US School Districts: Changing Grading System - Is It A Good Idea?

[Vanadium 50]

One of them explained it this way: if an A is 90 percent or better, then there will be a 10-point question on the test whose purpose is to distinguish the A students from the B students. And so on down the line for each grade.

You could take it a step further. To get an A, you need to co`rrectly answer question 1. No need to answer any other question. To get an B, you need to co`rrectly answer question 2. No need to answer any other question. And so on. Kind of the Priceline of grading.

If you thought they hated it before, they'd really hate that.

 

[atyy]

(Btw, I do think it should be OK for a student who truly has mastered all of the material, even the fine points that go into the "distinguish the A's from the B's" question, to get 100 percent. But I agree it shouldn't necessarily be easy or common.)

I would still consider a test where a student made a 100 to be a failed measurement of the student’s ability. But in practice of course if you have a test where only one student every few years gets that 100 then from a practical perspective it doesn’t matter. You still know those students all have truly exceptional mastery of the material even if you cannot tell which of those rare students has the greater mastery.

In one of my undergraduate classes (organic chemistry taught by Daniel Kemp), the teacher's aim was that everyone should get an A. But he also said that it would be based on mastery of the material, so if anyone deserved an F, they would get it.

Another class I enjoyed was statistical physics. I'm not sure what the grade distribution was when I took it, but you can see the mark distribution is quite high in a recent version: http://web.mit.edu/8.333/www/grades/index.html. In that class, part of the grading policy was "In accord with MIT Rules and Regulations of the Faculty section 2.62, the Physics Department does not grade on a curve. Students are assessed individually, and there is no pre-determined grade spread in any subject. Consistent with this, after Drop Date, students who remain in a class are not in jeopardy of seeing their grades change due to the change in class composition." http://web.mit.edu/8.333/www/admin/Organization.html

 

[Dale]

Because Ms. Brown doesn't have to teach any better. All she has to do is give out more (or only) A's.

Education is an exception because the person evaluating the teaching is the person doing the teaching. Efforts to change this, such as your example of standardized testing, have proven unpopular.

I see your point but it is not because education is an exception to the what you measure is what you get rule. In fact, it is a great example of the correctness of the statement.

If the grades measure the teacher’s whims then because the education system is not an exception you will get what you measure: the whims of the teachers will shift away from Ds and Fs (regardless of student mastery of the material). However, if the grades measure the student’s mastery then because the education system is not an exception you will get what you measure: the material mastery of the students will improve.

One of the big corollaries to the “you get what you measure” rule is that you have to be very careful about your measurement

Efforts to change this, such as your example of standardized testing, have proven unpopular.

Yes. That is a big problem because I don’t know how else to accurately measure students. Our local superintendent complains about the standardized testing, but I have yet to see him propose an alternative measurement. And universities still rely heavily on standardized testing for assessing incoming students.

I think this is a big problem. I know why teachers oppose standardized testing, but I don’t know why anyone else does.

 

[etotheipi]

Another class I enjoyed was statistical physics. I'm not sure what the grade distribution was when I took it, but you can see the mark distribution is quite high in a recent version: http://web.mit.edu/8.333/www/grades/index.html.

I didn't know Obi-Wan Kenobi studied statistical mechanics of particles??

 

[Dale]

Meaning, I assume, that the range of the measuring device wasn't broad enough?

Exactly, yes. I was trying to measure a 1 m object with a 90 cm ruler.

 

[PeterDonis]

Exactly, yes.

Ok. I would say that, in this particular case, lengths greater than 90 cm are rare outliers and the cost of measuring them, for the system in question, is probably greater than the benefit. But that's a difficult judgment call either way.

 

[Office_Shredder]

It seems like a waste of time in my opinion to distinguish the top student in one year vs the top student in another. They will both go on to do exactly the same thing next year anyway, which is go to their class/school of choice. The amount of effort you would put into this meaningless ranking is time you could have spent on other things.

 

[HAYAO]

I'm some random Japanese guy working as assistant professor in a college. I also have grade-school teacher's license. Since most people are talking about the academic performance itself, I'm going to talk about nonacademic grading that was mentioned in post #10.

I'm also one of the advocates for eliminating "behavioral parameterization" in grading. I do not think that most teachers are trained enough in psychology to assess whether a behavior is "good or bad" nor do I think they know how to deal with it. For example, let's say that you have an ADHD student that has not been diagnosed yet. There are several classification of ADHD that may show slightly different behavior. One of the misconceptions about ADHD (depending on the types) is that people believe they can't get anything done. 10% of the entrepreneurs are successful in their new business, while 66% of ADHD entrepreneurs are successful. That's a huge difference. Who is in the position to judge if ADHD is good or bad? I'm unsure. However, most teachers tend to have hard time dealing with ADHD students and they tend to grade them low not just in performance (because they can't concentrate) but in their attitudes and behavior. Labeling certain behavior as "bad" is merely attacking the symptoms instead of assessing the cause, so not only does it not solve anything but it could lead to secondary disorders and low mental health.

That goes the same for personality. In psychology, there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" personality, but how it is used. I've seen several teachers both in USA and in Japan grading their student's behavior based on obedience, which has to do with the personality of agreeableness. High agreeableness is not always a good thing (it could mean that you are a push-over), and similarly low agreeableness is not always a good thing (it could mean that you are too assertive). However, most teachers tend to grade former good and latter bad in class attitude. This favors certain personality trait and this is partially why girls tend to have higher grades than boys because girls naturally have high agreeableness. But let's say for example you have a rather aggressive personality. There is a big difference between becoming a police officer and a mob. 80% of inmates are male, but 93% of the police officers are also male in Japan. It's how you use your personality, not the personality itself.

Many of the teachers I had in the US were great (mainly because I lived in a good district). If a child was too obedient, good teachers taught them personally how to be assertive in the right situation. If a child was too aggressive, good teachers taught them when to use aggression and when not. My parents were toxic parents but I had mostly great teachers when I was in grade school and am really thankful about that.

However, being able to teach "how to use your personality well" is a difficult thing to do, sometimes, even for clinical psychologists. It also has to do with how parents interact with their children. I'm not saying I have a good solution to this, but I do think that a lot of parents and teachers should take advantage of clinical psychologists who knows their stuff, instead of making a judgement of their own. I definitely don't think it is appropriate to grade children based on their behavior without understanding the root cause of human behavior.

 

[symbolipoint]

That doesn't mean it's good. Luckily we got rid of many bad long-established educational practices in the past.I still don't see an argument for the benefit. You just claim that there is one, and that's it.They are quite popular in some states in Germany, for example. Not at every level, but in places where you want a comparable result like the Abitur.

Exactly what is wrong with homework? Exactly what is bad about assigning some credit for it? Do you find that homework is of very little value?

 

[phinds]

It seems like a waste of time in my opinion to distinguish the top student in one year vs the top student in another.

I disagree. It gives high achievers something to shoot for - a motivating force and so it elicits better performance out of a number of students, not just the one who comes out on top (which in and of itself is not, I agree, particularly important, other than that it will look good on a college application or a job application)

 

[HAYAO]

Exactly what is wrong with homework? Exactly what is bad about assigning some credit for it? Do you find that homework is of very little value?

Sorry for butting in, but there's definitely nothing wrong with "homework" itself. I think it's about how we use it. I don' think the argument is that teachers shouldn't hand out assignments and homework. I think it's about assigning some credit to it that goes into the final grades.

As I mentioned in the post above, low agreeableness children and/or low conscientiousness children tend not to do homework. If we focus solely on conscientiousness, even contentiousness have some types (industriousness and orderliness). Girls tend to be high on orderliness while boys tend to be high on industriousness. High orderliness means being able to manage various things with a good balance. That's why girls are more attentive and are consistent in their effort in assignments and homework. High industriousness means being able to put an effort in achieving certain goal. That's why boys may not do too much homework and not pay attention, but conversely do as well as girls in finals. However, there's no real "good" or "bad" in this.

When you assign credits to homework, you automatically put certain personality at advantage; in this particular case, you are putting orderliness higher than industriousness. However, industriousness is no better than orderliness in terms of personality. They are something that works great in certain situation and works bad in certain situation. Considering that everyone is graded by finals equally, putting some credits into homework (which is not the ultimate attainment) doesn't make any sense because it favors certain type of personality.

@Dale made a great point regarding homework, that they are something to be used so that children can learn something from it, and that their ultimate result (the final test) is the "current academic achievement". They should be graded mainly on that. Not on homework.

 

[PeterDonis]

their ultimate result (the final test) is the "current academic achievement". They should be graded mainly on that.

Note that this point of view also favors a certain type of personality: a good test taker, someone who can demonstrate their knowledge in the highly artificial environment of a standardized test. This does not always correlate well with the ability to put that knowledge to actual use.

 

[atyy]

I didn't know Obi-Wan Kenobi studied statistical mechanics of particles??

Probably because it's a prerequisite for statistical physics of fields.

 

[HAYAO]

Note that this point of view also favors a certain type of personality: a good test taker, someone who can demonstrate their knowledge in the highly artificial environment of a standardized test. This does not always correlate well with the ability to put that knowledge to actual use.

What's wrong with "good test taker"? Being industrious is not a bad thing at all in this world. On one hand, you have someone that requires good attention and daily effort to achieve certain goal, and on the other hand you have someone that would just intensively study the night before and reach the same goal. There's no good or bad here. No one is being favored. Whether or not such "test" reflects the real-world practicality or not is not the point of the argument, and even if it does, all it comes down to is "just make better tests".

IQ tests correlates well with career success with about 0.2 - 0.4 correlation. That's definitely not big enough to be considered a deciding factor, but it's still the biggest compared to any other factors such as 5 dimensions in the personality, family background, district, etc. Students and professors of physics and mathematics department have the highest IQ in most universities, and I'm sure you can understand why, because essentially, fair portion of them are "good test takers".

 

[mfb]

Exactly what is wrong with homework? Exactly what is bad about assigning some credit for it? Do you find that homework is of very little value?

Nothing is wrong with homework. Nothing is wrong with assigning a grade to it. But I don't think it's a good idea to make that go into the final grade. That - and only that - is where people disagree with you. Suggesting that anyone wants to abolish homework isn't helpful. No one wants to do so.

 

[atyy]

Nothing is wrong with homework. Nothing is wrong with assigning a grade to it. But I don't think it's a good idea to make that go into the final grade. That - and only that - is where people disagree with you. Suggesting that anyone wants to abolish homework isn't helpful. No one wants to do so.

This teacher tried to have the best of both worlds:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-spring-2013/syllabus/
The final grade for the course will be based on the following equation:
Final Grade = Exam Average * (1 + .2 PSet Average + .05 Clicker Average)
The exam average will be 50% Final and 25% for each mid-term exam.
For example, if you ace the exams, you will get an A regardless of your problem set or clicker averages.
However, if your exam average is low, a strong problem set average can bump you up by a letter grade or more.
If you answer most of the clicker questions correctly, too, you could get nudged up further, e.g., from a B to a B+.

 

[PeterDonis]

What's wrong with "good test taker"?

This:

This does not always correlate well with the ability to put that knowledge to actual use.

Not necessarily "wrong", just that "good test taker" is not the same as what is actually desired: a student who can put the knowledge learned to actual use.

Whether or not such "test" reflects the real-world practicality or not is not the point of the argument

I disagree. See above.

even if it does, all it comes down to is "just make better tests"

Which is much, much harder than your remark here suggests.

 

[symbolipoint]

Nothing is wrong with homework. Nothing is wrong with assigning a grade to it. But I don't think it's a good idea to make that go into the final grade. That - and only that - is where people disagree with you. Suggesting that anyone wants to abolish homework isn't helpful. No one wants to do so.

EVERY course I attended, high school, college, or university, had assigned homework which was required to be turned-in (yes, to the best of my memory- cannot recall any exceptions); and the homework counted for anything from 5% to maybe 15% of the course final grade. Maybe those teachers were using this credit as bribe to make the students study and do homework.

 

[PeterDonis]

IQ tests correlates well with career success with about 0.2 - 0.4 correlation. That's definitely not big enough to be considered a deciding factor, but it's still the biggest compared to any other factors such as 5 dimensions in the personality, family background, district, etc. Students and professors of physics and mathematics department have the highest IQ in most universities, and I'm sure you can understand why, because essentially, fair portion of them are "good test takers".

None of this addresses my concern. My concern is not that "good test taker" has zero correlation with things we actually care about; I never made any such claim. My concern is that "good test taker" is not the same as the things we actually care about. The things we actually care about probably cannot be tested directly in an artificial environment at all. Whether or not standardized tests, or grades in school, are a good enough proxy for the things we actually care about to make using them as metrics worthwhile is a difficult question involving a lot of judgment calls; it is not the straightforward cookie cutter process you appear to believe it is.

 

[Dale]

Not necessarily "wrong", just that "good test taker" is not the same as what is actually desired: a student who can put the knowledge learned to actual use

This is a good point. What we want is to measure the students’ mastery of the material. A test is one way to do that but not the only way.

A standardized test is the most feasible approach I know for judging student achievement across multiple schools and teachers, but for an individual teacher simply with the goal of assessing their own students they could be much more creative.

 

[HAYAO]

Not necessarily "wrong", just that "good test taker" is not the same as what is actually desired: a student who can put the knowledge learned to actual use.

Which is much, much harder than your remark here suggests.

None of this addresses my concern. My concern is not that "good test taker" has zero correlation with things we actually care about; I never made any such claim. My concern is that "good test taker" is not the same as the things we actually care about. The things we actually care about probably cannot be tested directly in an artificial environment at all. Whether or not standardized tests, or grades in school, are a good enough proxy for the things we actually care about to make using them as metrics worthwhile is a difficult question involving a lot of judgment calls; it is not the straightforward cookie cutter process you appear to believe it is.

Yeah, exactly, there's no doubt about it. Have I denied that anywhere in my posts?

Look, we actually agree on most points, and we are drifting away from what actually needs to be discussed. I am merely stating that the tests we have today is the best we've got right now. With the most rigorously general one being the IQ test. Standardized tests as Dale pointed out are also feasible approach. So we have to work with what we have. Teachers (ideally) put hours and hours of effort in making tests that hopefully assess what it's supposed to test, so that's the best we've got. You can't just say "well the test don't account for this and that". What do you suggest we do?

I believe literally everyone here understand how difficult it is to make a "good test". Stop assuming that teachers don't know that. I teach in college, I have my license for grade-school as well. I know what I'm talking about.

Also, I never claimed that you think a "good test taker" has zero correlation. Where have I said that?

The statement about IQ tests addresses your point exactly. You think that tests can't distinguish between "real thinkers" and "good test takers". That's true, but the point is, what do you suggest we do? IQ test is one of the most rigorous general cognitive ability test developed by science, despite not being perfect. People criticize IQ tests for their inadequacy, but it's still the best we've got. The 'best we got' has an correlation with career success up to merely 0.4. I want you to put that into perspective. You are making a pointless statement when you talk about "grades don't fully reflect this and that" because everyone knows that. Yeah sure. In that case, PhD degrees also don't reflect the actual academic ability of the holder but is almost always the prerequisite to get a position in college. So, should PhD be abandoned concept? Or should be replaced with something else? Can you suggest an alternative? The answer is, we can't do anything about the test further than the best we have today. But it's still better than most alternatives, so we have to use it anyway.

At least in my opinion, the alternative is definitely not using homework as a way to grade. (In case you might try to twist what I said, I am not saying you claimed that we should use homework to grade.)

As a side note, I always recommend combination of projects and tests for classes and grade solely based on those two. Tests tend to test one's ability within a given time limit to answer specific questions. Project on the other hand have some level of abstraction that students can freely experiment with. I also suggest teachers use combination of specific problem based projects and fully abstract project (students come up with their own question). I also suggest using standardized tests in combination with normal tests that teachers create because there's some specificity of those test and what it assess.

 

[PeterDonis]

the point is, what do you suggest we do?

My personal opinion is that we overemphasize credentials. You say IQ tests correlate with "career success". Are our schools supposed to be assessing children for "career success"? Why? It seems to me that, if a particular employer wants to assess a particular person, the employer is the one in the best position to know what they need to assess. I believe it's already been remarked in this thread that once you're an adult, nobody cares what grades you got in school anyway.

It also seems to me that it's up to the person themselves to decide what "career success", and indeed "success" or a "good life" in general, means to them and how best to pursue it. If the person wants to take an IQ test, or any other test, to help them do that, that's fine. But that's not what we're talking about here. Nor are we talking about using the results of tests (or homework or anything else) to give students feedback about how they are doing (which I have no problem with--when I was a student I always wanted feedback like that). We're talking about schools assessing students and using the results of those assessments to make decisions about the students. Saying "well, we have to do this and these tests are the best we've got", IMO, is not enough. We should be asking whether we have to "do this" at all, and to what extent.

 

[HAYAO]

My personal opinion is that we overemphasize credentials. You say IQ tests correlate with "career success". Are our schools supposed to be assessing children for "career success"? Why? It seems to me that, if a particular employer wants to assess a particular person, the employer is the one in the best position to know what they need to assess. I believe it's already been remarked in this thread that once you're an adult, nobody cares what grades you got in school anyway.

It also seems to me that it's up to the person themselves to decide what "career success", and indeed "success" or a "good life" in general, means to them and how best to pursue it. If the person wants to take an IQ test, or any other test, to help them do that, that's fine. But that's not what we're talking about here. Nor are we talking about using the results of tests (or homework or anything else) to give students feedback about how they are doing (which I have no problem with--when I was a student I always wanted feedback like that). We're talking about schools assessing students and using the results of those assessments to make decisions about the students. Saying "well, we have to do this and these tests are the best we've got", IMO, is not enough. We should be asking whether we have to "do this" at all, and to what extent.

Oh sure, I agree with that statement. I suck at reading between the lines so I didn't properly understand your points in your previous posts. I also question whether or not we need to know all of the knowledge we are taught in k-12 (if you are in the US) education system to live happy in this world. And of course, it is not up to us to decide what "career success" means.

It seems, however, from the perspective of psychology that people who are satisfied with their life generally have good psychological habits. For example, let's say that you are a pedestrian walking around the sidewalk and a car crashes into you. You break both of your legs. The doctors do the best they can to operate on your legs, and the driver is paying you all the money and compensations. The problem is that you require 2 years of rehabilitation to be able to walk again. People with unhealthy mindset will not engage in the rehabilitation process and spends rest of their life being resentful about the driver and the doctors. People with healthy mindset will engage in the rehabilitation and (possibly) be able to walk again. The difference is whether one is willing to own responsibility of their future, regardless of how wronged they were in getting to the current position.

In that sense, people with a good healthy mindset tend to be happy no matter what kind of situation they are put in. As such, "advanced nations" don't rank high in the "Global Emotions Report", which reports subjective sense of their emotional being of individuals (in contrast to World Happiness Report which is based on GDP, life expectancy, welfare, etc., which I believe is irrelevant). Top ten nations in Global Emotions Report include Ecuador, Philippines, Iran, Nicaragua, and contains literally zero European nations. Most countries consider these countries to have poor educational system. So the answer is definitely not, just studying bunch of stuff.

Nonetheless, if we were to assess whether they will become a workforce in society, then at least some workforce (such as scientists) certainly need some sort of guidelines in terms of their academic success. Developed nations typically require more "brainier" people to sufficiently serve as a workforce because the technology is developed way too far. That's why children aren't a reliable workforce until about 20 years old in developed nations, while in some countries even a 10-year-olds can become a workforce. Our current situation, particularly in the developed nations, is the way they are because it was meant to be. Unless you want to devaluate science and technology and other workforces, I don't see a situation where educational system abandoning tests and grading system. So that's where I disagree with you. Yes, we need them, and thus we need to use the best we've got. It might not be objectively important for happiness, but we certainly won't and can't go back.

 

[Rive]

..."behavioral parameterization" in grading.

Erm... For a class level grading it's not really 'behavioral'. It's more like an overall assessment of results belonging to the relevant area, forced to be represented on a single digit.
What's not really good anyway, but since it's an overall grade, it is kind of expected to be an overall content.
At least, for me.

Exam level/kind of grading is just a snapshot through the instrument of the 'exam'.
Just like that.

Both has their own place and function and I don't think they are equivalent or interchangeable.

 

[HAYAO]

Erm... For a class level grading it's not really 'behavioral'. It's more like an overall assessment of results belonging to the relevant area, forced to be represented on a single digit.
What's not really good anyway, but since it's an overall grade, it is kind of expected to be an overall content.
At least, for me.

Exam level/kind of grading is just a snapshot through the instrument of the 'exam'.
Just like that.

Both has their own place and function and I don't think they are equivalent or interchangeable.

I hope I understand you correctly, but most grading (at least in the district I lived in when I was in the US) contains criteria such as "attitudes" and "attentiveness", which has to do with child behavior during class. I am arguing from a psychological standpoint that favoring certain behavior without actually understanding the psychology behind it is not something teachers are trained to do. So accounting for the daily behavior of children into the final grades is not appropriate. Sorry if I am missing your point.

 

[jack action]

Unless you want to devaluate science and technology and other workforces, I don't see a situation where educational system abandoning tests and grading system.

So one cannot learn science and technology without being tested or graded? I failed to see the link between the two. The only purpose of a test is to prove to others that you know the subject. You don't need to prove something to others in order to learn.

 

[Dale]

The only purpose of a test is to prove to others that you know the subject.

Yes, but in my opinion that is one of the two primary responsibilities of a teacher.

 

[HAYAO]

So one cannot learn science and technology without being tested or graded? I failed to see the link between the two. The only purpose of a test is to prove to others that you know the subject. You don't need to prove something to others in order to learn.

It's not just a tool to prove to a third-party that a student is certified in a certain subject. As @Dale pointed out, testing can be used as a communication tools with the students to assess the attainment level of the subject. Many teachers incorporate interim test, whether they consciously have the intent or not, use interim test to see how much their student learned.

 

[PeterDonis]

f we were to assess whether they will become a workforce in society, then at least some workforce (such as scientists) certainly need some sort of guidelines in terms of their academic success

As I said, if particular employers need to assess people, they are the ones in the best position to know what assessment they need. If a scientific organization, such as a university doing research, needs to do an academic assessment, they can do it. For instance, you might be required to take a standardized test to check your subject matter knowledge in order to get into, say, a Ph.D. program. But most people are not going to try to be scientists so there would be no reason for them to take any such assessment. And a Ph.D. program, while it would probably look at grades from previous academic work if they were available, could probably get along just fine without them as long as it had the ability to require its own assessment test.

Similar remarks would apply to other areas of employment that need "brainier" people as workers: a specific assessment of a person's aptitude for that particular area of employment would be much more useful to them than a general assessment of "braininess", and provided they were allowed to use the former, they could get along quite well without the latter.

 

[mfb]

EVERY course I attended, high school, college, or university, had assigned homework which was required to be turned-in (yes, to the best of my memory- cannot recall any exceptions); and the homework counted for anything from 5% to maybe 15% of the course final grade. Maybe those teachers were using this credit as bribe to make the students study and do homework.

Well, I had the opposite experience.
In high school homework wouldn't be turned in, the teacher would ask a few students to present their work. No direct grade for it. Teachers would grade your overall contribution to the lessons (sort of) each half year, it could influence that grade a bit.
At university homework was graded, it was nice to get feedback, but formally you only used that to be admitted to the exam and the threshold was really low (you could easily stop handing in anything after half of the time if you wanted). The grade for the class was 100% the exam. That grade was largely irrelevant, too - because the final grade of the degree was purely based on oral exams and the thesis. In addition there were only a few classes that you had to attend: You still needed to know what was covered in others, but you didn't need to get a grade in them. That means homework and exams in them were purely optional.

 

[YoshiMoshi]

Wait I don't understand this at all? Can someone sum it up for me?

Basically they want to take race into consideration when determining grades?

-Modified

Sorry for my rant...

 

[phinds]

Sorry for my rant...

So are we

 

[YoshiMoshi]

It would be nice to have conversations on topics like this were we can rationalize our opinions in a calm collect manner. But people tend to loose their cool and scream and yell at each other on controversial topics. God forbid two people sit down like two grown adults and rationalize their views to each other.

 

[Rive]

God forbid two people sit down like two grown adults and rationalize their views to each other.

It's not forbidden. Just requires some good... spirit

 

[Evo]

The title of this thread is misleading. The OP cites an article titled "San Diego Schools Are Changing Their Grading System. Is It A Good Idea?" and somehow PF expands the headline to encompass to all US schools.

The title was changed, because phinds' article included links to articles discussing the change being implemented around the US, not just San Diego.