Word: gradesã
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...upheld. Admittedly, this is the most difficult way to address the problem: it would be far easier to arbitrarily mandate what percentage of As can be awarded in each class, forcing grades to conform neatly to a curve. But blindly enforcing a curve would defeat the entire purpose of grades??€”they would merely measure students relative to each other, telling students absolutely nothing about the objective quality of their work...
...disagree with the contention that while grades can be measured on an absolute scale, honors cannot. If honors are correlated to grades??€”as they should be—they become part of that absolute scale. In other words, once a student has submitted a thesis or equivalent project that reflects sophisticated, individual thinking, and has backed up that project with a record of good grades, it is unfair to suggest that splitting hairs over GPAs is the way to reward a chosen...
Among Pedersen’s recent suggestions, Faculty members were most opposed to imposing a University-wide curve or quota for the number of A-range grades??€”potential solutions that would pose the greatest threat to their autonomy...
...plus, corresponding to a 13 on Harvard’s grading scale. This, supposedly, would fight the current compression of the grade spectrum and give professors another option to reward excellent work. But this also addresses the symptom, and not the cause, of grade inflation. Harvard has enough grades??€”12 in all, from A to E with all the pluses and minuses in between—that it would have no trouble distinguishing between students if the system were applied correctly. Adding another high grade would merely be a temporary stopgap to the grade inflation problem...
...application of the themes presented in the course, then it would be superfluous to release the median grade in the course. It might help outsiders distinguish between students, and it might even help students distinguish among themselves, but it would be fundamentally opposed to the most essential purpose of grades??€”giving students an indication of their mastery of the material on a quality-based measure. It could even misrepresent to outsiders the value of the grades students actually receive. For instance, in a small, advanced class in which almost everyone completes excellent work, an employer might be unimpressed...