I’m on a huge Daring Fireball kick recently, it seems. Gruber’s just got me goin’! This time he quotes an article from USA Today reporting on “minimum 50″ grading policies:
Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.
“It’s a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F,” says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic. “The statistical tweak of saying the F is now 50 instead of zero is a tiny part of how we can have better grading practices to encourage student performance.”
Gruber goes on to say:
This is so profoundly stupid it’s hard to believe it isn’t from The Onion. That F covers 0–59 doesn’t make it six times more likely that a student will get an F than any other grade, unless test scores are based on random numbers rather than actual performance.
I couldn’t agree more. If that statement by Reeves were true, then many more students would be failing exams throughout all the levels of school. Instead, most students pass at some level, even if it is just barely. Some time after posting, he did edit his post to clarify:
Update: Clearly, when you’re talking about what to do with grades lower than 50, you’re dealing with students who need help. Maybe this “minimum 50″ policy is a good way to do that; I don’t know. What I’m saying is stupid is this Reeves fellow’s argument about it being a “classic mathematical dilemma”.
(Via ? Daring Fireball by way of USA Today)
