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Blair Peterson

Grading Systems - SCHOOL, HIGHER EDUCATION - Students, Grades, Teachers, and Learning -... - 1 views

education.stateuniversity.com/...Grading-Systems.html

history grading assessments assessment Grades

shared by Blair Peterson on 21 Jul 15 - Cached
  • In essence, grading is an exercise in professional judgment on the part of teachers. It involves the collection and evaluation of evidence on students' achievement or performance over a specified period of time, such as nine weeks, an academic semester, or entire school year. Through this process, various types of descriptive information and measures of students' performance are converted into grades or marks that summarize students' accomplishments. Although some educators distinguish between
  • In fact, prior to 1850, grading and reporting were virtually unknown in schools in the United States. Throughout much of the nineteenth century most schools grouped students of all ages and backgrounds together with one teacher in one-room schoolhouses, and few students went beyond elementary studies. The teacher reported students' learning progress orally to parents, usually during visits to students' homes.
  • Between 1870 and 1910 the number of public high schools in the United States increased from 500 to 10,000. As a result, subject area instruction in high schools became increasingly specific and student populations became more diverse. While elementary teachers continued to use written descriptions and narrative reports to document student learning, high school teachers began using percentages and other similar markings to certify students' accomplishments in different subject areas. This was the beginning of the grading and reporting systems that exist today.
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  • But in 1912 a study by two Wisconsin researchers seriously challenged the reliability of percentage grades as accurate indicators of students' achievement.
  • These demonstrations of wide variation in grading practices led to a gradual move away from percentage scores to scales that had fewer and larger categories. One was a three-point scale that employed the categories of Excellent, Average, and Poor. Another was the familiar five-point scale of Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, and Failing, (or A, B, C, D, and F). This reduction in the number of score categories served to reduce the variation in grades, but it did not solve the problem of teacher subjectivity.
  • At the same time, significant evidence shows that regularly checking on students' learning progress is an essential aspect of successful teaching–but checking is different from grading. Checking implies finding out how students are doing, what they have learned well, what problems or difficulties they might be experiencing, and what corrective measures may be necessary. The process is primarily a diagnostic and prescriptive interaction between teachers and students. Grading and reporting, however, typically involve judgment of the adequacy of students' performance at a particular point in time. As such, it is primarily evaluative and descriptive.
  • To ensure a fairer distribution of grades among teachers and to bring into check the subjective nature of scoring, the idea of grading based on the normal probability, bell-shaped curve became increasingly popular. By this method, students were simply rank-ordered according to some measure of their performance or proficiency. A top percentage was then assigned a grade of A, the next percentage a grade of B, and so on. Some advocates of this method even specified the precise percentages of students that should be assigned each grade, such as the 6-22-44-22-6 system.
  • Grading on the curve was considered appropriate at that time because it was well known that the distribution of students' intelligence test scores approximated a normal probability curve. Since innate intelligence and school achievement were thought to be directly related, such a procedure seemed both fair and equitable. Grading on the curve also relieved teachers of the difficult task of having to identify specific learning criteria. Fortunately, most educators of the early twenty-first century have a better understanding of the flawed premises behind this practice and of its many negative consequences.
Blair Peterson

Teacher newsmagazine - 0 views

bctf.ca/...NewsmagArticle.aspx

Grades assessment assessments History grading learning

shared by Blair Peterson on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • In the years from 1911 to 1960, school systems experimented with various letter and number reporting conventions. Percentage grading was the most popular system during the latter half of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century. In that system, the teacher assigned each student a number between 0 and 100 supposedly reflecting the percentage of the material that the student had learned. T
  • One well-known system, which evenly distributes the grades on either side of a bell-shaped curve, would automatically fail a certain proportion of any given group—even in a group composed of known high achievers. Research has shown that rigid adherence to such practices can be very damaging to students.
Blair Peterson

Grading, Assessment, Student Achievement: Revisited - rryshke's posterous - 0 views

rryshke.posterous.com/ent-student-achievement-revisi

grading assessment

shared by Blair Peterson on 02 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The first task in grading reform is to reach consensus on purpose and foundational issues.
  • Are grades about what students earn or are they about what students learn?
  • First and foremost, what is the purpose of grades, what message do we want them to communicate, and who is our audience? 
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  • Grades should provide the basis for differentiating students. Grade distributions should resemble a normal bell-shaped curve. Grades should be based on students' standing among classmates. Poor grades prompt students to try harder. Students should receive one grade for each subject or course.
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