I’m not talking about a typical “everyone gets and additional 10 points because the highest score in the class was a 90”, but the real thing - every student is rated comparatively and placed along a bell curve, and the lowest performing students MUST get an F (fail the course), even if their performance was decent. E.g. if the distribution of raw scores was in the range of 76-98, then at least some of what would have been “C” work in many US schools would instead be “F” work and which section would you like to enroll in next semester?
Yes, we got graded on a true curve in several in my college psych classes. Psychology is all about statistics and the professors liked to put them to real use for us all to see. We didn’t even get a grade. Everything was laid out as a z-score (area of the curve that you fall above and below). Those classes got really competitive and fairly difficult quickly as people who cared about grades tried to make it into the top few slots allocated for an ‘A’. The ‘B’ and ‘C’ parts of the curve were much bigger and you would fail with an ‘F’ if you landed on the bottom part of the curve even if you actually learned quite a few things but were out competed by your fellow students.
Most law schools grade this way, except that the lowest “curved” grade is D (at least at my law school it was). You can still fail with an F, but your performance must be lacking above and beyond the purely numerical lack of performance that gets you a D (late, unprepared, disruptive, obviously sleeping in class, etc). In most law school classes, the sole basis for the grade is one test you take at the end of the semester which is graded with names stripped out so the professor doesn’t know whose test they are grading. After grading the exams some professors will bump the grade to the + or - for participation or lack of participation. Others will take finer slices of the curve.
I have heard tales of the true curve but never seen it in action. Today it seems to be all about padding grades as much as possible so that even very poor performers can pass with a C.
I haven’t, nor have I graded my students on a true curve. I taught an Organic Chemistry lab; in order to fail it, you basically needed to get an A+ on douchebaggery.
Yes. At my university nearly all math, science, and engineering courses were graded on a curve. This was because the average grade on an exam could be a 50, 60, 70, anything really. Usually exams were graded such that the mean grade would be a B- and one standard deviation above or below would be one letter grade difference. So after homeworks the average grade is usually a B. This also means that about 5% or so of the class will fail unless they drop the course in time.
Similar for me when I took Anatomy / Physiology in college. It was (I’m told) a pre-med style class with lecture and lab sessions, both of which had exams. The labs in particular were extremely challenging. Identify one of several dozen protrusions on a given bone - that kind of thing.
The scores averaged in the 60’s on the labs, slightly higher for the lecture exams IIRC. The prof dropped the highest score as an outlier *, and then curved the rest around the average.
- Good thing he did, otherwise I would have gotten my ass kicked. I worked my butt off and usually scored in the 90’s.
Yes, this really brings back some fond memories, memories of when I would score 25% in real terms and be at the top of the class. It did not happen that often, but it underscores the value of beating the competition.
Yes, which is why when my middle school kids asked me if I would grade them on the curve I would explain why they didn’t know what they were asking. They seemed to think it meant everyone who did poorly would get free points. They didn’t realize that the kids who studied and got in the 90s would have killed them and their 72s.
This is the only time it happened to me, except we were in college. Some of the idiots were bugging the Statistics teacher* to “grade us on a curve” and he asked if they were really sure that’s what they wanted. I tried to explain how no, they really didn’t want that, but was shouted down.
Being a right bastard, the teacher went ahead and curved the next test results. But not being a total bastard, he didn’t do it for the tests after that! 
*Statistics, of all things! Really, if you ask for a Statistics test to be curved, you should just get an automatic F in Statistics…save everyone some time.
I never got graded on a curve like the OP described.
I have had tests where the teacher averaged the grades and shifted everybody up. If the best score was an 80 then that was an A. Someone way down at 60 might get a C in that example. It depended where most of the scores fell. If fifteen out of 30 scores were in the sixties then that definitely was a C.
Most teachers blamed themselves when the majority of the class failed a test. Something went wrong. They didn’t understand the lecturer, not enough homework etc. We’d often get pop quizzes so the teacher could gauge how well the class was keeping up.
I can remember one time a teacher threw out a test. We went back over the material and retook a new easier test.
Pretty much all of my college and law school classes were on a true curve, but with a B or B-minus center.
I had a professor that did that, he spent some time explaining what grading on a curve actual was and how he uses it while most others just use the term without any understanding of what actually grading on a curve is really.
To me he wasted our time, and his. Just teach the material man.
I can’t imagine any school getting away with flunking someone just because they were last in their scores. That could bring lawsuits.
I’ve had classes in college where the kids that couldn’t do the work dropped the class. The rest of the students in the class continued and there might not be anybody that actually flunked. If you study and pass the tests then you should pass the course. It shouldn’t matter if your scores were the lowest overall.
It happened to me once in middle school. It was a science test. I had one incorrect answer, and would have gotten an A normally. I don’t remember what my grade was, but it must’ve been at least a B for me to still be annoyed about it all these years later.
I vaguely recall the professor for a math class in college saying he was grading us on a bell curve. I don’t remember discussing final grades with my classmates to be able to tell if he really did grade on a bell curve.
I remember the first day in class when the professor said something like, “Three of you will get an A.”
A lot of my physics classes were graded on a “curve” so to speak, but I don’t think it was a classic bell curve. I know that I earned some A’s and B’s after averaging 40’s and 50’s on finals/midterms, so I know the class was curved in some sense, and didn’t adhere to a strict 90+ = A, 80+ = B, etc. In fact, I think almost all my science and math classes were graded in comparison to the results of other students in your class. But I don’t think that the professors set aside a particular percentage to get F’s, which would honestly be pretty unfair. That isn’t to say some student’s who didn’t do very well didn’t fail (some did, in fact), but the professor didn’t “guarantee” at the beginning of the class that a certain amount WOULD definitely fail.
This was the same experience I had at law school. Curved grades, anonymous exams, and a lot of effort required to get an F. Regardless, our grades were always curved.
Yeah, to be quite honest, i’m pretty suspicious about some of the claims in this thread, especially those who are claiming that a certain number of students ALWAYS received an F as a result of the curve. This suspicion is heightened by the fact that almost everyone making such claims was a student and not a teacher; while students sometimes think that they know how their professors are grading the class, more often than not they are just guessing.
I’m not arguing that it has never happened, only that it’s probably nowhere near as common as you would think from listening to the claims made by students.