[lit-ideas] Re: A D is a B...
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 11:52:50 -0600
At the large suburban community college just outside Chicago where I
teach, the student handbook had, until recently, the following
description of what a "D" grade meant:
Grade of D:
1. Below average examination scores but high enough to show
better-than-chance responses.
2. Assignments completed in imperfect form or not completed on
time; quality of work is marginal.
3. Shows grasp of individual units of subject matter but little
evidence of inter-relationships.
4. Shows some application of material, but with little insight.
5. Is a passive listener rather than an active participant in
class discussion.
6. Complies with the attendance regulations of the college.
Notice #1: To pass an exam you need "better than chance" responses.
That would mean an "F" would typically be a 25% score on a multiple
choice exam with four possible answers. That would mean a "D" might be
anywhere from 26% to mayber 40%. Of course I don't know many faculty
that could grade an essay on whether it had "better than chance
responses" so in practice this standard doesn't really mean anything.
Further, I suspect that a test from Brown University on Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics might be more difficult to start with than an exam at
my school, so 25% on the Brown exam might be the equivalent of 75% on an
exam here.
Grades have some meaning, but over-all what they mean is that a student
was able to jump through LOTS of hoops put up by LOTS of teachers and
was either reasonably successful, hence a "good" job candidate, or not
too successful, therefore perhaps not as "good" a job candidate. Grades
are an "academic horsepower ratio;" they measure the amount of work
OUTPUT from a student, but do not realistically measure what a student
got out of the class. When I give a grade, I try to think of it as my
appraisal of the student's output compared to what I think the
reasonable expectation of what a student at that level should be able to
accomplish. But I also try to help students evaluate the class in other
ways besides the grade.
Exams are fascinating. It astounds me that few educationalists have
studied exams. They should be a very good way to understand how
educationals standards have changed over the years, but I'm not able to
get very far if I start asking about what kinds of exams colleges gave
over Aristotle in years gone by; nobody seems to have made a collection
of them aside from individual faculty members.
What got me interested in exams is coming across the 1932 "Entrance
Exam" for Chicago Normal College in a used book store. Many college
students could not pass parts of it as an EXIT exam from college today,
especially if the questions were not from their major field. (I put the
exam on line; it's now here: http://academics.triton.edu/uc/1932test.html .
JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx wrote:
Your system is generous. Here
anything over a 90 is an A
anything over an 80 is a B
anything over a 70 is a C
anything over a 60 is a D
below 60 is failing.
Julie Krueger
========Original Message========
anything over an 80 is an A
anything over 70 is a B
anything over 60 is a C
you get the idea....
--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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