Such a scheme will also give highest grades to the students who know the most, without regard to their instructors' competence or peers' ability (among the other advantages you list).īut for classes that do not fall in either of these categories, I submit that "curving" and setting "absolute" standards are just two ways of framing the same practice (and "curving" is more honest). These classes are taught so often that it is very possible to design a sensible, static "absolute" grading scheme. Very large classes like calculus I and physics I, particularly when there are multiple sections of each class.It is very possible that these students all deserve As or Fs and we should not try to impose a bell curve where there is none. Very small classes with fewer than, say, ten students.I agree with you for two types of courses: Because of his fault, the students are exposed to an unfair grading system.Īm I missing something here? Are there any objective arguments in favour of grading by curve, and what are these? If not, or they are weak, what are the reasons it's still used, apparently widely? The responsible teacher failed to set exact, absolute, and clear requirements, and/or is lazy or unable to do so.If a student is good enough, he should pass. This is against the spirit of education IMO. The department expects an exact number of students to pass the course.In fact, I see only two cases where it may be used, and both of them are a fault of administration: Decimating the collective amount of obtained knowledge, this goes against the very spirit of education.Īll these problems, and I'm struggling to come up with any argument in favor of grading by curve. But learning by curve creates an artificial race situation, where the students are actively harming themselves by helping others. If a student missed a class due to valid reasons, classmates help to give and explain the missed material. If an otherwise smart student doesn't understand some part and is roadblocked, others would explain. Ideally, the students help each other in preparation. Also, it creates and encourages an unhealthy and harmful class dynamic.In a similar way as the point before, a student shouldn't be faced with the negative, possibly serious, consequences of failing, just because by chance there were a lot of very bright students in the class. Good students may fail, and bad students may pass. If almost everyone is a genius, there will be the same number of failures as if everyone did poorly. No matter the collective results, a given number of students will always inevitably fail.Hence, the student's mark is influenced by circumstances completely outside of his control, and unrelated to his knowledge. Here, the mark depends on factors like how "bright" are the other students, how much effort they put into preparation, and even on whether they cheated. The grade should only be influenced by factors under the direct influence of the student.It can't be correlated to the amount of learned knowledge. But here, the grade only reflects the student's knowledge relative to class members. An A+ should worth the same every time in the same test. Similarly, the grade should directly and absolutely reflect the knowledge of the student.The fact that the same ratio of comprehended material can give an A in one year, then a C in the next year, tells that the requirements of the course itself are also very unclear.
The grade of the test should directly correspond to how much of the course material did the student learn and understand.Here, the students do not know what are the exact requirements to get the result they desire, as the point limits are, obviously, only known after the test/exam. A test/exam should have clear and absolute rules and requirements.In my view, for a fair system, the following are necessary and neither are fulfilled by grading by curve: I see a number of serious problems with this, and I fail to see anything in favor. No matter what, say 20% of students will always fail, and only say 10% will get a perfect mark. Per definition, grading by a curve usually means that the students are assigned grades based on the statistical distribution of the test/exam results.
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