices of the apples). I will take this opportunity to propose (again) the abolition of grades. Grades serve no positive purpose other than to communicate to the next level of education how the student did in the last level of education (and they do it poorly, by trying to squeeze and entire year's worth of evaluation into a single character or two, and even that they do unreliably). On the down side, grades divert students' attention from what they actually learned to what grade they got. If there were no grades, then there would be nothing for students to focus on but what is in their heads at the end of the course, not the letter that is sent on to the next potential level of their education (and they might even read our comments on their essay and assignments instead of just flipping to the grade, and throwing the rest out). So, you will ask, how would a university select new students from those who apply if they didn't have grades from high school? The same way they did in the old days -- matriculation exams (e.g., entry exams). It only makes sense that the cost of selecting new students should be borne by the institution selecting them, not by the one before them. Indeed SATs and similar tests are, in effect, nationwide standardized matriculation exams. They could be improved, to be sure (what couldn't?), but imagine if, instead of endlessly testing, marking, and then debating grades with students, parents (and ultimately lawyers), you could spend that time discussing aspects of the course material they didn't understand the first time around. Chris ... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo On Feb 20, 2014, at 12:46 AM, Mike Wiliams jmicha5...@aol.com wrote: Given the level of education debt in the country, it's obvious that colleges and Universities are making far more money than test companies. Has anyone ever calculated how much information is lost by converting a perfectly good test average into a letter? Did I say letter? We actually convert scores into letters? Imagine if we converted IQ scores into letters. Does anyone know the history of using letter grades? The error in grading as a measurement device contributes to the lower predictive power of grades. If we scored courses better, I am willing to bet that they would be completely redundant with SATs etc and standardized testing would have no unique predictive power. Mike Williams On 2/20/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest wrote: Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the grades as being somehow more fair. So I think they invite the scrutiny. I think any individual grade from the student's middle school or high school record might be less useful than an aggregate GPA. The 20-30 instructors together make an index with considerable predictive power. Not that they shouldn't be held accountable also. But it's unlikely that all 20 or so are grading too easy or too hard. And no individual instructor has the same financial investment in his or her product than the handful of institutions making coin from theirs. That being said, SES, for both grades and test scores, is a problematic variable to tease out from merit/ability to succeed in higher education. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA -Original Message- From: Mike Wiliamsjmicha5...@aol.com To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu Sent: Tue, Feb 18, 2014 11:10 pm Subject: Re:[tips] SAT and High School grade study These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just highlight how grades are poorly designed as a measurement device. What is their
Re: [tips] Professors We Need You!
Kristof missed the boat on this one. If he wants to know why professors are reluctant to enter public debate, he needs to address the quality of public debate in the US political arena. The governor of Wisconsin and attorney general of Virginia both recently used the powers of their offices to investigate and threaten the livelihoods of professors who opposed their political agendas (labor unions and climate change, respectively). Few people are going to tolerate that sort of abuse, and will prefer to debate with those who are actually interested in debate, not just in silencing their opposition. In short, people much more powerful than Kristof have essentially demanded that professor NOT bring their expertise to bear on public debate and professors, understandably, have mostly complied. Chris ... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo On Feb 20, 2014, at 12:34 AM, Richard Hake rrh...@earthlink.net wrote: Some subscribers to TIPS might be interested in a discussion-list Re: Professors We Need You! [Hake (2014)]. The abstract reads: ** The LrnAsst List's Norman Stahl at http://bit.ly/O06Tjn and Nick Voge at http://bit.ly/1j8wBMT have called attention to Nicholas Kristof's NYT Opinion piece Professors, We Need You! at http://nyti.ms/1oIs7jD. In a subsequent blog entry Bridging the Moat Around Universities http://nyti.ms/1kOp8Wi, Kristof: (a) wrote: [Professors, We Need You! was] about the unfortunate way America has marginalized university professors – and, perhaps sadder still, the way they have marginalized themselves from public debate; (b) posted 313 comments (as of 19 Feb 2014 09:04-0800) on his opinion piece, about equally divided between approval and disapproval. One of more substantive comments is by Aaron Barlow, faculty editor of the AAUP magazine Academe, who pointed to Public Intellectuals and the AAUP (Schrecker at http://bit.ly/NZH5E5, and The Case for Academics as Public Intellectuals (Behm, Rankins-Robertson, Roen (BRR) at http://bit.ly/1dDTZky. (BRR + commentors on BRR + myself) list about 40 academicians who have bridged the moat around universities. But the fact that 40 [out of a total of over a million higher-education faculty] have bridged the moat does not negate Kristof's general claim that [professors] have marginalized themselves. ** To access the complete 61 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/1hw62E1. Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University; Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands; President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII); LINKS TO: Academia http://bit.ly/a8ixxm; Articles http://bit.ly/a6M5y0; Blog http://bit.ly/9yGsXh; Facebook http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm; GooglePlus http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE; Google Scholar http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3; Linked In http://linkd.in/14uycpW; Research Gate http://bit.ly/1fJiSwB; Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs http://bit.ly/9nGd3M; Twitter http://bit.ly/juvd52. REFERENCES [URLs shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 19 Feb 2014.] Hake, R.R. 2014. Re: Professors We Need You! online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/1hw62E1. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are on my blog Hake'sEdStuff at http://bit.ly/1oThbQl. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: chri...@yorku.ca. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=430248.781165b5ef80a3cd2b14721caf62bd92n=Tl=tipso=34401 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-34401-430248.781165b5ef80a3cd2b14721caf62b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5n=Tl=tipso=34411 or send a blank email to leave-34411-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
[tips] teaching resources and ideas
Dear Colleagues, Just a reminder, if you are looking for thousands of resources (e.g., activities, assignments, videos) for the teaching of social psychology and related courses, you can find them at http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/. Also, I send out a free, monthly e-mail newsletter in which I share new and newly discovered resources and ideas for the teaching of social psych and related courses. You can subscribe at https://lists.noctrl.edu/wws/info/socialpsy-teach Have a good year, Jon === Jon Mueller Professor of Psychology North Central College 30 N. Brainard St. Naperville, IL 60540 voice: (630)-637-5329 fax: (630)-637-5121 jfmuel...@noctrl.edu http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5n=Tl=tipso=34412 or send a blank email to leave-34412-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study
Ah Christopher Green beat me to a few points ... only _partly_ tongue-in-cheek, I would add that letter grades are close to the magical number of categories (7 +- 2) that limits some of our cognitive processes. When grading essays or artistic performances, can we reliably segregate students into more than 7+- 2 categories? I can't. I think a numeric grade on say, a 0 to 100 or 0 to 1.0 scale may work if we were teaching classes with a very prescribed set of outcome criteria such as (I am scrambling for an example ) a physical fitness test where # seconds and # push ups matter and can be counted, and you were training people to do a very prescribed physical job. We can't reliably reduce the arts and sciences to uni-dimensional scales. I am sympathetic to the no grades approach, which would reduce what we do to pass/fail. I am sure we can find some data out there showing very weak correlations between college grades and life success (whatever that means). The advantage of a good standardized test is that we can compare people across different backgrounds and school districts. The use of standardized tests coincided with the liberalization of admissions at elite schools which used to rely heavily on family history .. see: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/04/nyregion/henry-chauncey-dies-at-97-shaped-admission-testing-for-the-nation-s-colleges.html p.s. I notice that the recent $150 million donation to Harvard U was earmarked for qualified but less-than-wealthy applicants == John W. Kulig, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Coordinator, Psychology Honors Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 == - Original Message - From: Christopher Green chri...@yorku.ca To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2014 8:54:48 AM Subject: Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study First, on the history, I believe that grades of A, B, C, etc. are a descendant of the older 1st class, 2nd class, etc. Second, on lost information, I doubt very much information is lost at all because no teacher can actually reliably distinguish between 100 categories. Five to seven is about right. It is mostly noise that is lost. When you include pluses and minuses on just As, Bs, and Cs (plus a D and F with no E) that gives you eleven categories, which is too many already. What about numerical, multiple-choice tests? They aren't (and shouldn't) be given in every subject. Third, on redundancy with SATs, even if it were true that the content of SATs overlaps completely with that of school grades, the quality of schools varies far too widely to take school grades entirely at face value (especially in the US, where schools are (insanely) supported by highly variable local property tax bases, rather than by more stable state or federal levels of gov't). SATs allow you to compare apples to apples (even if it is, sadly, a few narrow slices of the apples). I will take this opportunity to propose (again) the abolition of grades. Grades serve no positive purpose other than to communicate to the next level of education how the student did in the last level of education (and they do it poorly, by trying to squeeze and entire year's worth of evaluation into a single character or two, and even that they do unreliably). On the down side, grades divert students' attention from what they actually learned to what grade they got. If there were no grades, then there would be nothing for students to focus on but what is in their heads at the end of the course, not the letter that is sent on to the next potential level of their education (and they might even read our comments on their essay and assignments instead of just flipping to the grade, and throwing the rest out). So, you will ask, how would a university select new students from those who apply if they didn't have grades from high school? The same way they did in the old days -- matriculation exams (e.g., entry exams). It only makes sense that the cost of selecting new students should be borne by the institution selecting them, not by the one before them. Indeed SATs and similar tests are, in effect, nationwide standardized matriculation exams. They could be improved, to be sure (what couldn't?), but imagine if, instead of endlessly testing, marking, and then debating grades with students, parents (and ultimately lawyers), you could spend that time discussing aspects of the course material they didn't understand the first time around. Chris ... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo On Feb 20, 2014, at 12:46 AM, Mike Wiliams jmicha5...@aol.com wrote: Given the level of education debt in the country, it's obvious that colleges and Universities are making far more money than test companies. Has anyone ever
Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study
It is not at all obvious. The main driver of debt level is the withdrawal of government support for higher education at both the state and federal levels, which has left universities to make up the deficit through increases in tuition. And imposing a false interval scale on data that are at best ordinal doesn't improve the accuracy of measurement; it degrades it. Changing IQ scores to letter categories (say, at one sigma intervals) would be a good thing. Do you really think that a ten point IQ score difference is much of a predictor of anything, aside from maybe the score on a repeat test? On Feb 19, 2014, at 11:46 PM, Mike Wiliams wrote: Given the level of education debt in the country, it's obvious that colleges and Universities are making far more money than test companies. Has anyone ever calculated how much information is lost by converting a perfectly good test average into a letter? Did I say letter? We actually convert scores into letters? Imagine if we converted IQ scores into letters. Does anyone know the history of using letter grades? The error in grading as a measurement device contributes to the lower predictive power of grades. If we scored courses better, I am willing to bet that they would be completely redundant with SATs etc and standardized testing would have no unique predictive power. Mike Williams On 2/20/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest wrote: Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the grades as being somehow more fair. So I think they invite the scrutiny. I think any individual grade from the student's middle school or high school record might be less useful than an aggregate GPA. The 20-30 instructors together make an index with considerable predictive power. Not that they shouldn't be held accountable also. But it's unlikely that all 20 or so are grading too easy or too hard. And no individual instructor has the same financial investment in his or her product than the handful of institutions making coin from theirs. That being said, SES, for both grades and test scores, is a problematic variable to tease out from merit/ability to succeed in higher education. Nancy Melucci Long Beach City College Long Beach CA -Original Message- From: Mike Wiliamsjmicha5...@aol.com To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu Sent: Tue, Feb 18, 2014 11:10 pm Subject: Re:[tips] SAT and High School grade study These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just highlight how grades are poorly designed as a measurement device. What is their reliability and validity as measures of performance. Somehow the college board and SAT makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to ourselves as grade makers. The error goes both ways. Paul Brandon Emeritus Professor of Psychology Minnesota State University, Mankato pkbra...@hickorytech.net --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5n=Tl=tipso=34414 or send a blank email to leave-34414-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study
As an alternative way of assigning grades, I used a unit mastery system where students retested on a unit until they mastered it, then (and only then) proceeded to the next unit. The letter grade required by the system was then based on the number of units mastered, rather than a judgement of the quality of work done, other than the binary judgement of mastery/no mastery. In an ideal world, students would receive credits based on the number of units mastered, and be billed accordingly. On Feb 20, 2014, at 7:54 AM, Christopher Green wrote: First, on the history, I believe that grades of A, B, C, etc. are a descendant of the older 1st class, 2nd class, etc. Second, on lost information, I doubt very much information is lost at all because no teacher can actually reliably distinguish between 100 categories. Five to seven is about right. It is mostly noise that is lost. When you include pluses and minuses on just As, Bs, and Cs (plus a D and F with no E) that gives you eleven categories, which is too many already. What about numerical, multiple-choice tests? They aren't (and shouldn't) be given in every subject. Third, on redundancy with SATs, even if it were true that the content of SATs overlaps completely with that of school grades, the quality of schools varies far too widely to take school grades entirely at face value (especially in the US, where schools are (insanely) supported by highly variable local property tax bases, rather than by more stable state or federal levels of gov't). SATs allow you to compare apples to apples (even if it is, sadly, a few narrow slices of the apples). I will take this opportunity to propose (again) the abolition of grades. Grades serve no positive purpose other than to communicate to the next level of education how the student did in the last level of education (and they do it poorly, by trying to squeeze and entire year's worth of evaluation into a single character or two, and even that they do unreliably). On the down side, grades divert students' attention from what they actually learned to what grade they got. If there were no grades, then there would be nothing for students to focus on but what is in their heads at the end of the course, not the letter that is sent on to the next potential level of their education (and they might even read our comments on their essay and assignments instead of just flipping to the grade, and throwing the rest out). So, you will ask, how would a university select new students from those who apply if they didn't have grades from high school? The same way they did in the old days -- matriculation exams (e.g., entry exams). It only makes sense that the cost of selecting new students should be borne by the institution selecting them, not by the one before them. Indeed SATs and similar tests are, in effect, nationwide standardized matriculation exams. They could be improved, to be sure (what couldn't?), but imagine if, instead of endlessly testing, marking, and then debating grades with students, parents (and ultimately lawyers), you could spend that time discussing aspects of the course material they didn't understand the first time around. Chris ... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo On Feb 20, 2014, at 12:46 AM, Mike Wiliams jmicha5...@aol.com wrote: Given the level of education debt in the country, it's obvious that colleges and Universities are making far more money than test companies. Has anyone ever calculated how much information is lost by converting a perfectly good test average into a letter? Did I say letter? We actually convert scores into letters? Imagine if we converted IQ scores into letters. Does anyone know the history of using letter grades? The error in grading as a measurement device contributes to the lower predictive power of grades. If we scored courses better, I am willing to bet that they would be completely redundant with SATs etc and standardized testing would have no unique predictive power. Mike Williams On 2/20/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest wrote: Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the grades as being somehow more fair. So I think they invite the scrutiny. I think any individual grade from the student's middle school or high school record might be less useful than an aggregate GPA. The 20-30 instructors together make an index with considerable predictive power. Not that they shouldn't be held accountable also. But it's unlikely that all 20 or so are grading too easy or too hard. And no individual instructor has the same financial investment in his or her product than the handful of institutions making coin
Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study
Interesting approach, so long as your material is easily organized into one-dimensional hierarchy of difficulty. If not, then you may be preventing students from completing unit they could because if other units they cannot complete that were arbitrarily placed earlier in the sequence. Chris - Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 Canada chri...@yorku.ca On Feb 20, 2014, at 10:19 AM, Paul Brandon pkbra...@hickorytech.net wrote: As an alternative way of assigning grades, I used a unit mastery system where students retested on a unit until they mastered it, then (and only then) proceeded to the next unit. The letter grade required by the system was then based on the number of units mastered, rather than a judgement of the quality of work done, other than the binary judgement of mastery/no mastery. In an ideal world, students would receive credits based on the number of units mastered, and be billed accordingly. On Feb 20, 2014, at 7:54 AM, Christopher Green wrote: First, on the history, I believe that grades of A, B, C, etc. are a descendant of the older 1st class, 2nd class, etc. Second, on lost information, I doubt very much information is lost at all because no teacher can actually reliably distinguish between 100 categories. Five to seven is about right. It is mostly noise that is lost. When you include pluses and minuses on just As, Bs, and Cs (plus a D and F with no E) that gives you eleven categories, which is too many already. What about numerical, multiple-choice tests? They aren't (and shouldn't) be given in every subject. Third, on redundancy with SATs, even if it were true that the content of SATs overlaps completely with that of school grades, the quality of schools varies far too widely to take school grades entirely at face value (especially in the US, where schools are (insanely) supported by highly variable local property tax bases, rather than by more stable state or federal levels of gov't). SATs allow you to compare apples to apples (even if it is, sadly, a few narrow slices of the apples). I will take this opportunity to propose (again) the abolition of grades. Grades serve no positive purpose other than to communicate to the next level of education how the student did in the last level of education (and they do it poorly, by trying to squeeze and entire year's worth of evaluation into a single character or two, and even that they do unreliably). On the down side, grades divert students' attention from what they actually learned to what grade they got. If there were no grades, then there would be nothing for students to focus on but what is in their heads at the end of the course, not the letter that is sent on to the next potential level of their education (and they might even read our comments on their essay and assignments instead of just flipping to the grade, and throwing the rest out). So, you will ask, how would a university select new students from those who apply if they didn't have grades from high school? The same way they did in the old days -- matriculation exams (e.g., entry exams). It only makes sense that the cost of selecting new students should be borne by the institution selecting them, not by the one before them. Indeed SATs and similar tests are, in effect, nationwide standardized matriculation exams. They could be improved, to be sure (what couldn't?), but imagine if, instead of endlessly testing, marking, and then debating grades with students, parents (and ultimately lawyers), you could spend that time discussing aspects of the course material they didn't understand the first time around. Chris ... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo On Feb 20, 2014, at 12:46 AM, Mike Wiliams jmicha5...@aol.com wrote: Given the level of education debt in the country, it's obvious that colleges and Universities are making far more money than test companies. Has anyone ever calculated how much information is lost by converting a perfectly good test average into a letter? Did I say letter? We actually convert scores into letters? Imagine if we converted IQ scores into letters. Does anyone know the history of using letter grades? The error in grading as a measurement device contributes to the lower predictive power of grades. If we scored courses better, I am willing to bet that they would be completely redundant with SATs etc and standardized testing would have no unique predictive power. Mike Williams On 2/20/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest wrote: Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the grades as being somehow more fair. So I think
Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study
Not quite sure that this follows. In my case, material is sequential and later material is dependent upon grasp of earlier material. I realize that this would not be true in a survey course such as Intro Psych. Even if material is not hierarchical (on however dimensions), there is still an argument for requiring students to work on one chunk of material and mastering it before moving on to the next. Among other things, this was the first time that some students had ever been required to do more than minimal work; they acquired skills which transferred to other courses. For those curious, my course syllabi are online at: http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~br8520zh/ On Feb 20, 2014, at 1:13 PM, Christopher Green wrote: Interesting approach, so long as your material is easily organized into one-dimensional hierarchy of difficulty. If not, then you may be preventing students from completing unit they could because if other units they cannot complete that were arbitrarily placed earlier in the sequence. Chris - Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 Canada chri...@yorku.ca On Feb 20, 2014, at 10:19 AM, Paul Brandon pkbra...@hickorytech.net wrote: As an alternative way of assigning grades, I used a unit mastery system where students retested on a unit until they mastered it, then (and only then) proceeded to the next unit. The letter grade required by the system was then based on the number of units mastered, rather than a judgement of the quality of work done, other than the binary judgement of mastery/no mastery. In an ideal world, students would receive credits based on the number of units mastered, and be billed accordingly. On Feb 20, 2014, at 7:54 AM, Christopher Green wrote: First, on the history, I believe that grades of A, B, C, etc. are a descendant of the older 1st class, 2nd class, etc. Second, on lost information, I doubt very much information is lost at all because no teacher can actually reliably distinguish between 100 categories. Five to seven is about right. It is mostly noise that is lost. When you include pluses and minuses on just As, Bs, and Cs (plus a D and F with no E) that gives you eleven categories, which is too many already. What about numerical, multiple-choice tests? They aren't (and shouldn't) be given in every subject. Third, on redundancy with SATs, even if it were true that the content of SATs overlaps completely with that of school grades, the quality of schools varies far too widely to take school grades entirely at face value (especially in the US, where schools are (insanely) supported by highly variable local property tax bases, rather than by more stable state or federal levels of gov't). SATs allow you to compare apples to apples (even if it is, sadly, a few narrow slices of the apples). I will take this opportunity to propose (again) the abolition of grades. Grades serve no positive purpose other than to communicate to the next level of education how the student did in the last level of education (and they do it poorly, by trying to squeeze and entire year's worth of evaluation into a single character or two, and even that they do unreliably). On the down side, grades divert students' attention from what they actually learned to what grade they got. If there were no grades, then there would be nothing for students to focus on but what is in their heads at the end of the course, not the letter that is sent on to the next potential level of their education (and they might even read our comments on their essay and assignments instead of just flipping to the grade, and throwing the rest out). So, you will ask, how would a university select new students from those who apply if they didn't have grades from high school? The same way they did in the old days -- matriculation exams (e.g., entry exams). It only makes sense that the cost of selecting new students should be borne by the institution selecting them, not by the one before them. Indeed SATs and similar tests are, in effect, nationwide standardized matriculation exams. They could be improved, to be sure (what couldn't?), but imagine if, instead of endlessly testing, marking, and then debating grades with students, parents (and ultimately lawyers), you could spend that time discussing aspects of the course material they didn't understand the first time around. Chris ... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo On Feb 20, 2014, at 12:46 AM, Mike Wiliams jmicha5...@aol.com wrote: Given the level of education debt in the country, it's obvious that colleges and Universities are making far more money than test companies. Has anyone ever calculated how much information is lost by converting a perfectly good test average into a letter? Did I say
