{"id":1026,"date":"2004-05-03T09:52:33","date_gmt":"2004-05-03T17:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/05\/03\/puncturing-inflated-grades\/"},"modified":"2004-05-03T09:52:33","modified_gmt":"2004-05-03T17:52:33","slug":"puncturing-inflated-grades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/05\/03\/puncturing-inflated-grades","title":{"rendered":"Puncturing Inflated Grades"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read a great essay: How to End Grade Inflation<\/a> by Michael Berube<\/a> (prof at Penn State).<\/p>\n

He humorously identifies the problem: English departments have basically worked on the A\/B binary system for some time: A\u2019s and A\u2011minuses for the best students, B\u2019s for everyone else and C\u2019s, D\u2019s and F\u2019s for students who miss half the classes or threaten their teachers with bodily harm.<\/i><\/p>\n

And then proposes a clever solution: What to do? If we so desired, we could recalibrate grades at Penn State, at Princeton or at any college in the country. The principle is simple enough, and it\u2019s crucial to every diving competition: we would merely need to account for each course\u2019s degree of difficulty.<\/i><\/p>\n

Every professor, and every department, produces an average grade \u2014 an average for the professor over her career and an average for the discipline over the decades. And if colleges really wanted to clamp down on grade inflation, they could whisk it away statistically, simply by factoring those averages into each student\u2019s G.P.A. Imagine that G.P.A.\u2018s were calculated on a scale of 10 with the average grade, be it a B\u2011minus or an A\u2011minus, counted as a 5. The B\u2011plus in chemical engineering, where the average grade is, say, C\u2011plus, would be rewarded accordingly and assigned a value of 8; the B\u2011plus in psychology, where the average grade might be just over B\u2011plus, would be graded like an easy dive, adequately executed, and given a 4.7. <\/p>\n

I have to say, I like it. I don\u2019t think any universities are going to go for it, but I wish they would\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read a great essay: How to End Grade Inflation by Michael Berube (prof at Penn State). He humorously identifies the problem: English departments have basically worked on the A\/B binary system for some time: A\u2019s and A\u2011minuses for the best students, B\u2019s for everyone else and C\u2019s, D\u2019s and F\u2019s for students who miss \u2026 Continue reading \u201cPuncturing Inflated Grades\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-of-random-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-gy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}