Experiments with Grading Systems
Examples could be multiplied indefinitely, showing that there is great vagueness in regard to the meaning of marks. We are, however, more interested in the efforts which are being made to overcome these unsatisfactory conditions.
First, teachers are being informed by comparative diagrams what the relation of their own marking system is to the general average of their colleagues. A few years ago the president of Harvard sent to each member of the faculty a chart showing the curve of distribution, reproduced in Fig. 16, and, superimposed on this, the curve of the individual instructor’s marks. The standard curve was derived by averaging the marks from eight large courses.
Fig. 16. Distribution of grades in various Harvard classes
The full-drawn line shows the average percentage of grades in eight large elementary courses. The dotted line and the broken line represent two departures from the average practice by instructors in two different departments
Second, the University of Missouri[82] has frankly given up trying to determine whether students are 100 per cent perfect in a subject or only 80 per cent. All students in all classes are arranged in the order of their excellence in their classes. The marks, in other words, are relative. When all the marks of the institution are compiled, there are a few students who are relatively very high, many who are mediocre, and a few who are low. The low ones are dropped, the high ones get honors, and the mediocres get the reward due the average student. On the basis of this kind of a classification the University gives to a student who stands in the uppermost 5 per cent of his class 1.2 credits toward graduation. The student in the next lower 20 per cent gets 1.1 credits. The 50 per cent who are mediocre get the normal credit of 1.0, while the lower ranks are penalized from 0.1 to all credit.
A third effort to improve the situation is being tried in the high school of Kansas City, Kansas.[83] In each classroom is posted a conspicuous chart telling students what they must do to get high grades. One may pass with a C if one does the required work taken up in a sixty-minute combination recitation and study period. If one is to receive B, it is required among other virtues that one be sufficiently well prepared to recite without prompting from the teacher. Furthermore, one must do outside work and report on it. The C pupil does his work in the class, but that is not enough for a B. The A pupil must fulfill even higher requirements. Each department is allowed to post, in addition to the general statements made for the whole school, special regulations which obtain for the work of that particular department.
This system is a kind of public definition of the marks, and has the great advantage of clearing up in the minds of the students what often seems to them to be an unjust and mysterious scheme.