STAR TREK

[Grey Fox]

I am NOT : Zoupa.

Your blood has: the taint. 

Sure, filthy Hun.

[Caliga]

Sure, filthy Hun.

Actually, I have a terrible confession to make.

My great grandmother's maiden name: LECRONE.

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother's maiden name: CHATEAU.

[Grey Fox]

My grandma's an Anglo.

[Caliga]

OTOH, the Frenchies in my blood were supposedly Alsatians, so I may be free of the terrible Gallic taint. 

[grumbler]

Alright.

Is it understood tho? A's is excellent, C's alright & D's failure no? but it seems the grading % doesn't quite show that.

In school, I always tried to get above 70.

The grading % is meaningless as such.  "Above 70" is meaningless out of context.  Above 70 Zercons? Above 70 degrees kelvin?

I am not sure I have ever encountered a person who doesn't understand that an "A" grade is something to be proud of, and a "D" is something to be ashamed of.  Within the US educational context, the letter grades are clear.  A student who scores a 70 points on my AP Euro test gets an "A" (and, since AP grades get bumped an extra level for being AP grades, that is the equivelent of a 5.0 out of 4.0 in grade point average).  One who gets 40 points gets a C+ (which counts as a B+ towards the GPA) even though it is only 50% of the possible points.

Students who get only 50% of the points on a regular test of mine, though, get an F.  On geography tests, if they only get 80% of the points that is also an F.

So, what matters to US students (and colleges, when it comes to college apps) is the average letter grade, not some percentage or arbitrary "70 points."  In canada, the letter grade system may not be well understood and the system that gave to "70 points" is well-understood, in which case that arbitrary system is the one to use.

So, raw numbers are pretty meaningless, absent some arbitrary system to give them meaning.

[Eddie Teach]

On geography tests, if they only get 80% of the points that is also an F.

I've never had a teacher do that. Any that gave tests that easy were fine with passing out A's like candy.

[Malthus]

The problem is that grades are a mix of the objective (some people actually do perform better than others and try harder), subjective, and purely arbitrary. They will never really be totally uniform no matter what system one uses.

For example - even assuming a teacher is totally objective and consistent, what exactly are they supposed to be measuring - Performance, or effort and improvement? Or a mix of both?

For example, I once took Chinese language in university (bizzare idea I know, but I wanted a challenge). My class was filled with people who obviously knew at least some Chinese already (many of them premeds hoping for an easy mark). In terms of performance, they would easily score straight A's while I would work long hard hours to scrape even a passing grade - yet I consistently got better marks (much to their dismay): the teacher marked based on improvement, and since I started from nothing my improvement was vast compared to the others.

[Josquius]

For example, I once took Chinese language in university (bizzare idea I know, but I wanted a challenge). My class was filled with people who obviously knew at least some Chinese already (many of them premeds hoping for an easy mark). In terms of performance, they would easily score straight A's while I would work long hard hours to scrape even a passing grade - yet I consistently got better marks (much to their dismay): the teacher marked based on improvement, and since I started from nothing my improvement was vast compared to the others

Weird, I've never ran across that kind of grading since school. Which is a shame, would have helped my dabbles with languages...


Thinking about it its the British system which is the strange, shitty odd one out.
70%+ = the top mark.
Then with all the other crap like only once chance to do anything it really messes things up.

But then the new Swedish system isn't much better.
98%+ is needed for a A. I prefer the old one with just G and VG.
And then there's some teachers who only give pass or fail even despite the new system- hence I have one E on my transcript (this being the lowest pass mark)

[Korea]

I enjoyed it. It was a bit predictable in all the wrong places though. And the Romulans seemed like part dirty mexican/part mobster. I did not care for Captain Nero at all.

Really? I totally didn't expect the bad guys plan to be successful.

I was mainly talking about Spock and their solution to the problem and various other things through out the movie.

[Berkut]

For example, I once took Chinese language in university (bizzare idea I know, but I wanted a challenge). My class was filled with people who obviously knew at least some Chinese already (many of them premeds hoping for an easy mark). In terms of performance, they would easily score straight A's while I would work long hard hours to scrape even a passing grade - yet I consistently got better marks (much to their dismay): the teacher marked based on improvement, and since I started from nothing my improvement was vast compared to the others

Weird, I've never ran across that kind of grading since school. Which is a shame, would have helped my dabbles with languages...

In that context, it makes perfect sense though.

You cannot possibly grade a language class on a strictly relative scale if some of the people are starting off with a firm grasp of the language, and others have none. If the class level is appropriate for those who have none, then it is likely that those with a grasp are in the wrong class to begin with.

I dropped a Russian class for this exact reason. had about 30 people in the class (begining Russian for people with zero Russian), and it was taught by this grad student. About half or more of the class were obviously either native Russian speakers, or grew up in a home that spoke Russian, and the grad student taught at THEIR level. Lots of "Wow, you guys are really picking this up quickly! Lets move on!".

Mandatory language requirements for a bachelors of Science degree. Bull. Shit.

I dropped the class, and by the next semester they dropped the language requirements.

[grumbler]

For example - even assuming a teacher is totally objective and consistent, what exactly are they supposed to be measuring - Performance, or effort and improvement? Or a mix of both?

You reward behavior that you want repeated.  Generally speaking, this means effort more than it means outcome.  However, in AP Euro, my grades are 100% outcome-based because that is how the exam is graded.

[Malthus]

Weird, I've never ran across that kind of grading since school. Which is a shame, would have helped my dabbles with languages...

It totally depends on the teacher. Languages suffer from the problem that, more than most other subjects, people come to them with vastly different levels of expertise - often they attempt to solve this problem by having different levels of class (beginner, intermediate, advanced) but in many cases there is not the resources to have so many different classes - this severly discourages newbies (who can compete against those who already speak it?) unless marking has an element of "improvement" to it.

[grumbler]

I've never had a teacher do that. Any that gave tests that easy were fine with passing out A's like candy.

I would guess that 80% of my students get 100% grades on the geography tests, so I still end up passing out As like candy.

[DontSayBanana]

If you had bothered reading my post, you would have seen that I noted never having seen the 7-point scale before, and asked where you had gotten it (and the title of "Traditional US Grading Tutorial").  Whining that Tim may use a seven-point scale (when, in fact, he may not) isn't an answer to the question.

If you don't want to answer the question, fine.  But don't attribute your failure to answer on the argument that there was anything "incoherent" about:

1. "I've never heard of the "Traditional US Grading Tutorial" (nor is it in google) nor have I ever (AFAICR) taken a course below college level that used anything like this scale."

2. "Kinda curious where you got it from" or

3. "This "modified" grading scale (it isn't a grading "method") is called the College Board Grading Scale and is used pretty much uniformly throughout the US."

Points 1 & 3. I made up the name, because I didn't know the formal names for them. Every public elementary school I've heard of in NJ, PA, and NY uses a combination of the 7-point scale and NS/S/E. Some of the private schools are switching to the CBGS format to try to show more As in testing.

Point 2. My last two jobs kept me in touch with a LOT of public school teachers and principals across the country, and my grandmother teaching in PA has been griping about the format change for almost a year now.

[Berkut]

Harris Hill elementary school in Penfield, New York does not use a 7 point scale.

So now there is at least 1 that you have heard of that does not.