I keep reading about people grading on a curve and I still can’t grasp what that means. Do those teachers have like a set number of A B C, or whatever, they can give out? And if they’ve run out of A then you get a B? And if the B run out you get a C and so on?
That seems a completely intellectually bankrupt practice! If you don’t want more than X people passing, then just grade people with percentages and let only the first X highest through and that’s it, but don’t lie with fake grades! How insane…
Because if the next cohort is simply performing better you force some students to be graded below their performance, which is unfair punishment, and if they’re worse then some will be graded higher. It’s especially unfair when the composition of students changes rapidly or when used over very mixed groups of students.
Grading should be decided based on achieved learning targets, not group rank. It’s not a fucking sport.
At my uni they’d take the highest grade of the class and reset that as the max points and grade from there.
So if max points on an exam was 120 and no-one scored higher then an 85, then an 85 would be an A, 75 a B, etc.
I’m a mediocre student but an amazing test taker and used to compete on math teams. So some of the math heavy engineering courses I would get perfect exam scores and sometimes the prof would ignore me as the highest grade. I was frustrated at first because my A didn’t mean the same as someone’s but I realized later it was to stop me from getting beat up by a bunch of 30 yo guys.
I still think the ABCDF system sounds so… childish? But presented like that I can see how it makes sense.
I always thought about more absolute systems as more, eh, honest? More of an absolute value of our worth, but in truth it depends completely on our teachers, so it’s not really any “truer” than the letter system. Just a different bias.
I’m glad there are so many interesting answers in this thread :)
Grades in the US are on a 4 point scale, with decimal values between:
3.5-4.0 - A
3.0-3.5 - B
2.5-3.0 - C
2.0-2.5 - D
1.0-2.0 - F
A “good” grade in a class is 3.5 or better, and 2.0 is usually barely passing. Letter grades are used through high school, and high school and college use the 4 point scale on transcripts, and people translate to the letter grades for talking with friends.
In assignments, you get a percent rating, with 60% being barely passing. There’s a lot of granularity there.
Grading on a curve means the professor expects a certain distribution of scores, so of everyone scores poorly, the test is bad, so the scores are readjusted according to that expected curve. If people outperform, then there’s no curve and you get the score you get.
The curve means the class’s scores is fit onto a bell curve. X% pass, Y% fail, etc all according to the predetermined standard bell curve. Doesn’t matter if the class is full of Einsteins or dunces. If 30% is the highest mark in the class then that’s an A+, and so on.
Wait until you hear that universities are just literal paywalls to seperate social classes so poor people can’t get good jobs that once were apprenticeships.
Universities don’t exist to train you for a job, they exist to teach you how to learn. That’s why you take a bunch of seemingly irrelevant classes, such as history, science, and English before you get into your specialization. Basically, half your education is unrelated to your specialty, and much of the rest is theoretical since you’re expected to learn what you actually need in the field.
At the end of the day, most jobs don’t require formal education and they’re happy with practical experience. But most companies won’t hire you wlfornyour first job without some indication you know what you’re doing, and companies trust university degrees as that form of evidence. After your first couple jobs, they really don’t care as much about your formal education.
There are other ways to get that experience, they’re just a lot harder than going through formal education. I’ve hired self taught people that have been fantastic, it’s just a lot harder to prove yourself.
That said, I wish there was a better way to tell kids what other options are. Everyone seems so focused on traditional university education that they don’t consider alternatives.
I assure you that’s not how it works in Europe. Nowhere near as bad as the US, in any case.
I guess that’s what happens when education is deeply ingrained in the culture.
That’s not fair, they’re also debt slavery scams where they sell false hope to people. They even have entire military boot camp lite night release prisons where they brainwash you into going
Haha, yeah, if you actually look at how much you earn vs how much you actually work (quality of life), some trades like electrician or plumbers are so much better off than my doctor wife, it’s not even funny :/
I keep reading about people grading on a curve and I still can’t grasp what that means. Do those teachers have like a set number of A B C, or whatever, they can give out? And if they’ve run out of A then you get a B? And if the B run out you get a C and so on? That seems a completely intellectually bankrupt practice! If you don’t want more than X people passing, then just grade people with percentages and let only the first X highest through and that’s it, but don’t lie with fake grades! How insane…
Grading on a curve is indeed that, and it should be criminalized because of how much it harms students
How does it harm students? A curve is only used if the grade distribution is below expectations. All it does is cover for a bad test or something.
Because if the next cohort is simply performing better you force some students to be graded below their performance, which is unfair punishment, and if they’re worse then some will be graded higher. It’s especially unfair when the composition of students changes rapidly or when used over very mixed groups of students.
Grading should be decided based on achieved learning targets, not group rank. It’s not a fucking sport.
I’ve never heard of a curve being used to adjust scores downward, only to adjust them upward.
I’ve seen dozens of examples
At my uni they’d take the highest grade of the class and reset that as the max points and grade from there.
So if max points on an exam was 120 and no-one scored higher then an 85, then an 85 would be an A, 75 a B, etc.
I’m a mediocre student but an amazing test taker and used to compete on math teams. So some of the math heavy engineering courses I would get perfect exam scores and sometimes the prof would ignore me as the highest grade. I was frustrated at first because my A didn’t mean the same as someone’s but I realized later it was to stop me from getting beat up by a bunch of 30 yo guys.
I still think the ABCDF system sounds so… childish? But presented like that I can see how it makes sense. I always thought about more absolute systems as more, eh, honest? More of an absolute value of our worth, but in truth it depends completely on our teachers, so it’s not really any “truer” than the letter system. Just a different bias.
I’m glad there are so many interesting answers in this thread :)
Grades in the US are on a 4 point scale, with decimal values between:
A “good” grade in a class is 3.5 or better, and 2.0 is usually barely passing. Letter grades are used through high school, and high school and college use the 4 point scale on transcripts, and people translate to the letter grades for talking with friends.
In assignments, you get a percent rating, with 60% being barely passing. There’s a lot of granularity there.
Grading on a curve means the professor expects a certain distribution of scores, so of everyone scores poorly, the test is bad, so the scores are readjusted according to that expected curve. If people outperform, then there’s no curve and you get the score you get.
The curve means the class’s scores is fit onto a bell curve. X% pass, Y% fail, etc all according to the predetermined standard bell curve. Doesn’t matter if the class is full of Einsteins or dunces. If 30% is the highest mark in the class then that’s an A+, and so on.
Usually if everyone gets high scores, a curve isn’t used. The curve is only used if most people score poorly to make up for a bad exam or something.
You still “need” people to fail, so
No, you don’t. That’s not how a curve works, the curve merely improves scores. If a curve would lower scores, it’s not used.
Not what they did for us.
Do you have more details? Because I’ve never heard of a curve being used to hurt students in a class, only to help make up for a bad exam.
Wait until you hear that universities are just literal paywalls to seperate social classes so poor people can’t get good jobs that once were apprenticeships.
That’s a pretty jaded way of thinking about it.
Universities don’t exist to train you for a job, they exist to teach you how to learn. That’s why you take a bunch of seemingly irrelevant classes, such as history, science, and English before you get into your specialization. Basically, half your education is unrelated to your specialty, and much of the rest is theoretical since you’re expected to learn what you actually need in the field.
At the end of the day, most jobs don’t require formal education and they’re happy with practical experience. But most companies won’t hire you wlfornyour first job without some indication you know what you’re doing, and companies trust university degrees as that form of evidence. After your first couple jobs, they really don’t care as much about your formal education.
There are other ways to get that experience, they’re just a lot harder than going through formal education. I’ve hired self taught people that have been fantastic, it’s just a lot harder to prove yourself.
That said, I wish there was a better way to tell kids what other options are. Everyone seems so focused on traditional university education that they don’t consider alternatives.
I assure you that’s not how it works in Europe. Nowhere near as bad as the US, in any case.
I guess that’s what happens when education is deeply ingrained in the culture.
That’s not fair, they’re also debt slavery scams where they sell false hope to people. They even have entire military boot camp lite night release prisons where they brainwash you into going
I mean, not the whole world is the US. Plus, at this point you’ll get a better paying job if you go into trades.
Haha, yeah, if you actually look at how much you earn vs how much you actually work (quality of life), some trades like electrician or plumbers are so much better off than my doctor wife, it’s not even funny :/