The Importance of the Range of Grades
When I was an undergraduate I had the most engaging and hilarious Shakespeare professor. Yet despite his great sense of humour, all of his students saw him as a "hard marker." I have come to realize (through my experience in grad school and as a post-secondary instructor) that he was not "hard" but fair. There are a few things that I will always remember about him. For one, he had extensive theatrical experience in the UK, and referred to Captain Picard as Paddy, I kid you not. (The fact that he knew Patrick Stewart well enough to call him Paddy was mind blowing).
Second, he was one of the first professors to teach me of the "myth of grading via stairs". For those of you who do not know this great little academic urban legend, the story goes that when professors just can't be bothered to grade a paper they go to the top of the stairs in their house or apartment and let their stack of essays/exams, etc. fall. Where the paper falls indicates the grade of the paper. Those at the top of the staircase get A's, those at the bottom get D's or F's.
I realize now in retrospect that this myth must be built on yet another myth, that of quantity=quality. Meaning that the A papers were probably longer, (i.e. heavier) therefore they fall straight down. The lighter papers (you know the ones that are 3 pages below the lower page limit) would float down to the bottom of the staircase.
I sometimes see a sadly similar thing happening with grading. There is a tendency by professors to do one of two things:
1. Average a letter grade to the middle of the range. For example, if a C is a 60-64% the instructor would average a C to be 62% and use that consistently.
2. Use the same 6 grades on all papers and only rarely diverge from that. Meaning there are 80%, 75%, 70%, 65%, 60% and 50% and nothing in between.
Now I like multiples of 5 just as much as the next person, but neither of these approaches work. There is a range of grades for a reason. Each grade indicates and implies a discrete set of criteria. Maybe the student's grammar is faulty, maybe their MLA is incorrect, maybe they have all their citations correct but in the end they rushed and forgot to attach a Work Cited. For all these individual cases there is a range of grades that will take that into account.
A related myth is the, "don't give your student a grade that ends in 9 because that is just asking for trouble." Thus, a grade of 79% is just begging for a student to come up and question why they are 1% away from an A or a 69% is 1% away from a B. I will agree that yes I have had my fair share of students come up to me begging when they get a grade that ends in 9, but that does not mean I will avoid assigning such a grade. If you automatically remove grades from the range as "nonassignable" the whole range falls apart.
The range of grades that we assign is important. We should not be thinking about maintaining a "bell" or avoiding certain "problematic grades" like a 69, 79 or 50. The range is our friend. If you think otherwise, you might as well be throwing the essays down the stairs.
Second, he was one of the first professors to teach me of the "myth of grading via stairs". For those of you who do not know this great little academic urban legend, the story goes that when professors just can't be bothered to grade a paper they go to the top of the stairs in their house or apartment and let their stack of essays/exams, etc. fall. Where the paper falls indicates the grade of the paper. Those at the top of the staircase get A's, those at the bottom get D's or F's.
I realize now in retrospect that this myth must be built on yet another myth, that of quantity=quality. Meaning that the A papers were probably longer, (i.e. heavier) therefore they fall straight down. The lighter papers (you know the ones that are 3 pages below the lower page limit) would float down to the bottom of the staircase.
I sometimes see a sadly similar thing happening with grading. There is a tendency by professors to do one of two things:
1. Average a letter grade to the middle of the range. For example, if a C is a 60-64% the instructor would average a C to be 62% and use that consistently.
2. Use the same 6 grades on all papers and only rarely diverge from that. Meaning there are 80%, 75%, 70%, 65%, 60% and 50% and nothing in between.
Now I like multiples of 5 just as much as the next person, but neither of these approaches work. There is a range of grades for a reason. Each grade indicates and implies a discrete set of criteria. Maybe the student's grammar is faulty, maybe their MLA is incorrect, maybe they have all their citations correct but in the end they rushed and forgot to attach a Work Cited. For all these individual cases there is a range of grades that will take that into account.
A related myth is the, "don't give your student a grade that ends in 9 because that is just asking for trouble." Thus, a grade of 79% is just begging for a student to come up and question why they are 1% away from an A or a 69% is 1% away from a B. I will agree that yes I have had my fair share of students come up to me begging when they get a grade that ends in 9, but that does not mean I will avoid assigning such a grade. If you automatically remove grades from the range as "nonassignable" the whole range falls apart.
The range of grades that we assign is important. We should not be thinking about maintaining a "bell" or avoiding certain "problematic grades" like a 69, 79 or 50. The range is our friend. If you think otherwise, you might as well be throwing the essays down the stairs.
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