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Re: grade-grubbing & course selection



responding to a post from "Richard W. Tarara" <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>:

I didn't count the Linear Algebra and the Partial Differential Equations
courses I took as an undergraduate (along with many of my classmates).
We
took these not out of great intellectual curiosity, but rather because we
believed this to be beneficial to our future careers. We are also
talking
amongst ourselves in a rather unique group--mostly Ph.D.s and Master
level
physicists. I'm not sure we can extend our experiences to the general
student body.

I'll go further than that. I'm not sure there is a "general student body."
The student body you deal with is apparently very different from the one I
deal with, and not just because you're at a college and I'm at a high
school. Chances are that burning intellectual curiosity on the whole
happens more than you see it, less than I see it.

What do you mean by hard graders? Is the average grade in the courses
really a C?

Probably not in most cases, though for the history teacher I might be. I
don't know the average grades for these teachers, just their reputations.
I guess by "hard grading" I mean an average grade in the B range, but with
many students getting lower grades than they're used to getting in their
other courses.

If the students are college-prep (and looking toward schools
with competive entrance requirements), are they really unconcerned about
their likely grades?

In some cases yes; in most cases, no. They are very serious college prep
students who have chosen (or whose parents have chosen) this school over
many others in the area because of its academic programs and reputation.
Many of them have pretty high GPA's for the first couple of years of high
school, and by and large they do care about their grades. But they also
care about what they learn, and take classes that interest them. I don't
by any means claim that this is universal here, just much more common than
it seems to be for your situation.


I agree. They want quality but they don't want their kids getting Cs.
When
that happens, they often jerk them out of that school and place them in
another.

We don't have much of that exact phenomenon, but the attitude is certainly
familiar. In my experience, it's not unusual for the kid to be cool with
the situation, except for the pressure from the parent.


If things nationwide were as you portray them, then why is there a
problem
with grades inflating upwards and why did we all get so upset a couple
months ago about a large public university course where one could pass
without do anything (certainly without leaning anything)? Colleges and
Universities are in competition for students and (despite the formal
rhetoric) in most cases the product being sold is a degree (not knowledge
or
skill). It therefore falls on the faculty to maintain the standards that
will ensure that the degrees conferred will represent the prerequisite
gain
of knowledge and skills by the graduates. Unfortunately, we've had
enough
reports, on this list alone, of instructors under pressure from
administrators to back off from some of those standards.

I'm not sure that I agree that there's a "nationwide problem" of grade
inflation. I'm not sure I disagree, either. I agree with what you write
here about standards, and with what you write below about the real damage
done by grade inflation: that students are misled as to their actual level
of ability/achievement/mastery in individual areas and across the board.
I've dealt with that as the misled student, and as the teacher of the
misled students at the next level, and it's terrible either way.

But I'm not sure I agree with the implicit assumption that
standards=grades. We need to be sure that a degree/high-school diploma
represents what we say it represents...as you say, that the person holding
that paper has the body of knowledge and skills you say it represents.
Ideally, that standard is simply in the passing or not passing an
individual course. The A/B/C/D grades simply differentiate levels of
something...natural ability, mastery of material, ability to regurgitate,
homework ethic...among those passing the course, but meeting the standard
of knowledge and skills is a matter of passing the course.

Of course, I do live in the real world, and I have to deal with grades just
like you do, and I certainly wouldn't state that all the students to pass
my class carry away a body of knowledge and skills that prepare them
for...whatever I'm supposed to be preparing them for.

As for the origins of grade inflation, one urban legend has it that it
really got going during the VietNam war, when college professors inflated
grades to help students keep their student draft deferments. Maybe
somebody on the list remembers that era well enough to comment.


Digby


To return a little more to Jim's original concern about grade inflation:
It
seems to me to be a real detriment to send students out of High School
with
3.9 averages and then have these students find out that they are B-
students
in College. I have any number of these B- students come to me totally
confused (yes, about the Physics too) because they just can't understand
why
they aren't doing better in the course. After all, they had all A's in
High
School! Their expectations are that they can get an A with the same
level
of effort (or the same memorization techniques) that they expended in HS,
and it doesn't work. This is not just a problem at the HS level either.
My
wife is an elementary school principal. She has to deal with parents who
can't understand why their children have to go to summer school (based on
the state-wide testing program) when they have been on the honor-roll all
year!

Rick