The proper distribution of credits opens up the complex problem of grading systems. The grading system is the basis of academic rewards and penalties. Yet it is recognized by pupils and teachers alike to be full of pitfalls. The ordinary system uses letters such as E for excellent, P for poor; or percentage designations such as 100 for perfect, 60 or 75 for just passing; or some other similar symbolism.
The ambiguities in the system arise in part out of the fact that individual teachers have the most divergent notions as to the meaning of each of the symbols.
Let us assume the case of a new teacher who has just come to a given school trying to find out what the other teachers mean by their marks. This teacher will be told that 100 per cent means perfection. But what is perfection in a subject? Is the student perfect when he tells what is in the textbook, or is there a demand for original thinking? Still more doubtful is the meaning of 90 per cent. Does this signify nine tenths of what a student might know, or is it a kind of vague statement meaning that the student is in the upper part of the class?
The new teacher will be very likely at this point, if he is intelligent about marking systems, to ask how many students in a class usually get 100 or 90. This question is based on a conception of the meaning of marks entirely different from that which was referred to in the last paragraph. Marks may refer, and often do refer, not to the degree of perfection in knowledge but to the relative position of the student in his class. Some teachers mark the best pupil 100 and then try to grade the rest from this standard.
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.