The Controversy of Standards in Grading Systems

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Throughout the education system, the standards of grading continues to be a highly controversial issue; however, grading is an integral component of nearly all educational institutions, including the University of Oklahoma. We continue to question whether grade inflation is a big deal or not and strive try to come to conclusions. Grading will undoubtedly continue to utilize grades as a measurement to gauge a student’s skills and abilities. Students are also given grades as a means to assess their abilities and to provide an opportunity for self-improvement in the areas that have been graded unsatisfactory. Grades attract the most attention but provide the least information, and grading for the purpose of judgment has evolved to be the standard today.
Jordan Ellenberg argues that grade inflation is no big deal, referring to the statistical concept of measurement and distribution through grading. In norm-referenced grading, a student gets a grade based on their relative performance to other students. This is easy for instructors to use, and works well in situations requiring rigid differentiation among students. The individual’s grade is determined not only by his/her achievements, but also by the achievements of others, creating a competition between students. This imposes that the distribution of grades is skewed because no matter if a student technically passed the course or not, the bottom 10% are automatically going to fail. Transferring over to the Criterion-Referenced grading system, it measures how well individual students do relative to pre-determined performance levels. Students are evaluated against an absolute scale, normally a set number of points or a percentage of the total. Since it is an absolute scale, it is possible all students can get all A’s or even all D’s. This imposes that the measurement can severely affect grade inflation because universities differ between their grading scales and most classes differ on how many points or what percentage is required to be assigned a certain grade.
The University of Oklahoma does not use a plus/minus grading system and developed several working statements that they believe to be true. They believe that there is no single best, correct, or ideal grading system. At most universities that have switched to a plus/minus system, there has not been a substantial decline in GPA’s. Neither system appears to offer any documented advantages in terms of pedagogy. And using a plus/minus system is not an effective way to address the problem of grade inflation.

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