TVeblen writes:
> I am a great fan of the concept but
> reluctantly skeptical about the odds for
> effective implementation.
I make no claim that the concept will work for most students, but I could see from New College that it did work for many students. I’m glad that there are a few gradeless colleges.
Another UC Santa Cruz student checking in (Sven, I thought I was the only one!). The lack of grades was definitely one of the reasons I decided I wanted to go to UCSC - along with the lack of any Greek shit, not to mention the incredibly beautiful campus. Last year, while I was studying abroad in Israel, I recieved grades, and I just couldn’t believe how useless they were. For instance, I took this class on Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity which I just adored. I loved the professor, I loved the material, I found it endlessly fascinating, etc. I participated a lot and went to talk to the professor during her office hours just because I enjoyed discussing the subject with her. I got an A on the midterm, but a C on the final (unfortunately, I had to take three final exams in a row, it was #3, and my brain was absolutely wasted by that time). End result? I got a B in the class. I felt so cheated by this grade. I know it was fair, but it said so little about what I had done, and how enthusiastic I had been about the material. That is the beauty of a UCSC eval - it mentions strengths and weaknesses, it not only mentions exams and papers, but class participation as well. A couple paragraphs is so much more meaningful that one letter. At this time, there is a movement among the faculty to rid the school of our grading system, and I am absolutely furious about it. As this is my last quarter, it doesn’t affect me except that if this happens, my transcript will become invalid.
Finally, I’d like to present a couple of my evals for examination. One is good, the other is REALLY BAD. (In my defense, my teacher was an evil bitch who totally failed to help me, even though I tried really hard. It was my first Politics class, and I studied my ass off, but, well, apparently it didn’t matter. She graded my papers on style rather than content and told me that as an anthropology major, I ought to be able to write fine politics paper, which is a load of BS. I’m a little pissed off about this, can you tell?)
This is for Women, Religion & Society, an Anthropology class:
XXXXX was a very active and attentive partcipant in both lecture and
section. Her engagement with the main concepts of the class was strong. She made excellent contributions in section, bringing both her interest and intellect to focus on the topics of the discussion. Her midterm was an observational paper on women in Religious Science. In this paper she examines a number of aspects of the content of the service she observed and interviews some of the participants. Her clear writing style, intellegent questions and well chosen examples made this a very interesting paper. XXXXX’s final paper titled “Esther and Vashti: Women of the Bible” was an excellent research paper. Her fine analysis of the different interpretations of Esther’s story was very clear and brought out interesting aspects of both the story itself and of how modern women and traditional men have viewed women’s roles. Good research, well organized and clearly written! Overall very good work.
If I’m such a good writer, what’s up with this next eval? It’s for Politics of Africa, which I thought would be interesting:
The work for this course was at best very marginally passing. Ms. XXXXX XXXXX’s take-home essay failed to develop a focused
response to the problematic posed by the question. Instead, the essay was a somewhat rambling discussion of a number of points
regarding Zimbabwe. XXXXX also experienced difficulties with the midterm examination where she achieved 60 out of a possible 100
points. The midterm indicated that XXXXX at the time of the midterm did not have command of materials covered in the course readings, lectures or knowledge of relevant current events.
XXXXX’s short oral report on ethnic groups and ethnic conflict in Zimbabwe indicated that she had command of a range of materials
but had as yet not shaped these materials into a clear thesis so that listeners could relate the evidence she was presenting to a
line of political analysis. Her final essay on Zimbabwe “The Politics of Ethnic Relations” was a rather free form, largely
unfocused essay full of conclusions, assertions and commentary
with next to no footnoting and little evidence. In short, the essay did not meet the standards of a carefully done research
paper but instead was a ten-page essay of opinions and conclusions clearly drawn form her readings but not assembled with care, focus, development and footnoting.
HA! I’m not careful, but who has a typo in their eval? No one can dispute that that second eval was a lot worse than getting a D. Man, it hurts to look at that. Fortunately, I don’t have a lot of evals like that. In fact, this is pretty much the only one. Now I’m rambling, but I hope that when I apply to grad school, they dismiss this as an aberration, because it is SO far from my usual eval.
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
My current university, one of the “tonier” British institutions not mentioned above, seems to have a bizarre mix of the graded and non-graded systems. I don’t think it’s really designed that way, though… (seems to be an exended period of transition, from what I can figure).
Students write papers for their seminars, but most of the time the papers don’t actually count for your grade. You get feedback on them so as to prepare you for the final exams, which are usually 100% of your grade.
One of my instructors didn’t really like the system, so he wanted to go with a more American style grading system: essays a certain part of your grade, plus the final exam. Turns out that there are regulations that essays cannot be more than 25% of a student’s grade. Furthermore, if the essays do count towards your final mark, theey must be read by three instructors. The instructors may make as many comments as they wish, but cannot inform the student of the actual mark on the essays until the term is over.
Does it seem unnatural that grad schools and employers should be interested in this measure of progress? Once you know this, I don’t see how you can avoid worrying about your ‘measurement’ of progress as much as your actual progress. Even at the UCSC, we see the very revealing example Kyla provides of someone very concerned about how others will view the measurements of her progress in her courses.
UCSC system looks good to me - but it seems like professors could be tempted to write less balance reviews - either very glowing or very bad. For example - what would a ‘B’ type review look like? Have either of you ever seen or heard one? I’m sure the real reason the faculty is opposed to the system is that it is so much more work. Rather than scoring each exam and paper, entering them into a single cell in a spreadsheet and totalling points at the end, you have to make detailed notes about each project or exam - and be prepared to discuss them for the 20 or 30 students in all four of your classes at the end of the year. I’d rather write a senior thesis!
Cooper, of course that’s why they want to change it. They shroud it in other reasons, like that UCSC graduates aren’t accepted to grad school because of our bulky transcripts, etc. I should note that there is NO proof for that statement at all; I read yesterday that the rate at which UCSC grads recieve doctorates is second in the UC system only behind Berkeley (there are six other schools in the system, including UCLA, Davis, San Diego, etc.).
And those were just two evals. Here’s one where I asked for a grade, and recieved a B. This is for Born Again Religion, an Anthropology class (I read ‘Left Behind’ in this class):
Course Description
This course introduced students to orthodox Protestant Christianity and examined six cases of current Christian apocalypticism in America. Students were expected to attend all class sessions, read a great deal, write a short research essay, take two exams, and, overall, master a complex body of religious
and historical knowledge and the skills to analyze it as a mode of cultural production.
Evaluation
XXXXX’s work for this course was generally very good. Although she
did not always complete the reading for class, she attended regularly and was adequately prepared to lead a class discussion on the novel, Piercing the Darkness. In her midterm, she showed a
strong basic knowledge of the concepts, although her responses tended to be too shallow. Her church ritual essay was a
beautifully-written description of the service she attended, showing the multiple performative elements of the ritual. In some ways, her clear narrative let the ritual speak for itself, but I also would have liked her to articulate her own analysis of the experience. Her final exam was somewhat uneven. Two of her responses were extremely
general and engaged only superficially with the texts, while the other two were nicely argued and well-supported. Grade: B
See? I’m a good writer. In fact, every single one of my evals that I have ever recieved for a course in which I needed to write a paper has mentioned that I’m a good writer. Maybe I got off-topic and rambled and BSed, but I’m a good writer. I can’t get over that politics eval. Sorry. (I just saw it for the first time yesterday.)
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
That’s interesting. At my university (Middlesex in North London) we had essays in all my classes, all counted toward the final grade (I don’t remember the percentages), and in most cases we did receive our marks before the end of the term (the exceptions being only those essays that didn’t come due until the end of the term!).
I do believe they were marked by more than just one person, though.
Hmmmm Not one person so far has proffered an explanation backed with reasoning and evidence as to why grading improves education.
The other potential reason for grading, the needs of employers/higher schools can easily be dismissed as unecessary. Using a grading system as a proxy for measuring what one has learned places the measurement in the hands of the professor of the class, instead of the employer or graduate school. Given that any graduate school also requires some standardized test before entry, it would seem the grade proxy isn’t necessary. Given that some professors insist on factoring into grades such things as attendance, ‘homework’, etc., grades can be quite meaningless as a measure of success in learning.
Well, I can you tell you that if I hadn’t thought I needed decent grades in high school that I wouldn’t have learned anywhere near as much. I probably wouldn’t have even gone to most classes. I can ace a standardized test standing on my head - and I could cram for a ‘knowledge’ based test, there would be plenty of resources to help me do so.
But could you participate meaningfully in class? Could you write a meaningful coherant essay? You need to actually think to do that, and that is what gradeless evaluations encourage. Also remember, college is voluntary, high school is not. I BS’d almost all of high school and got decent grades, but now I am paying fourteen thousand dollars a year just to be here. Thats my motivation to learn. I’m wasteing my time and money if I don’t.
“Never forget that you’re never more than 72 hours away from death by
dehydration. Drinking will only prolong that death.”
-Joe Dietz
Which way? It seems to me only that concentrating on being able to pass a GMAT or MCAT or whatever it is you need to pass to get to the next level is even more lowly a goal than four years of good grades - is easier to accomplish and says less about your work and study habits.
Great points DSYoung! This is what I have been thinking, but couldn’t really formulate like you did.
I think grading in High School is a little different since, as stated above, it is not voluntary. I think the same ends could be produced with reviews or some alternative system instead of the grades though. A lot of this, of course, depends on the individual’s motivation and the parental/guardian’s involvement with the student’s education.
“How’d you get your mind to tilt like your hat?”
-The Thrashing Doves
Cooper, everyone is motivated in different ways. Grades motivated me in high school, but I can say honestly that I am more thoroughly encouraged to do a good job at UCSC. In HS, I would often do very little work and then do well on the test. What looked okay as a grade (usually a B) tends to look shitty as an evaluation (Tested well, but didn’t do the work, and didn’t participate in class). See?
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
Neither I, nor anyone else, proposed replacing grades with standardized testing. We simply pointed out that such testing does better at acting as a proxy for identifying learned knowledge of use than a grade system that third-parties can’t control.
Instead of a grade system, a professor should provide for the student an analysis of how the student is perceived to be doing in learning what is offered. There is no reason not to do this in High School as well. The issue of voluntary attendance is meaningless. Those who don’t care about their education flunk HS. Those who need to demonstrate that they have learned what is needed will be willing to do so regardless of whether that means ‘earning’ good grades or earning a praising commentary from a teacher.
Grades represent three things:
An easy way for teachers to evaluate progress. A teacher can make up a test regarding material taught, score it, and assign a value with a grade, without having to do much thinking (I’ve scored tests, I know). But does this really represent actual learning? Suppose that the student in a science class gets an incorrect answer to a question because of a simple arithmetic error early in the solution, but otherwise demonstrates correct understanding of the underlying thinking process taught in the class? In many cases, this would be scored as ‘wrong’ and a grade assigned accordingly. A similar situation occurs when a political science teacher grades down an essay on principles of federalism for errors in use of the English language. Instead of having to actually evaluate the student’s knowledge, the teacher uses the proxy of a grading system, potentially a far easier process.
A method of comparison where comparison is inherently difficult. Face it, we love to feel like we have done better than the Joneses. But if I have to compare my knowledge of American Literature with someone else’s knowledge, it can be very difficult to make that comparison. With a test and a letter grade, I can lord it over my opposition. Think this isn’t the case? Please note that almost all schooling situations from junior high on up to graduate schools make an effort to identify those who have earned the highest grades, through things like honor roll, dean’s list, Order of the Coif (law school), Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude, etc. We love to feel better than others; grades help us do so.
A quick and standardized method for making later determinations. I recall vividly when I was in college, reading a publication regarding law schools that showed the number of accepted individuals with various combinations of grade-point averages and LSAT scores. Often, for schools deemed to be among the better in the nation, there would be an obvious cut-off point, below which no one would be admitted. This, of course, is a lazy-man’s way of determining who among the applicants has obtained in college the necessary knowledge to make the best use of a law school’s resources. What do you do with the student who did poorly his first year in his physics-focused classes, but then shined thereafter upon switching to Philosophy? Or the person who goes to a college less challenging to him or her and excells in grades there when it would have been harder to do so at a more challenging school? Similar concerns exist when an employer is looking at such grades, or a college is looking at a high school senior, etc.
Evaluation of learning should be a more thourough process than simply assigning a series of letter grades and making comparisons on that basis.
And by the way, GO BANANA SLUGS! (Totally off the subject, and, no, I didn’t go there, just lived nearby quite a while. 
)
Grades make it much easier to analyze performance than evaluations. I don’t see the resources in place to wade through the stack of evalutions for every person for all 44,000 who apply to med school every year. True, they are not as indicative of performance, but everything is a tradeoff.
I fail to see how an evaluation is superior to a score in, say, a chemistry course. One can obviously see where their weaknesses are from the incorrect answer on the test or problem set. If you make a silly error, usually it won’t affect more than a point or two (assuming partial credit, which is the usually the norm). If you make a lot of silly errors, perhaps you don’t know the material as well as you thought. In most science courses, part of the understanding is being able to apply it consistently and correctly. You might know the intricate meaning of F = ma, but if you can’t multiply m*a then that knowledge is useless to you and everyone else who needs you to use it.
FTR, most science students recieve grades for that very reason. People planning on applying to medical and veterinary schools pretty much unanimously request grades. New students from 1997 on can request a GPA if they get grades in 2/3 of their classes. I came to UCSC before 1997, and I have no plans to go to medical school, so I have never bothered to request a letter grade. (That one eval I posted earlier that gave me a grade of B is unofficial.) I do think a GPA is useful, but only as something to fill out on a form, not really as a learning tool. FI, I was applying for some scholarship online or something, and I couldn’t submit the application because NA apparently didn’t work in the box for GPA. That was the only time I got annoyed at my grades.
They do work something out though…when I applied to study abroad, I learned that the required GPA was 3.0 (this is the system in place for the entire UC, and only UCSC uses evals). Most students can look up their GPA, but I had no idea of whether my evals would be deemed good enough to be accepted to the program. (Of course, I got to go abroad, so I guess they were.)
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
The point, Edward, is that the fact that a grade CAN be influenced by factors other than the learned knowledge being taught makes it suspect as a proxy for actual evaluation of that knowledge by the teacher. Thus, my ‘C+’ in high school Chemistry was not a result of my lack of understanding of the material, but instead a result of my failure to routinely turn in the homework assignments requested by the teacher. The grade, therefore, reflected not understanding of the material, but instead willingness to comply with the requested teaching regimen. Similarly, the political science professor who hated split infinitives and other improper verb usage issued grades reflective of his evaluation of the ability of the student to use the English language to his satisfaction, rather than solely evaluating the understanding of games theory he was teaching.
As for the difficulty of a medical school in evaluating a large number of applicants by reading evaluations, rather than looking at grade-point-averages, I would first ask why convenience should be more important than accuracy, and, second, I will note the better proxy of testing, which is used anyway (MCAT, LSAT, etc.) Bar exams provide a very good example of tests that do a good job of testing the material and thinking process which the schools are attempting to impart to students (although one can, and should, question whether that is what should distinguish among applicants to the bar).
Kyla- I also agree that grades are not so useful as a learning tool. Ideally you want feeback in the form of an evaluation so you can actually learn your weaknesses, along with a grade to present to the outside world. This is what my academic experience was like- I always knew why I received a certain grade.
DSYoungEsq- your high school grade in chemistry could have reflected one of several things. 1) You understood the material but didn’t turn in the problem sets because you were lazy- certainly something a prospective employer or college would not like. Everyone likes the lazy genius until they have one working for them. 2) you understood the base level of material on tests, but did not comprehend the more advanced material on problem sets (I’m assuming the problem sets were more difficult than the test, which has been my overall experience; apologies if they were not)- again, a mediocre grade demonstrates mediocre understanding. I would guess an evaluation from a teacher who downgraded you for not turning in problem sets would not be very glowing. This is an issue with the teacher, not the grading system.
Even an evaluation is an inaccurate assessment. A completely accurate assessment would be to videotape the student in every lecture and every test, and submit this along with every piece of graded material for the course and an evaluation in lieu of a grade. This, of course would be more accurate than an evaluation. Certainly less convenient. Grades are an imperfect diagnostic tool, but in a world of finite time and resources, a good way of assessment. This, along with the standardized tests, letters of rec, essays, research proposals, etc., all form an incomplete picture of the student, but a better picture than examining each facet individually. If I’m applying to grad school in physics, and I have over the top GRE scores, but mediocre grades and letters of rec, I probably won’t get in many places, solely because I’ve demonstrated that I’m not willing to work hard. I think I’d agree with you more if there were more cases in which an individual letter grade is the sole determining factor for a decision. Note that I completely agree that evaluations (in some form) are better for the person receiving the evaluation. I’m just pointing out the logistical difficulties in abolishing grading in favor of evaluations. In any kind of grading/evaluation system you’ll always have outliers who do not have an accurate reflection of their capabilities. Grades are the compromise in the need for an evaluation at the expense of complete accuracy due to other factors.
The point which seems to be escaping you here is that the ONLY reason to utilize a letter grading system is to substitute an easily applied and quickly calculatable evaluation for a more comprehensive and time-consuming evaluation. Grades have the aura of being a relatively uniform method of evaluation, which is why many places deciding if people who have graduated from different schools will nevertheless assume that equal grades have equal value. A more erroneous assumption cannot be made!
I discussed the issue of the homework with my Chemistry teacher in High School. Ms. Veatch was kindly, but a bit vague and helpless when it came to children. Her rationale for assigning a value to homework was to make sure it would be done. It needed to be done by most students because, if they didn’t do it, she ended up unable to teach the entire course material during the year because lack of understanding by the students forced her to repeat explanations. When I pointed out that my mostly perfect test scores indicated I had no trouble assimilating the material, and therefore did not need to do the homework to keep up, she rightly pointed out that, if she made an exception for me, others would complain (thinking it somehow ‘unfair’ that they were forced to do the homework and I was not). Since I found that doing 50 problems of textbook homework demonstrating a principle I had understood just by reading the book examples was tedious and beyond my willingness to do, I reluctantly accepted a C+ grade in my final semester.
What, then, did those who looked at that grade learn about me? I am sure they were tempted to assume that I had trouble learning Chemistry. What other conclusion is one likely to make in the face of a poor grade? After all, that is what the grade is SUPPOSED to mean. In actuality, I not only knew my Chemistry, I scored quite well on testing of that knowledge (I took some national competition exam in Chemistry that year at UCLA and did quite well for a High School senior). What the grade actually reflected was an unwillingness on my part to do what I considered unnecessary and boring work required by the teacher for a higher grade.
Now, had Ms. Veatch written an evaluation of me, should could, in a simple paragraph, have said precisely that (smart, knows his Chemistry, hates to do homework). A college looking at THAT transcript would know infinitely more about me as a person than they would by seeing the grade ‘C+’.
Is it therefore vital that an employer or a professional school, etc., have the ability to dismiss me from consideration simply for the fact that my GPA is 2.99 and not 3.00? While that is an easy way to evaluate, it is hardly a very defensible way to evaluate.
I believe this is the point I am making.
I think you dwell too much on theoretical cases. How many programs will arbitrarily cut off at 3.00 and exclude 2.99? Especially if the candidate is strong in other areas. Grades are used as a one-dimensional diagnostic tool, and in conjunction with other diagnostic tools, such as letters of rec, test scores, accomplishments. You describe a theoretical world in which grades mean everything, when in reality, they don’t.
Again, I’ll agree that grades do not carry as much information as evaluations. However, they are easier to give, convey a lot of information about the applicant (not as much as evaluations), and more compact. You seem to view grades as being based purely on knowledge, which isn’t the case (as your own experience illustrates).
I’ll ask you a few questions about evaluations:
What is to prevent instructors giving evaluations not indicative of actual performance?
What is to distinguish equal evaluations = equal value? I understand that no evaluation will be completely equal, but imagine a paragraph for each of 300 students in intro physics with, multiplied by the number of courses across the nation. I don’t see tremendous variability in the evaluations among the normal range of students.
Who is going to read all of these evaluations?
As a Gradeless U (the aforementioned New College) drop out, I thought I’d like to weigh in here as well.
New College has a good record of graduating future PhD’s and a fairly solid reputation has evolved from that. It is not an easy school to get into. Like many of the grad programs they send their graduates off too, they weight writing samples and reccomendations quite heavily. And students who can’t cope with the study-all-night, party-all-day atmosphere that pervades this school DO fail there. No student’s advisor is going to permit them to earn an entire semester’s credit for “Effects of the Tropical Sun on Experimental Pharmaceutical Use.” I tried.
Some other universities that follow the same gradeless system are not so- ummm- tough. They do not have quite the recognition that New COllege does for graduating workaholic (pothead) pre-PhD’s. Graduates of other such colleges probably DO have to have some form of standardization to grab the eyes of the admissions people at Gradprograms and convince them that it’s worthwhile to review all those evaluations.
But really, there’s damn good reason why there aren’t many Gradeless U’s in the world. Most 18-yr-olds, regardless of how bright, determined, creative, whatever, they are, DO NOT have the discipline to maintain fullpower studiousness in an “informal- feedback- only” atmosphere. Such a program can be a great start for a student who intends to pursue a PhD and/or simply loves learning, but the vast majority of undergrads are in school in order to fullfill some requirements, get a piece of paper, and get a job. They may enjoy some of their classes along the way, but they don’t have the energy to strive for undefined greatness 24/7.