Bob Hayden wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Peter Westfall -----
>
> Deming himself (if I remember correctly) graded everyone as "A" until
> the administration noticed, and then they made his courses Pass-Fail.
>
> Deming was also very much against ranking students in any way, except
> for the possible exception of identifying an exceptional student that
> others might emulate (the > 3*sigma student) and identifying the
> exceptionally poor student (< 3*sigma) for remediation. All other
> students should be be essentially equivalent, in Deming's philosophy.
>
> ----- End of forwarded message from Peter Westfall -----
>
> Would you recommend this for drivers' license tests? Oh, I get it,
> that's what we're doing already! No wonder.
>
> I have to admit, it would sure simplify quality control if we
> considered anything within +- 3 s.d. to be OK. Then I guess the
> motivation would be to throw in a few clunkers now and then to keep
> the s.d. as large as possible?
Bob,
Your remarks sound facetious. I was hoping to stimulate some serious
discussion. Have you read anything by Deming?
Here is Deming's philosophy, as well as I can paraphrase it for the
present situation:
Students/teachers/administrators form a system. The system has an aim,
which is (presumably) to educate everyone as well as possible, for the
good of the students, and for the good of society. What good does
ranking do? Does it help to achieve the aim of the system? Or rather,
is it simply a weeding process? Is ranking necessary? (these are mainly
Deming's words, but I must admit I see lots of value there.)
Regarding making the standard deviation large, Deming would say that
management's (professors, administrators) job entails minimizing
variation among students. This can be done in the usual ways -
admissions procedures, advising, prerequisites. Individual classes are
"processes" within the larger system, and in the process of continual
improvement, one seeks ways to minimize variation within the processes.
Deming shows a diagram where the knowledge of people before training is
scattered and highly variable, and after training the mean level is
higher but the variation smaller. The inference is that the more
effective the classroom experience, the less variation in the final
levels of knowledge and abilities of the students, as they pertain to the
subject at hand.
My question is again: Is ranking really necessary? Given the goal of
reducing variation, what does it help? Students in competition for the
scarce A's will withhold information from one another. Does this achieve
the stated aim of the system in an optimal way? W. Edwards Deming would
have said, most emphatically, no. He spoke quite often of the
educational system particularly in his later years; his message was not
at all meant to be limited to manufacturing.
Peter
>
>
>
> _
> | | Robert W. Hayden
> | | Department of Mathematics
> / | Plymouth State College MSC#29
> | | Plymouth, New Hampshire 03264 USA
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