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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank

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To: Neocon who wrote (51269)	6/17/2002 9:10:52 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (3) of 82486

"Any student should be able to get an A... It seems that you are all agreeing on a belief statement here about students and A's. It is sort of like asking people if they believe they should have peace. Most normal humans would agree on the premise but few agree on the practical solutions in achieving the goal. Anyway, it is still good to start out with things that you agree on. An "A" is an abstract representation of one students achievement. However, what is the achievement standard that the "A" is being measured against? There are only two foundations that you can base your standard on. One is a norm based measurement. This is comparing the student against the population of students who are also being measured against some standard. So if he achieved an average amount he is a C student as compared to other students (the norm). When norm based grading is the known standard and a teacher "gives" the C student a "B" or an "A" simply because the student had a great attitude and worked very hard, the long term consequences to the student are negative. In future learning situations the student may be "tracked" with a higher achieving group of students. Even though he has a great attitude and continues to work hard his grade compared to the norm is likely to be below average, a "D" or even an "F". The bell curve in this case is not artificially established, it just is. The other standard that you can base your grading on is a criterian referenced standard. In this case you are measuring growth against some criteria. Using this approach you can target learning goals and measure progress toward the goal on an individual basis. The hard working student who makes tremendous progress toward a specific criteria is being measured against the criteria not the norm. In this case an "A" grade given to a hard working student represents his individual progress. All students from the gifted or mentally challenged can thrive under this system. I support a move more in this direction as long as the persons using the grading labels know what it represents. Too often people are trying to make a criterian referenced "A" seem like a norm referenced "A." Social comparisons (like norm referenced grading, physical attributes, wealth etc) help us to distinguish ourselves among our peers. They can be motivating in the competitive sense but have only short term benefits. They should not be used as a measure of success/failure in the general sense. When everybody is getting an "A" it is sometimes more about the needs of the teacher than about what the "A" represents to the students. I have seen situations where the gpa of a classroom is very high but the attitudes and corresponding achievement of the students is nothing to brag about. "If my students are all getting an A, I must be a really good teacher, or at least a really nice person...right?"

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