Was just chatting on Facebook, contrasting (in caricature):
Grading Scheme 1
A: Did everything
B: Missed a few things
C: Missed a lot of things
and
Grading Scheme 2
A: Went above and beyond
B: Performed well
C: Showed some skill
The thought was: Scheme #1 is going to lead students naturally to feel entitled to the A+ as long as they did 'everything that was asked of them' (teacher-centered), whereas Scheme #2 will lead students to reach out to determine what is meant by the difference between 'performed well' and 'went above and beyond' (student-centered).
The first scheme feels like a cascade downward, while the second feels like steps upward.
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I would love to see a document in school's handbooks that described what each letter grade meant, in a practical and meaningful way like this. Serra has done this with some success:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.siprep.org/cattech/p?=402
I'm not fully in favor of their wording, and like the philosophical point that you raise in comparing Scheme 1 to Scheme 2 above - but their articulation is better than most schools' ... largely because few schools have any.
It seems like having such would be Job 1.
ReplyDeleteI've also been thinking a lot about the downward pressure on standards that 'curving' generates.
Imagine you say 'students need to learn X, Y, Z' and write a multiple choice test and a student gets a 50% -- which happens to be the class average. The question is: what does the 50% mean? They didn't learn it? They did learn it?
Or better: say you give them an F for the 50% but allow them to do test corrections to raise to a C. Does this mean they learned it? When if the next time they are tested they get a 50% again? Do you average the C and the following F?
There is enormous pressure on teachers to give 'the right' fraction of As, Bs, and Cs, regardless of student performance.