How long before all grading is eliminated? (degrees, public school, psychology)

[Grlzrl]

Originally Posted by BOBNCHI

The dumbing down of America continues!

They have to dumb it down. They aren't educating minority kids so they have to lower the bar to pretend like they are.

[JONOV]

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

That was clearly a poorly implemented set of standards, but it doesn't mean that standards are not needed. Are you suggesting that the current system, where grades are basically a random lottery of who gets the easier teachers, is the best system? I'm sure you'll say "life isn't fair". But do you really want your doctor to simply be whoever was the winner of the "life isn't fair" lottery, rather than the best person for the job?

I'd disagree that grades are a reflection of who got the easiest/hardest teachers. I'm not saying that there isn't some "this one is an easy A/this one is a hard grader," but does it keep one out of medical school? I'm not buying that. Admission to med school usually requires two semesters of biology, that includes cell and molecular, with corresponding labs. Then, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics...Sorry, but I don't think that the "life isn't fair" lottery, is keeping qualified people out of med school or getting unqualified folks in. Might it move someone a few spots up or down the class rank? Sure. but it isn't keeping people from graduating or allowing many to graduate that shouldn't.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

I am obviously not suggesting getting rid of the commutative property. What I am suggesting is maybe universal policies as to how to deal with absences for exams or how to deal with spelling errors on exams, and maybe some criteria as to how many students get which grade. Can you really say it's the best system where, for the same class at the same school, with different teachers, one teacher gives literally every student an A, and one teacher gives literally nobody an A?

I think that's really a failure of the department and administration of the school. Honestly, if it's a course where no one gets an A, and it isn't something truly unique and difficult, that's a failure of the instructor.

I don't have a problem if every student gets an "A" in some subjects, depending on the subject. IE, most kids (I assume all of us) in my AP HS US Government class got A's; we also all got 4's or 5's on the AP exam. The subject matter was the subject matter wasn't all that difficult and the teacher was more than competent. The kids were smart enough.

In gym class, if you dressed for gym and participated you were guaranteed an A. Where my brother went to HS and they had Phys Ed every year, they had elective gym classes beyond a couple state mandated ones; you picked Dance or Weightlifting or Yoga or whatever.*

*The reality is that the top kids in the class by GPA are two sport athletes, not by a desire to play sports or even a desire to appear "well rounded," but because at least in my home state, participation in such allowed people not to take Gym, which then allowed them to fill in with Honors/AP courses which allowed a higher GPA. In fact one periodically reads about situations where kids do stuff like take a pre-req Pass/Fail in summer school in order to not have a regular "A" bring down their GPA.

Originally Posted by tnff

Probably most good technical people wouldn't consider VP or CEO to be a success. As one who got pulled kicking and screaming into management, it's a miserable existence. I advise our younger engineers every day to be very sure which path they want to follow.

I've heard from professor friends that one reason so many professors don't actually "retire" once they "retire" is now they can finally do the work they wanted to do without being distracted by all the administrivia that comes with professorship. The work becomes fun again.

Depending where they work they may be brilliant but not interested or very good at actually teaching or at least teaching the more entry level parts of it.

One thing I noticed with a class that I dropped in college and took over the summer at the community college. The community college had much better instructors. Math was merely something I was usually able to be competent at, not exceptional, no real natural aptitude, but at the same time not a weak point or a deficiency.

I took the class with that Professor based on the recommendations of two friends that were both really good at math in math heavy majors. They understood a language that I didn't. That simple.

Originally Posted by tnff

Ironically, when I went through school, as did my kids, quality of output was what was graded in gym and art.

To what extent was Art required though? I never stepped foot in the Art classroom in high school. Whatever requirement they had I believe I took care of with a semester of Chorus/Choir class? That is the definition of a participation A.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

I think the real issue is that teachers don't want to give up their power. They hide behind trying to sound woke, when in reality, they oppose standardized tests since it's the one time they can't give their teacher's pets special treatment.

Teachers don't like standardized tests because it more specifically directs their curriculum to material that's tested, and because the tests are used to grade teachers more than students.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

Maybe that can be a compromise. But the high schools would have to include something with the transcripts explaining their grading system, including details such as whether or not makeup exams are allowed, how grades are rounded, and how spelling errors are handled.

Aside from the spelling errors, all of that has been mostly handled by the administration in HS, and the department at college, and some of it included on the transcript.

[mitsguy2001]

Originally Posted by tnff

Didn't really feel at a disadvantage since everyone I was competing with was on the same scale.

But you are competing against other students nationwide (and worldwide), not just among your high school classmates.

Mainly I just thought it was ridiculous to make a A so flippin' hard to get. But it did have the advantage of minimizing grade inflation. It was essentially designed around the assumption that most students are average and so most students should get an average grade. Almost like a forced ranking system (which I also dislike).

I would say that your school's grading system put you at a disadvantage applying to colleges and scholarships that primarily focused on GPA. It may have given you an advantage applying to colleges and scholarships that primarily focused on rank in class, since it avoided the situation where many students had nearly identical GPAs, differentiated only based on a single easy vs hard teacher. It allowed the rank in class to be determined by the signal rather than the noise. Maybe that was why you don't seem to relate to my situation at all, since I was at a high school where rank in class was determined entirely based on noise rather than signal.

Don't confuse my dislike of standardized tests with approval of how teachers grade tests. The problems I have with standardized tests are due to methodology and application.

Which do you consider the lesser of all evil? Teacher grades or standardized tests?

Far too often, standardized tests are designed to measure one thing but are (mis)used to measure another.

That is not a reason to get rid of standardized tests, but rather to avoid misusing them.

My other objection to standardized tests is they often measure what was taught vs a standard of some undefined curricula that is being tested. Students should not be measured individually against material they haven't been taught. A related issue is different schools in different parts of the country serve different student needs and need the flexibility to provide for those needs.

Some exams, such as the P.E. (Professional Engineering) exam are designed where nobody taking the test has learned every topic. But the P.E. exam is pass/fail, so it's a different situation.

I remember when my father was in college, every professor taught a different curriculum for chemistry, up to the whim of the professor, but they all had to give the same exams, even though no student had learned every topic on the exam. He said it was graded like the SAT where there was a penalty for guessing wrong. The highest grade was a 12, and any grade above 0 (yes, 0) was passing. Obviously such an exam is completely pointless. But I see it as a reason for needing a more standardized chemistry curriculum at that college.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a core set of knowledge that all students need, but that standardized test grades are heavily biased by the non core knowledge questions. You'd get the same score bias if the standardized tests were developed based on the knowledge needed for rural farm life and then given to city kids.

But teacher written exams are no different. They very often focus on trivia that was barely taught, while ignoring the core points of the curriculum.

All of which is completely separate from the issue of teacher performance.

Another interesting thing to note is, for us, A+, B-, etc were basically information for the studnet/parent but not actually used as a scoring system.

At the college that I went to for grad school, +'s and -'s would appear on our internal report cards, but they did not affect GPA, nor did they appear on our transcript. I hated that system, since I got a lot of B+s' and C+'s that were dropped down to B's and C's. The general consensus was that undergrads liked the system, since it reduced the competition to get an A+, but grad students (including myself) hated the system.

One case that really angered me: I worked really, really hard in a class, but just barely missed a B, due to questionable grading, and got a C+, which of course counted as a C. The professor was my research advisor, and I was told by the TA that if I challenged the grade, that my advisor will cut off my funding. On the other hand, there was a student who was caught plagiarizing, but he argued that he didn't know plagiarizing wasn't allowed. Eventually the professor let him off easy and just gave him an F for that one assignment. He ended up with a C-, which of course went in the books as a C, the same as my grade! And he had the nerve to complain to me, of all people, that his C- was unfair!

In another class, I answered a final exam question correctly based on the lecture notes that the professor gave us, but he marked it wrong. It made the difference between an A- for the class (which would have counted as an A) vs a B+ (which counted as a B). I pointed out that my answer was correct based on his lecture notes. But he pointed out that my answer was wrong based on the textbook, and he refused to change the grade. He had just been denied tenure, so he was not in any mood to be giving fair grades.

[mitsguy2001]

Originally Posted by JONOV

I'd disagree that grades are a reflection of who got the easiest/hardest teachers. I'm not saying that there isn't some "this one is an easy A/this one is a hard grader," but does it keep one out of medical school? I'm not buying that. Admission to med school usually requires two semesters of biology, that includes cell and molecular, with corresponding labs. Then, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics...Sorry, but I don't think that the "life isn't fair" lottery, is keeping qualified people out of med school or getting unqualified folks in.

I don't know about med school, but at my high school, which teachers you had would determine what college you got into and whether or not you'd get scholarships.

Might it move someone a few spots up or down the class rank? Sure. but it isn't keeping people from graduating or allowing many to graduate that shouldn't.

But college admissions and scholarships, unfortunately, are based on those few spots and and down the class rank.

I think that's really a failure of the department and administration of the school. Honestly, if it's a course where no one gets an A, and it isn't something truly unique and difficult, that's a failure of the instructor.

I agree, but the administration doesn't seem to care. All they care about is how much time left until they can collect their pension.

To what extent was Art required though? I never stepped foot in the Art classroom in high school. Whatever requirement they had I believe I took care of with a semester of Chorus/Choir class? That is the definition of a participation A.

In my state, when I was in high school, we needed either 1 year of music or 1 year of art. Music typically meant 1 year of band, chorus, or orchestra in 9th grade.

Teachers don't like standardized tests because it more specifically directs their curriculum to material that's tested, and because the tests are used to grade teachers more than students.

I have never heard of the SAT being used to evaluate teachers. What teacher would it evaluate anyway, since it's not based on the curriculum of one class?

Aside from the spelling errors, all of that has been mostly handled by the administration in HS, and the department at college, and some of it included on the transcript.

When I was in high school (and college), each teacher set their own policies as far as makeup exams, rounding spelling errors, etc, and it was not noted anywhere on the transcript.

[JONOV]

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

I don't know about med school, but at my high school, which teachers you had would determine what college you got into and whether or not you'd get scholarships.



But college admissions and scholarships, unfortunately, are based on those few spots and and down the class rank.

Maybe, maybe not. If I take the three state universities that I'm most familiar with, it's complicated to say the least.

Kids from less populous counties have an easier path to admission compared to kids from the major metro areas, not only because the schools were more competitive but because there was more of them

While you are correct in that there are differences in the relative harshness of grading from teacher to teacher, that ignores that there often aren't a lot of teachers for any one course...so for Freshman College Prep English there were two teachers that taught English I or whatever, and one that taught honors English; that's in a medium sized (1350 enrolled roughly) high school.

GPA would be further complicated by your course difficulty; at a traditional 4.00 GPA system, Honors courses meant A=4.5, B=3.5, and AP courses A=5.0, B=4.0.

So, there were kids that gamed that system a little bit, and for some of them it worked out.

Then you have very competitive schools/districts that stop tracking class rank if it doesn't help their students...One larger school near where I grew up did that and saw another 25 kids get accepted into the major flagship state university.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

I have never heard of the SAT being used to evaluate teachers. What teacher would it evaluate anyway, since it's not based on the curriculum of one class?

I'm not talking about the SAT to evaluate teachers. I'm talking about various state achievement tests. IE, North Carolina has End-of-Grade tests for Math and Reading from grades 3-8, and science at the end of 5th & 8th grade. In HS they have a few End-of-Course tests (English II, Math 1 & 3, Biology.)

I had to take similar tests growing up in another state. IIRC we had to pass a test about the US Government/Constitution to graduate HS too.

The SAT/ACT is a tool, useful IMO, but not useful for much in the absence of other information.

[mitsguy2001]

Originally Posted by JONOV

Maybe, maybe not. If I take the three state universities that I'm most familiar with, it's complicated to say the least.

Kids from less populous counties have an easier path to admission compared to kids from the major metro areas, not only because the schools were more competitive but because there was more of them

That is definitely true.

While you are correct in that there are differences in the relative harshness of grading from teacher to teacher, that ignores that there often aren't a lot of teachers for any one course...so for Freshman College Prep English there were two teachers that taught English I or whatever, and one that taught honors English; that's in a medium sized (1350 enrolled roughly) high school.

I graduated from a large high school, so there were a lot of different teachers for the same course, often with extremely different grading policies.

GPA would be further complicated by your course difficulty; at a traditional 4.00 GPA system, Honors courses meant A=4.5, B=3.5, and AP courses A=5.0, B=4.0.

My high school gave the extra point for AP classes, but it did not give any extra points for honors classes, even though they were significantly harder than regular classes. That put us at a huge disadvantage compared to students from other high schools that gave extra points for honors classes.

So, there were kids that gamed that system a little bit, and for some of them it worked out.

Do you really want your doctor to be whoever was best at gaming the system?

Then you have very competitive schools/districts that stop tracking class rank if it doesn't help their students...One larger school near where I grew up did that and saw another 25 kids get accepted into the major flagship state university.

My high school ranked when I was a student there.

I'm not talking about the SAT to evaluate teachers. I'm talking about various state achievement tests. IE, North Carolina has End-of-Grade tests for Math and Reading from grades 3-8, and science at the end of 5th & 8th grade.

Those we had only in elementary and middle school. They were never used to evaluate teachers.

In HS they have a few End-of-Course tests (English II, Math 1 & 3, Biology.)

New York had the Regents exams. Those were never used either to evaluate teachers. Teachers were never evaluated, once they had tenure.

I had to take similar tests growing up in another state. IIRC we had to pass a test about the US Government/Constitution to graduate HS too.

The SAT/ACT is a tool, useful IMO, but not useful for much in the absence of other information.

Which is why we need a variety of tools, not just teacher grades.

[JONOV]

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

Do you really want your doctor to be whoever was best at gaming the system?

You've twice brought up doctors. Are you talking about admission to medical school or primary education? There is no gaming the system to get into med school, in a meaningful way. The chemistry, physics, etc, combined with the MCAT, insure that. I know doctors that started in community college and I know doctors that were at the top of their HS class.

[Arach Angle]

nothing will work until we address the problem(s) causing the situation we see in schools. Bad parenting and social norms are the number one problem, not the schools. The schools are a magnification of the social problems.

Its funny, when we need accounting, law, and building help we go to the people that know the job the job. We love to see people with 15 or 20 year experience fixing our stuff. Teaching, well, they go to anybody else.

Remove the notion that its other people duty to pay for people that fail. Start with teaching people how to parent. Its not the only problem but it will be a quantum leap.

[tnff]

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

nothing will work until we address the problem(s) causing the situation we see in schools. Bad parenting and social norms are the number one problem, not the schools. The schools are a magnification of the social problems.

Its funny, when we need accounting, law, and building help we go to the people that know the job the job. We love to see people with 15 or 20 year experience fixing our stuff. Teaching, well, they go to anybody else.

Remove the notion that its other people duty to pay for people that fail. Start with teaching people how to parent. Its not the only problem but it will be a quantum leap.

It might be we go to those people because they have a reputation for success. An accountant who fails to keep the books properly won't be an accountant for long. A lawyer with a reputation for losing won't last as a lawyer.

But the school system? When they fail, they simply blame someone else and demand more funding. The education system has lost the public's trust. That's why the public looks for someone outside to fix the system because they education system has proven they can't fix themselves.

[tnff]

Originally Posted by JONOV

*The reality is that the top kids in the class by GPA are two sport athletes, not by a desire to play sports or even a desire to appear "well rounded," but because at least in my home state, participation in such allowed people not to take Gym, which then allowed them to fill in with Honors/AP courses which allowed a higher GPA. In fact one periodically reads about situations where kids do stuff like take a pre-req Pass/Fail in summer school in order to not have a regular "A" bring down their GPA.
.

That wasn't uncommon in my kids' high school. We didn't play that game, but there were parents who did. Basically started planning their kids' high school program in 8th grade, filling in with summer school to avoid risk to the grade. All designed to provide the highest GPA opportunity at the lowest risk. It definitely made a difference determining who was and wasn't in the top 10% GPA wise which impacted scholarships.

Originally Posted by JONOV

To what extent was Art required though? I never stepped foot in the Art classroom in high school. Whatever requirement they had I believe I took care of with a semester of Chorus/Choir class? That is the definition of a participation A.
.

Yes, Art could include Chorus, Band, and Theatre. But grading was about more than participation. There was a performance element to it as well.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

But you are competing against other students nationwide (and worldwide), not just among your high school classmates.

I would say that your school's grading system put you at a disadvantage applying to colleges and scholarships that primarily focused on GPA. It may have given you an advantage applying to colleges and scholarships that primarily focused on rank in class, since it avoided the situation where many students had nearly identical GPAs, differentiated only based on a single easy vs hard teacher. It allowed the rank in class to be determined by the signal rather than the noise. Maybe that was why you don't seem to relate to my situation at all, since I was at a high school where rank in class was determined entirely based on noise rather than signal.

Thing is, at the time, I never considered that I was competing against anyone for admission to college. Scholarships, yes, but admission, no. I was admitted to my first choice but didn't get a scholarship right away. Thing is I enrolled and kept at it and with a few weeks, some of those who had gotten scholarships dropped out and I picked up one of those.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

Which do you consider the lesser of all evil? Teacher grades or standardized tests?

I don't look at them as the lesser of all evil. I look at consistent performance over time is a better indicator of ability than a single test on a single day. Lots of people are good test takers and can beat the SAT/ACT. But, as I mentioned about scholarships above, drop out when the reality of college hits. How someone handles the ups and downs of the daily grind is to me a better indicator of how they will handle college than a single test.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

That is not a reason to get rid of standardized tests, but rather to avoid misusing them.

Some exams, such as the P.E. (Professional Engineering) exam are designed where nobody taking the test has learned every topic. But the P.E. exam is pass/fail, so it's a different situation.

PE exam is a different beast, written for a very specialized purpose and a specialized group, like the Bar.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

At the college that I went to for grad school, +'s and -'s would appear on our internal report cards, but they did not affect GPA, nor did they appear on our transcript. I hated that system, since I got a lot of B+s' and C+'s that were dropped down to B's and C's. The general consensus was that undergrads liked the system, since it reduced the competition to get an A+, but grad students (including myself) hated the system.

One case that really angered me: I worked really, really hard in a class, but just barely missed a B, due to questionable grading, and got a C+, which of course counted as a C. The professor was my research advisor, and I was told by the TA that if I challenged the grade, that my advisor will cut off my funding. On the other hand, there was a student who was caught plagiarizing, but he argued that he didn't know plagiarizing wasn't allowed. Eventually the professor let him off easy and just gave him an F for that one assignment. He ended up with a C-, which of course went in the books as a C, the same as my grade! And he had the nerve to complain to me, of all people, that his C- was unfair!

In another class, I answered a final exam question correctly based on the lecture notes that the professor gave us, but he marked it wrong. It made the difference between an A- for the class (which would have counted as an A) vs a B+ (which counted as a B). I pointed out that my answer was correct based on his lecture notes. But he pointed out that my answer was wrong based on the textbook, and he refused to change the grade. He had just been denied tenure, so he was not in any mood to be giving fair grades.

One of the reasons I like your posts is I think you and I had very similar experiences in school and college. I can relate to pretty much every experience you post. For example, a couple of professors almost cost me my scholarship. One, an English prof, took a dislike toward me. At the time I was too young and naïve to understand what was going on. When he asked me to tell stories from my background in class, I thought he considered me a top student. It was only later that I learned he was mocking me in front of the whole class and gave me a D. First D I'd ever gotten in my life.

I've had the good, the bad, and the horrible for teachers and professors. The worst are burned into my brain such that I will never forget. But I haven't let that define me. I picked my career and moved on, leaving them behind in their miserableness. It's part of why in the last 15 years I've volunteered for education outreach from my employer. It's to help the younger generation become scientists and engineers without the crap we had to endure.

Originally Posted by mitsguy2001

I have never heard of the SAT being used to evaluate teachers. What teacher would it evaluate anyway, since it's not based on the curriculum of one class?
.

I think this is part of the discussion. When you're thinking standardized tests, you're thinking SAT/ACT. The rest of us however are thinking about the mountain of standardized tests that are pushed onto schools and students practically from first grade. Those tests define where teachers spend their time because teachers and schools are graded on how students do on them.