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[genecks]

I was looking over the topic of grade deflation. As I was looking over the concept of grade deflation for the first time, I decided it was based in discrimination. Although social cognitive neuroscience says that discrimation is just a part of life, the ideas brought forth by grade deflation will determine how an educator is to assign grades or "grade choices." The ideology is that so many people will recieve a certain grade. Is the ideology considerate? How is it considerate?

If educators are to only give out so many grades, then they must fail certain people. However, why are they to give out only so many? Why is it that a professor cannot have his or her own standard of a student's achievements? Why can't a professor determine if a student's achievements are deserving of an A, B, or C level grade?

Let us imagine a situation in which a group of students that always study together. They've never let others know this. They understand that to be known is to let others bias their actions and ways throughout the educational system. And yet these students excel at everything because of teamwork. The professor does not know these students are a team. No other student in the class knows these students work as a team. The team's ethic is one of the best around. The students of the team don't plagiarize, steal another's ideas, or sabotage another's work.

Now image that all of these students enter into the same class. If at anything, they've found a way to sabotage the educational system. No one's been aware of their activities. However, there's a down side that will strike the students. That downside is called grade deflation. Interestingly, however, is that all the students of this team create excellent paper, each and everyone of them. Yet the professor has been told to only give out so many 'A', 'B', and 'C' grades. Thus, the disappointing part comes when the professor gives half of the team members B grades and the other half A grades. They look at each other questioning what has happened. "Why is it that our system doesn't work?" The system doesn't work because it conflicts with a biased ideology of grade deflation.

So, how is grade deflation logical?
It's not logical. It's a way of creating stratification.
A predetermined stratification as if educators are playing God.
Educators are not God, and they have no right to do so.

[crazybatlady]

Grade: D

genecks, while I appreciate your passion for the subject of grade deflation, this essay fails to meet standards of proficiency for sophomore composition.  For example, while your entire essay argues against "grade deflation," you fail to define your terms or clarify in context what precisely you mean by them.  You state that you were "looking over the topic of grade deflation," but you don't cite a source or make any claims about what that topic is really about.  And finally, can you articulate your argument in a single reasoned sentence?  Does it really matter if a policy is "considerate"?  Can you come up with a more concrete term for what you mean?

Also, unnecessary repetition suggests you were struggling to make the word count, and the essay suffers for lack of editing and proofreading--particularly regarding sentence fragments and clausal elements.

Please come and see me to discuss this essay further.

CBL

[aandsdean]

What Crazy Bat Lady said, plus:

You need to look up the logical problem of "question begging."
You need to consider logical parallelism (is your statement that grade deflation is not logical but is rather a way of creating stratification parallel?  No....Many ways of creating stratification are perfectly logical).
Moreover, it's hard to imagine how your fictional team scenario could possibly avoid leaking over into plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty, particularly because most courses that don't specifically permit teamwork at least implicitly prohibit it.  In that case, despite this team's "ethic being the best," they should actually all fail.

And come to think of it, if that were to happen, we would have deflated the grades quite nicely, thank you very much...

[mountainguy]

I agree with aandsdean that the situation described by genecks doesn't make sense when taken through to its logical conclusion, and would be likely to result in academic honesty issues.

That having been said, I am somewhat sympathetic to those in academia who would prefer for us to re-evaluate traditionally-held notions about grade deflation and inflation. Individuals who criticize instructors for handing out too many As and Bs to students fail to acknowledge that instructors are sometimes discouraged to give bad grades by unresponsive institutional policies and American cultural misconceptions about higher education.

[dr_crankypants]

I'd like to see a school where there actually is a grade deflation problem.

[comp_queen]

I'd like to see a school where there actually is a grade deflation problem.

Dr. C--I attended it for Undergrad.  You could definitely see where our profs were SO concerned about grade inflation that they would give work slightly lower grades than they wanted to.  Sometimes they even TOLD us that this was the case.  So it's rare, but it does happen.

[gennimom]

Some profs do this by grading on the curve. If you use the statistical curve, a typical "Bell curve," there will only be so many As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. The Cs are in the middle so there will be more. As and Fs are the ends so there will be less. I don't agree with doing things this way, especially when a prof uses it sadistically (I had one of those). I think if a student earns a grade, they deserve it, regardless of how many others earned the same. I think however, grading on the curve is easier to do when the majority of the tests are essay/fill in the page.

[warmaiden]

Dr. C--I attended it for Undergrad.  You could definitely see where our profs were SO concerned about grade inflation that they would give work slightly lower grades than they wanted to.  Sometimes they even TOLD us that this was the case.  So it's rare, but it does happen.
[/quote]
Oh, CompQueen, I wonder fi we attended the same institution. it actually became a point of pride that we could say no one had graduated from our college with a 4.0 since the late 1920s, the place was so difficult and grade-deflationary! However, no working and attending a large public university that doesn't care about grades much, I can definitely say that deflationary tendencies make students work harder to earn their grades, result in greater learning and fostering intellectual community, and also result in a higher percentage of students that not only know where the library is, but how to use it...

I'd like to add that in an era where students everywhere are given good grades throughout their academic careers based on what grades will do for their self esteem rather than basing grading on actual ability and mastery of a subject, I'm a very big fan of deflation. However, if you get a class full of rock stars who do excellent research adn earn As, I think grading on a curve is ridiculous. Give folks the grade they earn...just make sure those students are EARNING those As and Bs.

[csguy]

I worked at an institution that expected a 2.0 (C) average for lower division courses. It's not completely unreasonable for some of the larger classes at least.

The ideal is an overall culture of expectations. If you have faculty who never give D's or F's then you probably have a problem unless you're in a highly selective university where all students are held to and actually achieve high standards.

[msoexpert]

Grade deflation is bascially the concept of an "easy grade."  In other words, you simply hand out passing grades to students who really didn't earn it.  How is that "deflation?"  Well it lowers the value of the grade because it was not earned, but rather just given to you without merit.

So why do some do it?  Well there are 2 main reasons.

#1: As instructors, we live or die today based on our student evaluations, and those students who don't get a "good grade" will tend to complain the loudest.  So to bump-up our evals, we give students grades that they can live with and not complain about.  This makes us look "good" to our Dept. Heads and Deans.

#2: The Deans and Dept. Heads often don't want student complaints at all, so they'll sometimes tell instructors to "pass" them.  This happens with those supervisors who don't want to be bothered with these issues, or want everything "happy."

Personally, I think it stinks!  It sends the wrong message to students, that you can slide by without earning it.  And it makes us look bad because we're forced to lower our standards.  And most of all, it's one main reason why employers look outside America.  Because in many foreign countries, this practice is unacceptable.

I say go back to the days when education was NOT run as a business as it is today.  Let's go back to the days when students were held to higher standards, and teachers were given the freedom to hold them accountable for unacceptable behavior and quality.

[philoctetes]

I worked in a school that had a similar policy. They were managing the fact that they gave a free ride to anyone who could keep an A- average. This meant pressure to keep grades low to save money, not high to please students (customers?). Overall I didn't mind this policy, there was some flexibility. If you had a real great batch of students, the average could go higher, they cared more that you didn't make a habit of it.

I worked at an institution that expected a 2.0 (C) average for lower division courses. It's not completely unreasonable for some of the larger classes at least.

[iomhaigh]

We get to have a chat with the Dean if our course averages routinely run high.  Students do not expect to get high grades without working incredibly hard for them.  Course evals are not negatively impacted by grading fairly.   

Have I mentioned lately that I work in Brigadoon?   It can be done. 

[dundee]

I despise teachers who brag about all the bad grades they dish out. Failing to grade each paper based on its merits or lack thereof is a failure to teach properly. If a student earns an A, give them the A! If they deserve to fail, give them the F! Deciding how many A's or F's one is going to give before one has even graded the assignment is unethical, IMO.

[iomhaigh]

I despise teachers who brag about all the bad grades they dish out. Failing to grade each paper based on its merits or lack thereof is a failure to teach properly. If a student earns an A, give them the A! If they deserve to fail, give them the F! Deciding how many A's or F's one is going to give before one has even graded the assignment is unethical, IMO.

I'm not sure if you were referring to me or not, but I do grade fairly.  Indeed, my dean's views on grading allows me to grade fairly in ways that many other folks are not free to do.  It is a rather refreshing place to work for that very reason.  Students know they have to work to earn their grades -- and they do work to earn those grades.  And, in the process, I get to grade some fantastic papers.  Plus, the slackers who are coasting to graduation do not complain about their grades and do not expect to slack their way to a B grade.

[dundee]

I'm not sure if you were referring to me or not, but I do grade fairly.  Indeed, my dean's views on grading allows me to grade fairly in ways that many other folks are not free to do.  It is a rather refreshing place to work for that very reason.  Students know they have to work to earn their grades -- and they do work to earn those grades.  And, in the process, I get to grade some fantastic papers.  Plus, the slackers who are coasting to graduation do not complain about their grades and do not expect to slack their way to a B grade.

No, I was not referring specifically to you iomhaigh, just to some of my colleagues.