Grades and Grading

#27
#27
DuckInAPen said:
Which kids in the scenario above have the higher requirements? If we only know the grading scales of the two schools, we have know way of knowing.
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Based on my school, I assume the higher grading standard equals higher requirements. I went to private school, though.
 
#28
#28
The grading scale changes on a system by system basis and very few schools use the 93-100, 85-92, 75-84, 70-74 scale any longer. It is generally 90-100, 80-89, 70-79, 65-69 with some minor variations in between. Grading has become far too lenient and passing has become far too easy. My system operates on a no assessment grade below a 60 and students can retake any assessment; homework has been eliminated because it “sets students up for failure”. The grading system should be a reflection of where the student is in comparison to knowledge of the curriculum. It isn’t.
 
#29
#29
NEO said:
Based on my school, I assume the higher grading standard equals higher requirements. I went to private school, though.
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That's a faulty assumption. Without knowledge of the respective rigor of each school's curriculum, there's no way to make a valid comparison. An 80 at one school may represent greater achievement than a 95 at another. (I think we all understand this in the context of football recruiting.)
 
#30
#30
DuckInAPen said:
That's a faulty assumption. Without knowledge of the respective rigor of each school's curriculum, there's no way to make a valid comparison. An 80 at one school may represent greater achievement than a 95 at another. (I think we all understand this in the context of football recruiting.)
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I was speaking about academia. Not football recruiting.
 
#31
#31
NEO said:
I was speaking about academia. Not football recruiting.
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I brought up football recruiting by way of analogy (we are, after all, having this discussion on Volnation). My point is very simple: not all schools have a curriculum of equal rigor, nor are the average talent and diligence of the student body equal across schools. That one school requires a 93 for an A while another requires a 90 tells us nothing meaningful about what level of achievement either A represents.
 
#32
#32
DuckInAPen said:
I brought up football recruiting by way of analogy (we are, after all, having this discussion on Volnation). My point is very simple: not all schools have a curriculum of equal rigor, nor are the average talent and diligence of the student body equal across schools. That one school requires a 93 for an A while another requires a 90 tells us nothing meaningful about what level of achievement either A represents.
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You are making an assumption.

I can only go by the facts. If all things are equal then the higher grading requirement for an A makes it harder. Your assumption is we do not know if the school with a higher requirement has lower education standards. I see your stance but it’s an opinion no one can honestly debate without using actual schools to compare.

My statement was simple: in my personal experience the higher requirements to get an A at my private school hurt some of my classmates who competed with public school kids to get into specific colleges like Vanderbilt. They still got in but missed out on max scholarship money.
 
#33
#33
NEO said:
You are making an assumption.
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I made no assumption at all.

I can only go by the facts. If all things are equal then the higher grading requirement for an A makes it harder.
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Yes, that's precisely the point: the facts we have been given do not tell us whether "all things are equal." We know only that one school requires a 93 for an A, while another requires a 90. We don't know what a student must achieve in order to earn a 93 at the first school or a 90 at the second.

Your assumption is we do not know if the school with a higher requirement has lower education standards.
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That's not my assumption; it's an objective fact.

I see your stance but it’s an opinion no one can honestly debate without using actual schools to compare.
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That's precisely my point. I teach in a school where the average ACT score is > 30. Most of our graduates go on to graduate from Tier 1 universities. I've had alumni tell me that the work they did at our school was more challenging and more intellectually engaging than what they did at Harvard and Duke respectively. The numeric score we require for an A is substantially lower than what is required by either of the schools referenced in the post that initiated this exchange, but the achievement our A represents is something which relatively few schools require.

My statement was simple: in my personal experience the higher requirements to get an A at my private school hurt some of my classmates who competed with public school kids to get into specific colleges like Vanderbilt. They still got in but missed out on max scholarship money.
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I understood you to have opined that, on the basis only of the incomplete information we were given, an A earned at the first school mentioned above (where a 93 is required) should be given more weight than an A earned at the second school mentioned (where a 90 is required). If this is not, in fact, what you meant, I apologize.

I'm sorry for the experience of your classmates. In the past, such an outcome was likely to be due to an independent school failing to build a sufficiently strong relationship and understanding with the universities in question. Today though, with the Common App and schools vying for prestige by encouraging as many students to apply as possible (so that they can artificially lower their acceptance rate), many applications are disqualified without consideration if an arbitrary GPA threshold is not met (arbitrary in that it does not take adequate account of the rigor of the student's coursework). The schools simply don't have the resources to give due consideration to each of the overwhelmingly numerous applications they receive.
 
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#34
#34
I think what you consider an objective fact I would consider an objective claim.

But I do not know if a 93 A at one school should be held at higher regard than a 90 A at another school as I do not have the specific schools to contrast and compare.

I can say a 90 A at Harvard is probably better than a 98 A at Vol State but without being able to do a deep dive of identical curriculum I don’t have enough data to support a valid hypothesis.

I can only by the fact that statically speaking a 94 A is harder to get than a 90 A across all boards if all things are equal.

This might be the weirdest debate I have ever had on here, by the way.
 
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#35
#35
NEO said:
I think what you consider an objective fact I would consider an objective claim.
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Two schools were compared: the school Jxn Vol's child (children?) attends, where an A is earned with a score of 93 or above, and another school in the same town, in which an A is earned with a score of 90 or above. Unless you are familiar with the two schools in this comparison, that "we do not know if the school with a higher requirement has lower education standards" is not merely an objective claim, but an objective fact. It's a question that can be answered, but not on the basis of the information we've been given.

But I do not know if a 93 A at one school should be held at higher regard than a 90 A at another school as I do not have the specific schools to contrast and compare.
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This is exactly right, and this is all I wanted to convey (I read your response to Jxn Vol and your subsequent response to me as suggesting that a college should, on no other basis than the grade scale, attribute more weight to an A earned at the school Jxn Vol's child attends than to an A earned at the other school he mentioned -- if this is not, in fact, what you meant, I apologize).

I can say a 90 A at Harvard is probably better than a 98 A at Vol State but without being able to do a deep dive of identical curriculum I don’t have enough data to support a valid hypothesis.
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This too is exactly right (though I would add that, given what we do know about Harvard and about Vol State, it's a very safe bet, and a graduate admissions office would not be unjustified in taking it).

I can only by the fact that statically speaking a 94 A is harder to get than a 90 A across all boards if all things are equal.
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But this "across all boards if all things are equal" exists only in the imagination. The reality is that academic rigor differs greatly among schools (which you acknowledge when you write of "the kids with the higher requirements" being penalized in college admissions evaluations when adequate allowance for those higher requirements is not made in the admissions process). Standardized tests (such as the ACT, the SAT, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams, and the like) provide meaningful context for the grades a student has earned at his school and, consequently, a reasonable basis for comparing his achievement to that of other students at other schools. The arbitrary numerical bands that his school assigns to letter grades, to the contrary, provide no meaningful basis for comparison. As we seem to be agreed on these points, it's likely that I mistook your meaning above.

This might be the weirdest debate I have ever had on here, by the way.
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If the fault is mine, I apologize. Given our agreement on certain points above, I suspect I've misunderstood how you intended your response to Jxn Vol's post to relate to the question he asked in it. If that's the case, I'm sorry for having dragged you through a fruitless discussion. All that I've written here has been in reaction to the fallacious presumption (made, it seems, by a few who have posted in this thread) that a higher numeric floor assigned to an A is, in and of itself, an indication of heightened academic rigor.
 
#36
#36
landscapingvol said:
The grading scale changes on a system by system basis and very few schools use the 93-100, 85-92, 75-84, 70-74 scale any longer. It is generally 90-100, 80-89, 70-79, 65-69 with some minor variations in between. Grading has become far too lenient and passing has become far too easy. My system operates on a no assessment grade below a 60 and students can retake any assessment; homework has been eliminated because it “sets students up for failure”. The grading system should be a reflection of where the student is in comparison to knowledge of the curriculum. It isn’t.
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I would claim exactly the opposite. A lack of homework sets a student up for failure.
 
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#37
#37
NEO said:
You are making an assumption.

I can only go by the facts. If all things are equal then the higher grading requirement for an A makes it harder. Your assumption is we do not know if the school with a higher requirement has lower education standards. I see your stance but it’s an opinion no one can honestly debate without using actual schools to compare.

My statement was simple: in my personal experience the higher requirements to get an A at my private school hurt some of my classmates who competed with public school kids to get into specific colleges like Vanderbilt. They still got in but missed out on max scholarship money.
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His point is that rarely are all things equal, and he is correct. Some schools are harder than others. Some teachers are harder graders than others.
 
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#38
#38
Vol423 said:
His point is that rarely are all things equal, and he is correct. Some schools are harder than others. Some teachers are harder graders than others.
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Nothing is ever equal. Ever.

But unless we can compare a specific school and its specific curriculum against each other when their grading standards are different than we have no way of truly knowing if there is a difference between these two schools therefore on the surface the difference in grading structure does appear to make one look more difficult. What lies below the surface may be a completely different story though.

And damn it why must I respond?

This is a major flaw I have.
 
#39
#39
Vol423 said:
I would claim exactly the opposite. A lack of homework sets a student up for failure.
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Yeah no. I used to hate the idea, but actually I am against homework. Students need time to be kids out side of school. They have sports, social lives, family time, chores, jobs etc.... As adults most of us go work our jobs then we go home and have our at home lives whatever that may be. So why do we expect kids to do school all day, then go home and do more school? Imo if less homework was assigned there would be more engagement from students because they know if they get their work done they can go home and just live their lives. I think homework leads to burnout.
 
#40
#40
landscapingvol said:
The grading scale changes on a system by system basis and very few schools use the 93-100, 85-92, 75-84, 70-74 scale any longer. It is generally 90-100, 80-89, 70-79, 65-69 with some minor variations in between. Grading has become far too lenient and passing has become far too easy. My system operates on a no assessment grade below a 60 and students can retake any assessment; homework has been eliminated because it “sets students up for failure”. The grading system should be a reflection of where the student is in comparison to knowledge of the curriculum. It isn’t.
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This I agree with. Honestly my view of school was always its not set up for knowledge its set up for obedience. Show up, shut up, dont be an ass in class and most of the time you can get by with a C.
 
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#41
#41
NEO said:
Nothing is ever equal. Ever.

But unless we can compare a specific school and its specific curriculum against each other when their grading standards are different than we have no way of truly knowing if there is a difference between these two schools therefore on the surface the difference in grading structure does appear to make one look more difficult. What lies below the surface may be a completely different story though.
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Which is precisely why such superficialities should never be adopted as criteria for distinguishing the rigor of one school from that of another.

Thankfully, we do have meaningful criteria (such as standardized test scores, the collegiate success of a school's previous graduates, interviews with college representatives, and the like) that allow college admissions offices to draw informed (if not infallible) conclusions.
 
#42
#42
mr.checkerboards said:
Yeah no. I used to hate the idea, but actually I am against homework. Students need time to be kids out side of school. They have sports, social lives, family time, chores, jobs etc.... As adults most of us go work our jobs then we go home and have our at home lives whatever that may be. So why do we expect kids to do school all day, then go home and do more school? Imo if less homework was assigned there would be more engagement from students because they know if they get their work done they can go home and just live their lives. I think homework leads to burnout.
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There are doubtless contexts in which a policy of no homework would be prudent, but successful completion of a competitive college-preparatory program simply isn't possible without the practice of skills, exposure to monuments of culture, and space for reflection and creation that homework provides. Not every student has the aptitude and motivation necessary for success in such a program, but, to those who do, the elimination of meaningful homework would be a great disservice.
 
#43
#43
Matt2496 said:
Based on my experience at UT the grade scale depended upon the professor. Most of the time, anything above a 92 was a guaranteed A. One class I had completely did away with pluses and minuses and just set anything above 90 as an A. 80-89 automatically went down to a B and so on.

Now I had a certain professor in the EE department that actually curved the class down so that only one or two people got A’s. You could have a 90 average in the class and still end up with a C. That was fun.
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Did UT record plusses and minuses on transcripts when you were there? When I was there (Peyton Manning era), the university did not (or, at least, Arts and Sciences did not -- perhaps the College of Engineering did).
 
#44
#44
DuckInAPen said:
There are doubtless contexts in which a policy of no homework would be prudent, but successful completion of a competitive college-preparatory program simply isn't possible without the practice of skills, exposure to monuments of culture, and space for reflection and creation that homework provides. Not every student has the aptitude and motivation necessary for success in such a program, but, to those who do, the elimination of meaningful homework would be a great disservice.
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We can agree to disagree on that.
 
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#45
#45
Master is an arbitrary term. The level of master is obviously going to differ from child to child.

I honestly like a ten point scale but I don’t think the number itself is very important give most teachers will adjust to the scale.

Edit: I’ll add some areas of education I do think are important though.

1. Integrating tech schools into public schools the way we have community colleges.

2. Make it easier to drop out, eliminate alternative schools, and move all alternative education online
 
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