I’ve encountered two stances in the time I have been in college and high school.
The grades are “given” stance.
People who think this, tend to believe that teachers will alter the grades of their students depending on whether they like them or not. They believe that in classes with curved grades (i.e. pre-med classes in college, science classes), the teacher wants only a certain percentage of the class to get an A, and they will be like “I want 10% of my class to get an A”, so of the top 10%, the lowest grade in that percentile becomes the boundary for an A. In circumstances like this, where a grade is not your raw score out of 100, some believe the grade is “given”. Also considering that essays and projects are subjectively interpreted, others say that the grade is given.
The grades are “earned” stance.
People who believe this, such as myself, believe that whatever requirements, grading style, or method of interpreting work a teacher sets, you have to meet that standard and you thus earn your grade relative to how well you can do so. Under this point of view, complaining that the grades you receive are “unfair” or “I didn’t deserve a C” is ridiculous, since a grade is a reflection of how much you know, how well you meet the teacher’s criteria, and the extent of effort or ability you have demonstrated. People who believe this think that even with curved grades for instance, if the teacher decides that only 10% of the class can get an A in say, a competitive pre-med science course in college, if you want to be one of the ones getting an A, you have to work to earn that grade and be within that tenth percentile in the class (I don’t know how often this approach is taken but if it is, you have to meet the teacher’s standard!)
I’m a firm believer that my good attitude in class helped push my grades up a bit on subjective things like “participation,” etc. There are so many students in public high school that don’t give a flying damn, that those who act like they do get some slack.
I know for a fact that my high school teachers ‘gave’ me my grades. I went to a really bad, rural high school and was bored to tears so I rarely did any work. I refused to do homework and sometimes just put my name on tests and turned them in if I didn’t feel like taking it. I still got all A’s and B’s in the end just because the teachers knew I understood the material as well as anyone. There was one exception though. My English teacher got really mad at something I did just before she gave out grades for a period my senior year. She gave me an ‘F’ for the period just like my true average said it should be. I started doing some work in her class after that but wasn’t happy about it. I still finished the year with a ‘B’.
I worked my ass off in undergrad school though. There was no giving grades as far as I know. They would happily give you whatever you earned including failing you and not think twice about it.
It really depends. Math, absolutely earned. I mean, it all counts on how I do on my homework and quizzes. Same with the sciences.
In college, I find a good portion of my grades in non-math classes is dependent on class participation. So some of that is definitely “given” - did I engage the class and the teacher? make good points? Try to understand?
Funnily, I think the most “given” grades I’ve been given were in grad school. Essentially it was, “look, there are only six people in the class, and I know each one of you and how well you know the material; There is formally a final exam, but I know the grade you deserve already, and you will receive it.”
Grades are earned, except if you’re failing miserably-
Explanation: I taught at a school on the quarter system, block schedule. That means two report cards per semester with the pass/fail grade being the average of the two nine weeks’ grades. We were pretty much required to not doom a kid to failure with the first nine weeks’ grade. Therefore, in my classes, no one got less than a 65 (passing is 70) the first nine weeks, so the kid had a reasonable chance of getting a passing average. Second nine weeks, kid got just what he/she earned.
How many students did this help? Usually about one or two a year out of at least a dozen. People who failed my classes usually made no fuss about it- they knew they were at fault for not putting in any effort to pass.
In my classes, grades are earned. I don’t base my assessment of their work on how pleasant or otherwise they are as individuals - that’s not fair on them or anyone else.
I had a professor whose grading system was based on grouping everybody into three groups - those who clearly had no concept of what was going on (F), those who had a very basic idea (D), and those who had at least some general idea (which were divided into As, Bs, and Cs, in order to get some university-mandated average grade for the class - I want to say C+, but that seems low).
I can’t recall any high school classes that used a curve. Some classes did require a 95 for an A. Others used 90 as the minimum A. That was always explained on the first day of classes. Requiring a 85 for a B hurt me in a couple classes. I much preferred the 80 requirement for a B. Teachers that used the harder scale obviously hated giving out high grades.
I often heard that teachers “gave” D’s to students that at least tried. Flunking a student was pretty rare in high school unless they didn’t show up or refused to turn in any work.
IME mostly earned, occasionally given. I’d like to say that theoretically they should always be earned, but like leahcim I received one grade in a grad class that was essentially given and I don’t think there was anything particularly egregious about that case. But I did witness a few pretty bad examples ( not involving myself ) pre-college.
As a former teacher, I used a mix of both. Yes, if you always do your work well, you will get an A. And if you rarely do your work and are consistently poor. you can expect a bad grade. But for the people in between, there was some subjectivity. Some kids are ultimately somewhat dim, but are engaged, intellectually curious, and hard working. Others are bright but lazy, and they do good work but show little improvement or engagement with a subject.
Is it fair? I think so. I am a teacher, not an IQ test administrator. My jobs is to inspire, challenge, and educate my students. When students do show that initiative and engagement, I think it is appropriate to recognize that. And when they are showing a bare-minimum engagement, I don’t mind being a little more critical of their work. The skills that the motivated students display are the actual skills that improve learning. These things will take your further in life that simple subject knowledge. .
There’s a huge difference between having curved grades, and having a grade “given” to you.
Generally speaking in my educational career (hs, bs, MBA, MS) the curve only was relevant when the average was significantly below what the professor thought most people should get on the test, or the distribution was really weird. I can’t recall anyone who was in the habit of downgrading anyone’s letter grade below their percentage score.
Most of them usually either curved at the end of the semester, or a few adjusted the percentage scores of each assignment so there was no curve at the end. At no point was a grade just “given.”
This is what I think. I don’t consider curves meaning a grade is “given”. I just am told in some college science classes, the teachers only want a certain percentage of the class to get an A, because they want to “weed out” the students from the pre-medical track.
When I taught, I started every school year telling my kids that they would earn their grade. Even so, I made it as hard as possible to fail. I accepted late work without penalty, because the point was that they’d done the work and learned the material. Any student could retake a test if they weren’t pleased with their grade (a different version covering the same material, taken after school). I sent home progress reports with a list of any missing assignments. I called parents if the student got lower than a C-. I badgered the kid mercilessly until it was easier to do the work than not.
Even then, I got people complaining that I was failing their kid. Or the kid complaining that their grade wasn’t high enough. The worst was a Dallas ISD principal who basically said we weren’t allowed to flunk any student during the first six weeks. I had students pulling averages of 7 and 13%. You bet I gave them the F they deserved. The fact that I caught hell for it, and the principal broke state law by changing the grades without my approval was one of my reasons for leaving halfway through the year.
There’s still a huge amount of grading liberty even in calculatory math. There’s a huge difference between taking 8/10 points of for mis-adding 3 and 9 when your general approach was sound, and taking 8/10 points off for a glaring conceptual error.
ETA: And I say this as someone who was a TA for an AI course that was a bit probability heavy. It could have be the difference between an A and a C in many cases if I had taken off more points for people who mis-added a number on a test.