
The validity of grades - jseliger
http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades/
======
csmeder
Wow you quoted me :) (I kind of feel embarrassed, its an essay I through
together and then basically retracted because it was so thrown together, and
Iv'e been to lazy to fix it...)

Some thoughts on what you said:

    
    
      "Smeder misses the main point, which isn’t identifying 
      the problem; a gazillion people in the Chronicle of Higher
      Education have said virtually the same thing at various 
      times. The real problem is solving the problem, which 
      requires changing the incentives that drive professors. "
    

Your argument is that we need to put the carrot in front of the teachers. Give
them incentives to be better teachers. I think this is true. But it only
solves part of the problem.

Your solution is analogous to a magazine company giving its sales team
commissions in a world where sales teams don't earn commission. Which I agree
is smart. In fact I hate it that teachers don't have incentives to be good
teachers.

... continuing the magazine company analogy: Yes, I agree sales reps should be
paid on commission. However, if the magazine sucks and the company is poorly
run fixing the issue with the sales team isn't going to fix the company.

-

The point of my essay was to say that the problems with college are out of the
hands of teachers. It is an organizational problem. In a magazine company a
organization problems would be: The magazine has a bad art department or the
main editor sucks at his job. These are issues that correcting the mistake
made with the sales team wont fix. Giving the sales team the commission they
deserve wont put a high quality magazine in the hands of the public. Sure it
will help. The sales team will put pressure on the Art Department to step up
their game. But in the end you cant fix the magazine by fixing the how the
sales team is paid. My argument is you can't fix college by fixing how we
treat teachers. Giving teachers is only part of the solution.

-

Giving teachers incentives is needed, but it won't fix college. The
organizational level issues with college I stated in my essay are:

\- Super Star teachers are not utilized to their full potential.

\- Designing a good lesson plan is difficult. Creating fair tests is
difficult. (And people act like its not!) It's so difficult I think a team of
people using the most recent research on education methods should be doing
this not a teacher by himself with microsoft word and power point open. This
guy [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-linear-
algebra...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/teaching-linear-algebra.html)
should be helping teachers teach. It is ridiculous that most teachers don't
use the education techniques this guy used. And I am sure there are many other
education techniques that teachers could be using but don't.

\- Students are not given adequate resources to study and collaborate (24 hour
study areas, rooms with white boards).

\- Peer tutoring programs and study groups are greatly lacking.

\- Way to many students don't have the basics down: Writing, Spelling, hand
writing, study skills and basic math. The lack of these skills cause many
brilliant and creative students to needlessly to do poor in school or worse
kicked out. For example I got B's and A's in my Special Relativity and Intro
To Quantum Physics class but did poorly in my lab grades because I had bad
hand writing, couldn't spell well or use grammar correctly.

~~~
csmeder
Actually in my analogy changing "Sales Team" to "Writing Team" would be a
better analogy. What I said still holds. Giving the writing team incentives
will increase the quality of some of the articles, but if the editor and art
department still suck the magazine is going to suck.

------
donaq
I decided grades were bullshit and rebelled in college because I failed a
programming module while people who copied my lab work passed. Even worse was
when people who copied my answers for a quiz got higher marks than me even
though our answers were _exactly the same_ (seriously, wtf? was it my
handwriting? ok, so I have really bad handwriting).

Towards the end, though, I realized that spending extra time in college
redoing modules wasn't making any statements other than that I like incurring
debt and am possibly retarded. So I gritted my teeth and finished it. Despite
knowing that grades are mostly bogus, I found to my surprise that I actually
enjoyed that last year in college. If I bothered to learn the course material,
it was good for me. If my teammates in the lab hacked the system by letting me
do all the work, it was good for me because I learned more. And if they got
better grades, it didn't matter, because they're bogus anyway, and I _knew_ I
could leave them in the dust when it came to doing real work.

What I'm trying to say is that grades are bogus, but you should try to learn
the course material in any case because it's good for _you_.

------
emily37
In the vast majority of college classes that I've had, I've seen a pretty high
correlation between the amount I've learned and the grades I've gotten. I've
never felt like I did badly on a test even though I knew the material really
well.

And there are some silver linings to grade inflation. I've never shied away
from a really tough class for fear of getting a really bad grade, because it's
hard to get a really bad grade when you're making an effort. That doesn't mean
it's fair when my GPA is compared to less inflated GPAs, but at least it means
I won't graduate feeling like I skipped out on really cool classes for the
sake of my GPA.

Also, my perception is that grades appear to be inflated because the vast
majority of people here are really smart, work really hard, and learn lots of
stuff.

------
muerdeme
Complaining about the validity of grades is an easy path to deciding "I could
do better than them if I actually tried" for me. I've regretted not trying,
but I've never regretted working hard, regardless of the grade.

~~~
electromagnetic
The problem is that grades in the American system are a mix of work and
teacher opinion. Whilst this can have its advantages, it also makes the system
wholly unfair.

In the UK my eventual grades were decided by an impartial third party who
didn't even know my name or sex, simply a number. Sure in this system I still
could have done better if I'd tried harder, however I didn't try harder and I
don't today, so really it is an apt measurement of my skills. Someone who is
working their ass off at 15 is still going to be working it off at 50, I beat
them without effort at 15 and logic dictates I'll likely still be beating them
at 50 without effort.

~~~
lmkg
We have standardized testing in addition to grades in the United States. They
tend to have their own problems. Foremost among them is that most tests are
designed to be efficiently and objectively graded, which limits the scope of
the test. But, standardized testing really is an entirely separate subject.
The only further point I'll add on it is an anecdote.

One of my friends told me that the college he went to decided at some point
that they think the SAT is stupid and they should stop using it as a basis for
admissions. In order to get an idea of students' math performance, they would
instead submit one (1) graded math test that they had taken in high school.
Obviously, most students submitted the highest score they had achieved, which
was usually the easiest test they had taken. Some students actually had the
integrity to submit tests with mediocre scores but which nonetheless
demonstrated significant understanding of the concepts. One poor professor had
to review these tests, and decided admission based on them. He, quite
properly, gave stronger recommendations for students in the second category,
who submitted harder tests with lower scores. Politics ensued, and there was
no happy ending.

