Word: rawing
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Most disagreements surrounding the issue of grade inflation can be reduced to a divergent understanding of the purpose of grading, namely, whether grades exist to communicate the raw or relative levels of student achievement in a course. At some institutions, grading can do both, for there will be enough students who do both well and poorly that the differences in students’ raw accomplishment will be significant enough to communicate relative performance as well. Princeton’s decision to cap A-range grades at 35 percent in order to restore grades’ role as a communicator...
...school such as Harvard, however, where a vast majority of students are capable, in terms of raw measures, of A-level work, grades based on merit alone fail to distinguish most students. But ironically, these ubiquitous A grades hardly communicate even raw performance, much like a perfect score on an intelligence test cannot accurately measure intelligence for failure to challenge the test taker...
This problem would be solved if Princeton—and Harvard—would instead focus on combating the inflation of grades as a signal of raw accomplishment and committed itself to a much bolder change. The notion that a C denotes “average” performance in a course seems positively quaint today, but why not revive it? This is not to say that courses should be graded on a strict curve with a C as the mean; that would reinstate grades exclusively as a relative communicator of performance and have similar effects as the Princeton grading...
Magical Thinking is an act of consummate literary bravery, a writer known for her clarity narrating the loss of that clarity, allowing us to watch her mind as it becomes clouded with grief. But the book also reproduces, in its formal progression from those first raw, frenzied impressions to a more composed account of mourning, Didion's recovery. She literally wrote herself back to sanity. "Writing is the only way I've ever gained clarity," she says. "I don't go through life with a lot of clear-formed thoughts. It's not till I sit down and write that...
...Bayou LaBranche, a green, glassy waterway some seven miles west of New Orleans, it's alligator-hunting season, and trappers have strung hunks of raw chicken on heavy hooks to dangle over the water. An 8-ft. gator leaps out of the dark waters to snatch the bait; a great egret flaps away from the commotion...