Do you consider letter grades to be unfair?

[ElFenix]

yes. in law school, letter grades vastly overstate the separation between students and often end up creating the wrong order. that's important for something where GPA significantly gates your ability to get positions after school.

for example, the final (which is usually the only grade) may have 80 points on it, but what qualifies as an A- is a range of 4 points, B+ is 2 points, B is 2 points, and B- is another 2 points. you also can have someone whose actual points scored is higher but GPA is lower because person A might get high B+s each time while someone else gets low B+s and one A-.

 

[anyusername]

To me the 0-10 scale is the most practical way of assigning grades. Student A gets 93% in an exam, than that is a 9.3. Student B gets 86%, then that is 8.6.

 

[edro]

In today's day and age, there shouldn't be grade letters at all.
Everything should be graded on a 100 point scale with 2 decimal places.

If you got an 89.97% in a class, it should list that... not B+.

 

[Pia]

Do you want to find out that the doctor doing your surgery tomorrow graduated from an alternative medical school where they made construction paper cutouts for an anatomy class, or made sock puppets and put on little skits?

It's a better question if I would mind if the surgeon, instead of having completed all standardized exams medical school has to offer, possessed certifications from top-notch surgeons which say he can do the job. I probably wouldn't.

I do agree with you that in small groups, it's easy enough to know everyone's skill level well enough that it's easy enough to give a grade without needing to rely on exams. I don't need to bother most of the time in my calculus class. However, you say "artifact of mass education" - it's more a necessity of mass education. Do you have any other suggestions for college professors teaching an intro class with 100 students? Do you have any suggestions for high school teachers who have 150 different students through the course of a day? You're ignoring that we DO have mass education in our society.

Not at all - I was explicit about that limitation. My point is we should not consider the limitation immutable. For instance, what if the economy is at a standstill, and skilled manpower is available for teaching much cheaper than usual? What if we can find another school to put our kids into? What if we can pull some strings to limit the amount of students who can enter a course we teach? If we don't keep ideals of higher-quality learning in mind, we won't notice all the chances we get to pursue them.

 

[Born2bwire]

I do. If a [90-94)% is an A-, then it's not fair to the person who made a >90%, but <94%.

Why do they do that? Do they do it because of simplicity or because it can help the lower achievers?

In addition to being unfair, it can cause extra credit not to count at all or it can cause extra credit to count too much.

Wait... what?

Why is it unfair that you get an A- for getting a score in the range that defines an A-?

 

[rudder]

I do. If a [90-94)% is an A-, then it's not fair to the person who made a >90%, but <94%.

If someone makes a 90... their report card reflects an A-. The student still have a 90. This does not mean they have 90%-94%. Grade schools it does not matter much. High school is where this is more important.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Focus on testing is an artifact of a mass education system. If the focus was on learning, I believe there would be more interactive examinations, and teachers would individually certify the student's abilities and understanding in a particular area.

Summing up test scores of different subjects is incredibly stupid.

You would need more teachers in this type of learning environment.

 

[Stuxnet]

This is what GPA's are for.

 

[gophins72]

I find that in modern education, the only thing a test measures is a student's ability to whine. Oh, and material presented in the course. We need to cut funding to tests and attach it to a h1-b cap increase bill.