[lit-ideas] Re: Grade inflation
- From: "Steven G. Cameron" <stevecam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 07:56:48 -0400
**To help monitor plagiarism, often time is spent viewing copies of
previous students' papers in my files. Rereading my comments in the
margins, as well as the final ones to them accompanying the grades at
the bottom, it occurred to me that my perspective is frequently
different than my original impression. Since this is so, isn't grading
an incredibly subjective art -- undoubtedly many of the grades assigned
by me would not be the same if evaluated by another professor (or even
me on different days). What, therefore, is the value, of the grading
procedure??
TC,
/steve Cameron, NJ
Torgeir Fjeld wrote:
> Hello Judith
>
> On 9 Apr 2004 at 22:57, Judith Evans wrote:
>
>
>>The problem with your argument, Torgeir, is that you're making it to people
>>who do the teaching and marking, and albeit they cannot compare their
>>students with all students, can compare one group of students with another.
>
>
> "Problem", I don't know. But, yes, I identify as teacher in this context. And
> your point is well put, which is precisely my point.
> Educators are certified to educate, inclusive of assessing students. We're
> the pros.
>
> -tor
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>On 9 Apr 2004 at 10:19, Steven G. Cameron wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Do any of you have additional insight(s) into this??
>>>
>>>Aiming to halt widespread grade inflation afflicting Ivy League
>>>colleges, Princeton University officials are proposing to limit the
>>>number of A's that its professors award.
>>
>>Well, insights, I don't know. But the sentiment is well known from multiple
>>educational sites (Minnesota, kwaZulu/Natal and Norway). As a
>>version of Moral Panic, it's basically the old Monty Python joke of "kids of
>>today don't know how easy they have it. We had it rough." And
>>since it's usually, as in this story, based on a numerical sort of argument,
>>I find it most efficient to counter it ditto. It goes
>>something like this:
>>
>>Even if it was the case that each birth cohort could be predicted in terms
>>of their distribution according to a scale of, say,
>>"intelligence", it would still remain impossible to predict the exact
>>location of each distributed element. Perhaps ALL the A students of
>>one particular cohort went to the University of Minnesota? Then we would
>>surely agree that it would be wrong to apply this kind of doctrine
>>STRICTLY. It can't be applied on a class level, and clearly even university
>>level would be too small. Would a national level apply?
>>
>>It has been pointed out previously on this list that when it is applied to
>>such a large social group, forms of instruction vary to the
>>extent that it would be meaningless to test for the same things across the
>>population. And then we're left with the general abstracts,
>>"intelligence" and "population". Perhaps it would also be helpful to remind
>>those who are not themselves assigning marks that these kinds
>>of evaluations are spurious and huge simplications of massively complex
>>matters. If only the world could be reduced to analytical
>>categories...
>
>
>
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