Herman Rubin wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> EAKIN MARK E <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >The students did understand that I said that 79 was a C. Some told me
> >later that since many faculty round 79 up to a B, they feel that I
> >should also round it up regardless of what I said on the syllabus.
>
> I do not give that type of exams. I would have 70% to be an A.
I'm afraid I don't see the rationale for this. An examination has
little value *except* as a way of setting grades; and setting an exam so
hard
that a student performing at an excellent level will only get 70% would
seem to reduce the sensitivity of the test as a measuring instrument in
the range for which it will be used. It's like the macho speedometers
on rather basic cars that extend to a speed (say 220kph) that the car
could only reach in free fall.
An effectively open-ended exam, such as the pre-reform Cambridge Tripos
or the Putnam contest, is another matter; in this case the distinctions
between the upper end of the score range is *not* discarded (Today, if I
remember correctly, the raw Tripos scores are not released, though
student rumor had it that they were a rather open secret among the
dons.)
I suppose that one might give an exam in this way, pitched well above
the level that one would expect of an excellent student, if one intended
to use it as a basis for recommendations to other schools or employers,
for outstanding students, that effectively constituted a private
extension of the grade range (... A, A+, A++, A+++ ...), and if one
considered this use to be more important than the university's intended
use. I think the ethics of this are dubious (and I am not sure that
examinations are the best tool to use at this level anyway.)
One might also do so if grade inflation at one's institution were so
out-of-control that one were obliged to give an A for what would have
been B- work twenty years ago. In that context, I would respond to
Herman's quote
above "I don't give those kind of grades; I would have 70% be a B-."
-Robert Dawson
.
.
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