May 17, 2002

What Grades Do and Don't Say

To the Editor:

Concern about grade inflation is understandable but perhaps misplaced ("Grade Conflation: a Question of Credibility," The Review, April 12). The substantial literature on the science and art of evaluation suggests that grading is very complicated. To make sense of a particular professor's assignment of a grade to a particular student in a particular course at a particular college, one must account for the instructor's teaching methods, the characteristics of the