Word: minuses
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...have lost some grades that I think students would see as meaningful grades, like B-minus and C-plus,” says Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82. “Having a whole pile of grades that mean the same thing and four grades to do all the work—that’s our problem...
Because teachers are unable to distinguish effectively between students’ quality of work when almost 50 percent of the grades are A or A-minus, some have said Harvard should add a grade of A-plus. An A-plus, presumably, would allow professors to reward truly exceptional work while leaving the rest of the grading system intact...
...providing meaningful feedback on student work, and as a result, grades as pedagogical tools are ineffective at best and useless at worst. Because 86 percent of grades were B or better last year, professors and TFs were effectively limited to four grades—B, B-plus, A-minus and A—when evaluating all but the weakest student work. Not only are there too few grades to be precise, but worse yet, the meaning of those grades is utterly unclear...
...matter how many grades instructors have at their disposal, those grades are useless to students if no one agrees on their meaning. Individual TFs, professors and departments are forced to guess at the proper meaning of inflated grades. One TF’s A-minus may be another TF’s A or B-plus. In lieu of clear standards across the Faculty and even across TFs in the same course, interpreting a grade can be as challenging as earning it in the first place...
Just under one half of students surveyed said they would support changing the grading scale to add more intermediate grades, such as an A-plus or a A-minus/B-plus...