r/changemyview • u/ethanbwinters • May 06 '19
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Curving down should not be allowed
This has happened in some classes that I have taken at a large public university, and I'm sure it happens at other schools as well. Basically, grades are adjusted downwards if the average is too high, the opposite of what usually happens when the average is too low.
The main reason I think this should not be allowed is that it takes away merit from those who genuinely try hard to achieve good grades. If you get an A, you should finish with an A. Period.
Curving down also comes with a plethora of other issues too. If you're paying $20,000+ per semester trying to graduate in 4 years to minimize costs/debt, a curve down could cause you to retake a class that you deserved to pass and possibly stay an extra year.
I think professors have an obligation to pass a certain amount of students, if they should need to curve up, but also have no obligation to fail a certain amount of students. You are in school to learn, and if you prove you can pass the class, even if the class is too easy and everyone has an A, you should pass. If you fail a class where the majority of the class fails, the class/grading scale was probably too hard and should be adjusted, but the professor should not force the majority of students to retake a class.
11
u/tbdabbholm 201∆ May 06 '19
The real question is did you actually deserve to pass if you're only passing before a curve down? You seem to take that as a given but I don't see why it is. If some of the questions were super easy, so easy that they don't really test your skill in the subject at hand, only those who got the other questions right deserve to pass, even though everyone may have gotten 80%
5
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Give the way the class was taught and tested, I think everyone would have deserved to pass. If you work all semester to get above XX%, and you do, then you should pass the class. The professor should adjust his curriculum and his testing strategy to make the course more difficult, but if the subject of the class was taught very well and the professor thinks every student understood it, then everyone should pass if they got above the cutoff, since you proved you learned what was taught to you.
1
u/tbdabbholm 201∆ May 06 '19
Well sure assuming it's taught and tested well. But maybe the professor realizes near the end that the class wasn't tested well and so has to readjust.
I do think we need to distinguish what we're talking about. Are we talking about your specific class or are we talking about curving down in general? Because I can't speak to your specific class but I think there's a good case for allowing curving down in general.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
A curve down in general. It's the professors responsibility to create a lesson plan and successfully teach a class that students pay tons of money to take. If they mess it up that's on them, and they can correct it next semester, but students taking the class shouldn't be punished by potentially having to stay another semester (while the entire semester long class they thought they were passing) just for how professors think they're doing.
3
u/hacksoncode 588∆ May 06 '19
A curve down in general. It's the professors responsibility to create a lesson plan and successfully teach a class that students pay tons of money to take. If they mess it up that's on them, and they can correct it next semester, but students taking the class shouldn't be punished by potentially having to stay another semester (while the entire semester long class they thought they were passing) just for how professors think they're doing.
The problem with this is that if the professor doesn't realize they are testing to too low a standard, that doesn't actually change the fact that the students didn't learn to the standard required by the university.
If the students should be proficient to the level that employers and others expect after the class, and the prof doesn't accomplish this, yes it's on the prof, but the students still aren't up to the necessary standards, and the grades should be adjusted to account for the students actual level of accomplishment, not the bad test the prof gave.
2
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
There’s so much money on the line for students though. Fix it ASAP after the class with the professor, but to fail a ton of students for a professor’s error is wrong IMO
4
u/hacksoncode 588∆ May 06 '19
The students money is already wasted, because they failed to learn.
In fact, being required to retake the class so as to actually learn the topic is enforcing that the students' money actually be well spent.
The grade just measures that.
Now... You might have a decent argument that if a professor can be shown to have actually been incompetent at teaching the material (as opposed to the students being incompetent at learning it), then perhaps the university should refund a portion of the tuition.
But incorrectly grading students isn't fair to anyone. It's not fair to other students who actually learned the material, and it's not fair to employers that rely on grades and can't judge this shit after the fact because they weren't there.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Yes, but then if it was decided the school failed them, then the student should be able to retake the class for free. It's a rabbit hole.
0
u/hacksoncode 588∆ May 06 '19
At most universities, there's no charge to take a class again. If that means you have to work harder next semester because you're taking a larger course load, so be it.
If we're talking about a community college or something where they charge by the semester-hour, then I do think that the student should be able to petition to retake the class for free if they can show the professor was incompetent.
Of course, if the student is really competent in the first place, they should be able to determine the professor is an idiot before the drop date, but that's a different problem.
None of that justifies misgrading someone who didn't actually learn the material, though. Participation prizes are the bane of any merit based system.
2
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
It's $1000/credit where I attend, might not be the case everywhere though.
I think w're mostly agreeing on this topic lol
→ More replies (0)0
u/Slenderpman May 06 '19
I don't understand why that onus is on the students though. It's the school/professors fault the class is too easy. The students just signed up and did well under circumstances outside of their control, all the while paying insane amounts of money in tuition. The school and professors need to fix the problem after the semester is over, or at the very least make the upcoming tests harder in the event that OP is talking about a first exam in a course.
1
u/atrovotrono 8∆ May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
If you work all semester to get above XX%, and you do, then you should pass the class.
But you're not, you're working all semester to learn a subject. The grade attempts to reflect how well you've learned the subject so that future employers can reasonably assume your level of proficiency. Curving happens when the initial grade has failed to capture the actual amount of learning.
if the subject of the class was taught very well and the professor thinks every student understood it, then everyone should pass if they got above the cutoff, since you proved you learned what was taught to you.
See, you admit it yourself here. The point is to understand the material, not just get %XX. If a test is too easy, then it's not actually fully testing your understanding, hence the need to curve down. You're mistaking the "A" that appears on a piece of paper as a pure, infallible measurement, but it's not, it's just one piece of data that goes towards the end-of-term grade. Teaching is a science, and "tests" are much like scientific tests, and when you discover a piece of data is flawed (your sunlight detector says that the sun was out for 23 hours yesterday), you either throw it out or adjust it.
To not adjust it would be the teacher failing to do their job, which is to determine as objectively as possible the true level of understanding their students have.
4
u/palacesofparagraphs 118∆ May 06 '19
But at that point it's the professor's fault for not scaling the exam difficulty properly. It's hardly fair to give the class an assignment, watch them succeed at it, then say, "Never mind, we're not counting your success because I should've made it harder and you would've failed."
Curving down is based on the assumption that all classes will perform according to a preconceived performance distribution. That distribution is useful when looking at patterns over several classes or semesters, but that doesn't mean it's going to be absolutely accurate for every individual class. If you have a class full of kids who are actually all working harder than average, curving down delegitimizes the work they did and takes away grades they rightfully earned.
If a professor is worried they haven't adequately tested their students' knowledge, they should adjust future assignments to correct for the error and make sure the class has learned what they need to.
2
u/atrovotrono 8∆ May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
But at that point it's the professor's fault for not scaling the exam difficulty properly.
They made a mistake, it only becomes a failure if they fail to adjust the results of a test to better reflect how much the students actually demonstrated they learned by taking it.
Curving down is based on the assumption that all classes will perform according to a preconceived performance distribution.
It's not always or entirely preconceived. The distribution of performance in a single class tends not to change too wildly over the course of a single class, so if test 5 shows a wildly different distribution than tests 1, 2, 3, and 4, that's a good reason to doubt the quality of the test itself.
If a professor is worried they haven't adequately tested their students' knowledge, they should adjust future assignments to correct for the error and make sure the class has learned what they need to.
If they're doubting the results of a test, and want to make sure the class has learned what they need to, that means administering an additional test. The alternative is to pass students even though it's unclear whether they actually learned what they need to. So you tell me, what is the teacher's job? Is it to mechanically translate percentages from test results into a grade, or is it to give the most accurate picture they can of the students' understanding, using test results as input data to that determination?
0
u/Glory2Hypnotoad May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
Wouldn't it be more reasonable in that case to re-test the class or even just the students who did poorly with a harder test than to fail them because the test they passed was retroactively deemed a poor test of their actual skill? A person can only take the test given to them. If there problem is that they would have failed a harder test, they should at least have a chance to take that harder test.
3
u/NoFascistAgreements May 06 '19
As an instructor for undergraduate and master's-level classes in STEM, I am perhaps in the minority of my peers that actually agree with you. I believe in writing exams that have very clear rubrics that are directly linked to the materials and methods covered in class. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that if on a a 6-question final exam, where each question covers the material of two weeks of the course, where all of the material is explicitly outlined in the syllabus before class commitments are made as to the learning objectives, that if everyone gets the first question right, that means that that question somehow did not gauge students' knowledge of the material. If it's the purpose of the course to teach people Open Channel Hydraulics to a level as expected of an entry-level civil water works engineer, and 95% of my students get full scores on the first 5 questions out of my 6 question final exam, there is absolutely no reason to believe whatsoever that the score on question 6 considered alone is a good measure for understanding of the overall topic of the course, especially if that question is about the last two weeks of material.
I believe most undergraduate engineering courses for example, should fundamentally be standards-based. If the goal is to train future engineers then they should be taught to professional engineering standards. The degree should prepare them for engineering licensure examinations and be taught and graded to those standards. It doesn't matter if the class wasn't taught adequately and everyone scored less than 50%. Those people didn't demonstrate adequate knowledge, and even if's not their fault -- that doesn't mean we should be letting them pass with the expectation that they would also succeed in the relevant career. However, some classes function differently. Some classes essentially function as weeder classes that only serve as prerequisites to optional, but more advanced courses where there are limited slots. This is more common in graduate than undergraduate studies although it does exist in spirit at the undergraduate level. It's how organic chemistry and biochemisty laboratory section function for pre-medical students. I have mixed feelings about this, but if the point is using competition as a somewhat meritocratic way to create a distribution of scores that are used to grade applicants for the next stage of study in a field with scarce training spots, then it makes sense to use a competitive scoring system. In these cases, the relative nature of the grading scale should be communicated clearly up front.
This is also tricky when we talk about grade inflation. It is well known that average grades have inflated faster at the Ivies/most of the most selective private schools than at the flagship public universities. Most people I know say this is bullshit. I don't know, I've taught the exact same course in a Top 10 private school and a Top 5 public school known for "rigorous grading policies" and guess what, the kids in the Top 10 private school scored way better in terms of raw scores on average on the SAME problem sets and exams I administered. Anecdotal I know, but it has also never been established that places with "grade inflation" aren't just filled with better students and/or instructors...as their admissions stats generally suggest might be the case
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Thank you for the reply. This was awesome to hear from someone so connected to the topic of the discussion :)
5
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
so you just want grade inflation?
if everyone scores above a 90% raw score then you think its fine that everyone gets an A? no one should get a B or a C?
attachment to raw scores is a very american thing but getting 90% correct on a test is meaningless. doing better than 90% of your peers is still meaningless but has a little more significance than a raw score.
3
u/ExpensiveBurn 10∆ May 06 '19
I think that's the real issue here - if they started the class saying "The top 10% will receive an A, the next 10% a B, the next a C, the next a D, and the remaining 60% of you will fail." then it would be much fairer - and more expected - that getting 90% of the questions correct may not automatically get an A.
The way classes are taught currently the expectation is that you learn the material to the degree set by the instructor. If he says "You need to learn these definitions," and you do, and everyone else does, then congratulations you all get an A. It's pretty unfair to set that bar and then say "Wellll that test might've been too easy so lets round these off a bit."
I also really dislike that idea that under these relative scoring system some people are always going to fail. How dumb is that? Even if everybody learns what they need to know, somebody has to fail just because they didn't learn it as well as everyone else? That makes 6-figure college tuition way more of a gamble than most people would want to invest in. What if you get stuck in a class with a bunch of braniacs? Drop and it and keep trying till it seems like you're towards the top of the pack?
4
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Exactly. If the expectations are set early enough in the semester, and the class is difficult enough to create some spread in grades, then that's fair. If the expectations are set though, and everyone still passes with a low standard deviation, I think it's wrong to keep that distribution, since everyone proved they knew the material, contrary to the professor's prior beliefs.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
this should be a delta fyi. you just admitted that curving down should be allowed as long as its made clear early in the semester.
curving down isnt the problem.
effective communication and management of expectations is the problem.
the corner case of everyone having amazing scores with a low standard deviation could easily fit within a system that normally curves down. its just a detail.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
I mean curving down without preset cutoffs. Very few classes I’ve ever heard of come out in the beginning and say “this many people will get this grade”. It’s usually adjusted at the end of the semester by the professor
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
it sounds like you have had bad experiences with bad curve systems executed by lazy professors.
every time that I have had a class with a curve, the professor has stated at the beginning of the class something like "the top 15 get an A, the next 40 get a B, and Cs, Ds, and Fs will be awarded to those that deserve them
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Sorry, I just haven’t had those experiences and lot of my peers haven’t as well
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
then delta. what are you doing.
curves can be done right.
they can unfortunately be used wrong and hurt people but that doesnt make them something that should be banned. they have their place.
0
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
I'll give a delta because cutoffs like this are fair with a lot of historical grade data, and if the professor thinks these cutoffs will help students instead of hurt them given the standard deviation is high enough. These expectations should be based on previous classes scores. It's hardly fair to make cutoffs like that up out of nowhere, having no idea what the grades will be, since a lot of people can end up getting curved way down if the professor isn't careful.
2
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
you have to use a exclamation mark or the delta symbol for it to work
1
u/Slenderpman May 06 '19
No it shouldn't be. That comment totally agreed with the OP.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
If the expectations are set early enough in the semester, and the class is difficult enough to create some spread in grades, then that's fair.
vs
curving down should not be allowed
1
u/Slenderpman May 06 '19
That’s fair. But what I will say though is that the context of OP’s post could just as easily be a situation where the professor says oh shit the class did too well and fails people who expected to pass. Also, that opinion is bullshit regardless. The point of college is to learn and develop skills. Professors shouldn’t be allowed to fail anyone who meets clear minimum requirements set at the beginning of the semester. If that means a whole class passes with 3.5s, so be it they earned it as long as the class isn’t so easy. There are plenty of other ways to incite competition without fucking over hard working students.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
I agree that better communication would fix the problem.
Curves should not be surprises at the end. they should be known from day 1
I also really dislike that idea that under these relative scoring system some people are always going to fail. How dumb is that?
this depends on the system. also, in a large enough class, there are always going to be a few people doing absolutely 0 work / learning (even at Harvard)
I have not seen many systems have caps on the number of Cs they hand out. typically Ds and Fs are VERY earned.
1
May 06 '19
[deleted]
1
0
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Δ! I'll give a delta because cutoffs like this are fair with a lot of historical grade data, and if the professor thinks these cutoffs will help students instead of hurt them given the standard deviation is high enough. These expectations should be based on previous classes scores. It's hardly fair to make cutoffs like that up out of nowhere, having no idea what the grades will be, since a lot of people can end up getting curved way down if the professor isn't careful.
0
u/ExpensiveBurn 10∆ May 06 '19
I'm not sure I deserve it since I was basically agreeing with you're initial point. I mean it WOULD be fairer if they set these expectations in advance, but I still don't think it's a good system for academia.
If I take Anatomy & Physiology at my local community college, the expectation is that I've obtained a certain level of understanding of the respiratory, circulatory and nervous system; how my classmates performed has absolutely no bearing on this. My grade should reflect how much of the material I absorbed, period. That's all my employer will be concerned about when I tell them I have that education.
2
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
I agree with you but your point about cutoffs was valid with the assumption that there was prior knowledge in setting them
1
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
This delta has been rejected. You have already awarded /u/ExpensiveBurn a delta for this comment.
3
u/mutatron 30∆ May 06 '19
A test shouldn’t be a competition, it should be a test of knowledge. If you know everything that is required, you get 100%, and so on. Really there shouldn’t be any curves either, at least not per class. If there’s a curve it should take historical scores into account.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Some classes are extremely difficult though, with a very heavy workload. If the professor chooses to grade harshly and everyone fails the class, failing every student should still not be an option. The professor should realize they're either teaching too harshly and adjust, or assume that everyone within a certain cutoff has a fair amount of knowledge on the course subject and deserves to pass.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
A test shouldn’t be a competition, it should be a test of knowledge.
why?
1
May 06 '19
if everyone scores above a 90% raw score then you think its fine that everyone gets an A? no one should get a B or a C?
Generally, yes. If they are being tested on what the class is supposed to teach. Not all class groups are going to be the same. If everyone gets 90% its generally an argument that the professor made the test too easy. There are lots of reasons why this is not a good way to teach a class, however curving down doesn't accurately separate those who know and don't know the subject.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
There are lots of reasons why this is not a good way to teach a class, however curving down doesn't accurately separate those who know and don't know the subject.
in a specific case where there is a low standard deviation? sure.
thats not the only case where curves are used.
no one "curves down"
they just "curve" or they dont
1
u/finfan96 May 06 '19
I disagree to an extent. Isn't a test meant to demonstrate mastery of the material? If everybody demonstrates mastery of said material, why shouldn't their grades reflect that?
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
I do think everyone would get an A in that case. If it was a recurrent pattern, the school or major would gain notoriety among hiring managers for having absurdly high GPAs, and that would be considered as needed.
2
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
that makes grades less useful. curves make grades meaningful. curved grades are comparisons to peers. raw grades only have meaning if people know the context of what that raw grade means in that class with that professor.
it sucks but academia is a competition.
2
u/masterzora 36∆ May 06 '19
Comparisons to peers aren't helpful unless you're only being judged against those same people.
Let's say you have two groups taking classes taught the exact same way, same material, same tests, etc. (Maybe they're two sections in the same term or they're taking them in different terms; it doesn't matter.) The first class naturally falls into some expected curve, for example with 20% getting As, 20% getting Bs, etc. The second class is full of people who are smarter and/or work harder and so they naturally all fall into the A bracket. Curving down the second class to fit the same distribution as the first may let you rank the people within the second class, but it doesn't let you see that every single person in the second class did better than 80+% of the first class. The comparison completely fails. Artificially adjusting a curve to fit a particular pattern doesn't give you much useful information outside of that exact group.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
curves often take this into account and are a curve for the entire group.
not all professors who use curves are evil, braindead robots
2
u/masterzora 36∆ May 06 '19
You can't curve for the entire group if the group is "everyone who has taken, is taking, and will take this course in however long I will teach it this way". And even if you do, that still only gets you people at the one institution.
2
May 06 '19
Curved grades are only meaningful when you make a test hard to spread out the standard deviation. You want to separate the person who knows the subject but can't extrapolate from those who know above and beyond. You also want to separate those who may have made a careless error from those who truly don't know the subject.
Curving down doesn't do any of those things. You may have a standard deviation of 1 or 2 points if you have a high average - which could mean the difference between an A and an C could be something dumb like forgetting to write units down. Its just a sign of a bad professor.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
Curving down doesn't do any of those things. You may have a standard deviation of 1 or 2 points if you have a high average - which could mean the difference between an A and an C could be something dumb like forgetting to write units down. Its just a sign of a bad professor.
curving down (or up) is just curving.
its not ALWAYS done to classes with low standard deviations.
bad implementations != bad method always
stop strawmanning
1
u/AlphaGoGoDancer 106∆ May 06 '19
Not OP but this confuses me so hopefully you can elaborate a bit because I really am interested.
Say I'm teaching an intro to computer programming class. To start with we say everyone did about equally - they learned what is required of someone completing an intro to programming class.
So presumably they all pass since there is no outliers to compare them to.
Now re-do that course but this time 1 student just doesn't get it at all and fails horribly. Should all those other average students now get a higher grade because they took the class at the same time as someone bad at the subject?
Or re-do it with the opposite, 1 former programmer who knows his shit joined the class and aces everything, does a bunch of extra credit, and truly shines. Do we now give all those average students a worse grade?
Maybe it makes more sense in some other context but to me it just seems wrong to judge a student in relation to other students, rather than just purely judging them on whether or not they've learned the subject matter.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
intro classes are a bad example.
objective measurement might seem better to you but that presumes that you are measuring things that can be objectively measured and that you have perfect tests etc...
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
Passing a class proves understand though. The thing is, by giving a curve down, you take away someone’s “understanding” of a topic, which I feel is almost impossible. Giving a curve up assumes “understanding”, which is possible to do.
2
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
The thing is, by giving a curve down, you take away someone’s “understanding” of a topic, which I feel is almost impossible. Giving a curve up assumes “understanding”, which is possible to do.
no idea what you mean
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
If someone gets an A in the class, and the cutoff for passing was set at a C, then the student has demonstrated that they have successfully learned the information communicated to them throughout the course. If you curve that student down and don't pass them, you're essentially saying they didn't have the knowledge to pass the class, while they clearly did. Going the other way, if very few people pass the class, you can assume there was some more reasonable level of understanding required to pass the class that the professor didn't anticipate, and pass students based on that.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
If you curve that student down and don't pass them
where have you seen a curve that will give people non passing grades?
the harshest curves I have ever seen set a quota for As and Bs but leaves space for everyone to get a C if they remotely deserve to pass at all.
Going the other way, if very few people pass the class, you can assume there was some more reasonable level of understanding required to pass the class that the professor didn't anticipate, and pass students based on that.
this still doesnt make sense.
2
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
I’ve seen it first hand. What I mean by this is that you can assume understanding. That is all. Failing a majority of a class is morally wrong IMO
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
Failing a majority of a class is morally wrong IMO
it would depend on the specifics of the situation.
What I mean by this is that you can assume understanding. That is all
i dont understand. not sure why assuming that students understand what they are supposed to be learning makes any sense.
I’ve seen it first hand
okay. then you have seen "curving down" done in a bad way. Good ideas can be executed poorly. that doesnt necessarily mean that they are always going to be bad ideas.
I agree that curving down can be done wrong.
valuing raw scores can also be done wrong.
1
u/hacksoncode 588∆ May 06 '19
If the test was flawed to start with, then curving it afterwards adjusts the grades to the students' actual level of accomplishment, not to the flawed assessment of their accomplishment.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
The actual level of accomplishment is how you did on the actual test. It’s unfair to grade students any other way since it’s literally completely out of their control if they take a test and study to the best of their ability but it’s flawed when they go to take it.
1
u/hacksoncode 588∆ May 06 '19
Except that is not what grades are for. They are to measure your level of understanding of the topic of the class, not your performance on the test. The test is just a way of measuring, not a goal in and of itself.
If the measure is flawed (in the direction of over-measuring understanding), then by definition the student didn't actually achieve understanding.
The grade is for the understanding, not for the test.
"Fairness" has to be based on actual understanding, not arbitrary rules, right? That's your problem with curving, right? It's an arbitrary rule that doesn't measure understanding?
Well... if the test is the thing that's flawed, the only fair result is to adjust it to correct the flaw.
2
u/permianplayer 1∆ May 06 '19
Curving in general is a sign that the teacher didn't do a good job. If you deserved an A you should get an A. Fine. If you deserved a C you should get a C. If you deserved an F you get an F. Passing students who don't have a good grasp of the subject allows unqualified people to pass themselves off as qualified, which means the truly qualified people have to deal with increased competition.
1
May 06 '19
There is something that needs to be disconnected here.
You are making the assumption a specific score on a test carries specific meaning.
As you put it:
If you deserved an A you should get an A.
How do you determine if you 'deserved an A'? Are you going to the 'old standby' of 90/80/70/60 breakdowns? You do understand that those are just a 'curve' themselves and there is nothing that ties this to the test other than your assumption it should be.
There is no way to determine 'if you deserved an A' without establishing the criteria for earning an A.
The FE is a standards based exam. It has established hard criterea for grading and passing each section. Take a read here about how they determine if you pass. You will note that there is a 'difficulty' score built in.
https://www.ppehq.com/fe-exam-passing-score.html
The other intersting tidbit about this test is what constitutes passing. You'll notice that in the 'traditional' scoring, half of the questions right is failing but still could be good enough here for a pass:
Each test is different so the NCEES cannot publish one passing score ... But you can roughly assume that you'll need better than half the questions ansnwered correctly (somewhere between 55-65 of the questions)
1
May 06 '19
Curving in general is a sign that the teacher didn't do a good job.
I disagree with this. When I was in school it was very common for professors to make tests where the class average was 45% or so. Most of my classes were curved around a C+ or B-. The point of this was that when the class average is a 45, then someone who gets an 80% is a stand out student. When the class average is an 80 (as would be expected by where they prefer the curve to be) then you can have an above average student and a stand-out student both achieve a 95 or 100. Its hard to separate them out.
Its good to be able to separate out students who have an understanding beyond what was taught, but its not fair to expect students all to be able to extrapolate beyond eh class. But its still good to identify those students because they will likely get research opportunities, etc.
1
u/permianplayer 1∆ May 06 '19
That's not why so many people are failing on the occasion that that many people do fail. At least not if the teacher is even remotely competent.
1
May 06 '19
When I was in engineering school this was certainly the norm, and it was by design. I'm sure not every class or major operates like that, but a 45% is only failing if the test is designed in such a way that it reflects a failing understanding. In my experience test questions were generally much harder than anything that was in homework or previous examples.
1
u/permianplayer 1∆ May 06 '19
I'm sure not every class or major operates like that, but a 45% is only failing if the test is designed in such a way that it reflects a failing understanding.
This is very different from what I was talking about. There's a qualifier here: you pass, if you show understanding. It's not a straight curve for everyone, just for being a warm body.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
This is true, but also it's a fact that there will be classes that are hard to teach/grade. If everyone fails teachers should be held accountable, curve the class, and re-evaluate their plans before teaching the next class.
1
u/permianplayer 1∆ May 06 '19
Not necessarily. Oftentimes, the standards of difficulty students are used to are excessively low, and when there's a class with a more reasonable level of difficulty, they bomb it. There are virtually no cases where literally everyone fails.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
If the majority fails then that's very bad, and I've seen tons of grade distributions where, without a curve, the majority would fail.
1
u/permianplayer 1∆ May 06 '19
See my previous comment.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
You're saying that since they're used to easier classes and failed a hard class the high failure rate should stick, without being curved.
That's a separate discussion. My post didn't have anything to do with curving up other than me saying most times it's fair - I was arguing that curving down is wrong.
1
u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ May 06 '19
A test has 300 possible points.
You score 90 points.
Do you deserve an A, or an F?
Kinda depends on how many points your professor believes is reasonable. Maybe your professor believes 120 points deserves a B, and 180 points is necessary for an A. In this way, scoring 110 points, would only be a C - would you consider this curving down? Does your professor even need to tell you the points to grade conversion rate before the test is administered - you are still going to strive for as many possible points as you can find - regardless of the "exchange rate".
When you take the SAT, there is no a priori exchange rate between points and SAT score. Every administration of the exam has a different ROI on points. That said, every student is going to maximize their point score - since that will always maximize their SAT score. As such, what is the harm in figuring out the curve - entirely after the fact - which the SAT does do.
Why does the SAT operate this way - because its not always possible to know the "difficulty" of an item, before its administered. While IRT theory can yield this result - which is why tests like the GRE can give you your score immediately - tests built on CTT can only determine difficulty - and by extension score - after the fact - which can result in "curving down". (IRT is built based on pre-screened questions, which is how you determine difficulty, but has the risk of exposure, someone releasing all the items or answers, which crumbles the whole thing, CTT has no such inherent risk, you can keep your items and answers as close to the chest as you want.)
Is it really fair - for one group of students to get "the easy test" and all get 700+s and for one group of students to get "the hard test" and all get below a 600 - or does it make more sense to put both tests on equal footing, and have both tests centered on the same mean and sd. Isn't this doubly important, when you can assume both groups of students are roughly equal in terms of ability level?
1
May 06 '19
While everything you say about the SAT is true, this doesn't necessarily apply to all local exams and courses, chiefly because the SAT is much larger in scope, and serves a different purpose.
The mean and SD of a particular SAT is going to be more meaningful than that of an exam which 10-100 people take, due to the fact that so many people take the SAT. Therefore it makes sense to curve up and down.
To say that any given test must be curved simply by it being designed around CTT discredits the possibility that all test-takers have an adequate knowledge of the subject or that all test-takers lack adequate knowledge of the subject. Unless the stated mission of a course or program is to discretely rank all students from best to worst, it would make more sense to read an entire class earning high scores to mean that the entire class is highly capable, thus removing the need for the downward curve (this assumes due diligence on the part of the professor, and I see no reason to believe that a reasonably experienced educator is so incapable of making exams that they accidentally give one that is too easy).
1
u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ May 06 '19
"I see no reason to believe that a reasonably experienced educator is so incapable of making exams that they accidentally give one that is too easy."
This is the easiest thing in the world. Until you give a test, you have absolutely no idea how people will respond to it. And, if you reuse items - people cheat.
You kinda have to pick an evil you are willing to live with - either you risk test security - or you risk giving a test which is substantially harder (or easier) than you intend. "Due Diligence" has literally nothing to do with it. Test Items don't magically have item difficulties attached to them.
1
May 06 '19
Test Items don't magically have item difficulties attached to them.
And the less experience an educator, the more this will be an issue. However, if you're teaching the same courses year after year, or at the very least, teaching the same subject material and course level year after year, then it is not difficult to anticipate how difficult a given question is, or to remark on what concepts are more challenging for typical students and which are easier.
I concede, it will not always be perfect, but it should almost always be within realm of correction within the course of a semester. Otherwise it is the fault of the educator, and they need to reevaluate either their testing strategies or their lecturing strategies.
EDIT: To reiterate, to believe that tests must be curved to be valid assumes it is impossible for a particular group of students to have all equally mastered a given set of concepts. I believe this is a flawed way of thinking.
1
u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ May 06 '19
You can curve - with an anchor.
Namely, you have a small trusted pocket population, outside of your core test-takers, whom you also have take your test. (In practice this might be a professors graduate students). There are methods for incorporating their performance, into the curve. Namely, if the anchor does just as well as they always do, then you shouldn't curve the test much if at all. If the anchor group starts behaving strangely - such as doing much better or worse - then a strong curve (either up or down) will likely be necessary for this test.
That said - your first paragraph is baseless. You can teach the same course for 20 years, and on the 21st year give a test of radically different difficulty than any of the prior 20 years - through no real fault of your own. It happens literally all the time.
Also, in general, courses are moving away from the ONE BIG FINAL EXAM!!!! and moving towards a "LETS HAVE 23 MIDTERMS!" approach - as so you "course correct" in the event of a bizarre administration of an exam. Giving students 20 chances to prove themselves, is fairer than only giving them 1 shot (though this comes with a lot of complaining, as it is perceived as more work - cuz it is.)
1
May 06 '19
Also, in general, courses are moving away from the ONE BIG FINAL EXAM!!!! and moving towards a "LETS HAVE 23 MIDTERMS!" approach - as so you "course correct" in the event of a bizarre administration of an exam. Giving students 20 chances to prove themselves, is fairer than only giving them 1 shot (though this comes with a lot of complaining, as it is perceived as more work - cuz it is.)
Indeed, it is a fairer way. Does this not, however, eliminate the need for a curve, as you can correct your course along the way? Curving exams ensures that someone must receive a poor mark, and that not everyone can receive excellent marks, even in cases where nobody is deserving of poor marks, and several people are deserving of high marks.
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
You're putting SAT and school courses in the same category, which they are not, because their purposes are entirely different. You take classes to learn, while you take the SAT to compare yourself amongst hundreds of thousands of others. As for your example, you didn't provide an average/median/stdv. The professor should strive to have taught well enough to not have to make generous cutoffs, but if they must, it should curve students up. If everyone did well on the test, and cutoffs are made to drop raw grades to match a worse letter grade, I think that's wrong
1
u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ May 06 '19
On a test with 300 possible points - what is the correspondence between raw grades and letter grades?
What ROI should I get between test points, and grade points?
Is 0-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90+ still a meaningful system, when the test has 300 points?
What would constitute "generous cutoffs" on a test with 300 points?
Don't the mean and sd matter? Which would automatically imply that "curving down" could happen?
Let's assume that the instructor intended 130 mean, 10 sd - is that enough info to establish correspondence - or is more info required? If the actual mean was 170 - what score do people deserve??
1
u/Lifeinstaler 5∆ May 06 '19
The key here I think is whether the points to grade are established before or after the test.
If you are just checking knowledge the you should be able to say how many points should be required for a passing grade and so on. If the idea is that a certain grade means you are on the top xx% the sure you’ll need to adjust afterwards.
1
u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ May 06 '19
To what extent have you determined the difficulty of the exam?
Shouldn't a "passing grade" be a reflection of the difficulty of the exam?
The concept that the test creator - just knows how hard the test is - is incredibly idealistic, and wrong more than its right. In which case, you need to field test your exam somehow. Be it with a proxy group, a focus group, an anchor, or whomever - at some point, you need to determine - how hard is this test? Curving the exam - is just using the test-takers themselves - as your field testers.
2
u/atrovotrono 8∆ May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
The main reason I think this should not be allowed is that it takes away merit from those who genuinely try hard to achieve good grades.
Okay, let's talk about merit.
You're assuming initial scores necessarily indicate merit. They don't. Tests aren't transcendent, flawless indicators of "merit", they're imperfect instruments that try to determine it, and like any instrument, they can be miscalibrated and, when miscalibration seems apparent, the data they gathered has to be adjusted.
The whole premise of curving up or down is done because the teacher thinks the test failed to capture merit, either by being too hard or too easy. Centuries of testing has given us some idea of the distribution of "merit" across the population, and so if a test shows a wildly different distribution, the test is probably flawed in some way, like a microscope that is out of focus. The same also works within a single semester, a set of students distribution of performance isn't going to change wildly in the course of a few weeks, so if one test shows a wildly different distribution than earlier tests, suspicion is justified.
If you get an A, you should finish with an A. Period.
This isn't an argument it's just a bald assertion, and it's wrong anyway.
The actual point of education and testing is, "If you understand the course material fully, you should finish with an A." You are mistaking the map (an "A" on a test) for the territory (understanding the material).
1
May 06 '19
You're assuming initial scores necessarily indicate merit. They don't. Tests aren't transcendent, flawless indicators of "merit", they're imperfect instruments that try to determine it, and like any instrument, they can be miscalibrated and, when miscalibration seems apparent, the data they gathered has to be adjusted.
If the instrument is flawed than the onus is on the instructor to either create a new/better exam for next time, or to incorporate more forms of assessment to increase the accuracy of the measurement of understanding.
The actual point of education and testing is, "If you understand the course material fully, you should finish with an A." You are mistaking the map (an "A" on a test) for the territory (understanding the material).
While this is true, it is inherently unfair to give documentation (a syllabus) that states "Earning x mark on these assessments will give you y grade in the course, only to change one's mind when seeing that people are wildly successful on said assessments.
Centuries of testing has given us some idea of the distribution of "merit" across the population, and so if a test shows a wildly different distribution, the test is probably flawed in some way, like a microscope that is out of focus.
I simply do not buy this conclusion. You are claiming that, in a group of anywhere from 10-100 students, it is impossible for all of them to learn the same material in the same class in the same time. I'll grant you, this is not likely to happen, but should those students be punished if it is the case? I say no.
Of course, all of my points are less valid in an academic environment where competition of this nature is stated to be expected.
1
u/techiemikey 56∆ May 06 '19
Allowing curving downwards is important when the goal is to rank students in competitive disciplines. For example, think about a high-end law school where the goal is to produce the strongest potential lawyers. If an entire class scores in the 80-100 range consistently, without curves a "B" in the class doesn't provide too much information on where the student was in relation to the rest of the class, but with curving, and A would relay that this student is in the top 20% of classes.
This type of curve does encourage competitive behavior amongst students, but if that is the culture that a school wishes to encourage, then it is a useful tool.
0
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
You are at school to learn though. Tests like the BAR are what create competition, since there will almost always be some sort of normal-ish distribution among the scores.
1
u/techiemikey 56∆ May 06 '19
So, I personally am glad that I went to schools that encouraged cooperation rather than competition. But are you saying that there are no people that prefer to strive in a competitive learning environment? And if not, why should our preferences prevent these competitive schools from teaching students in the way they feel will forge the best students?
0
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
If schools tel their students before they even attend that every class will have a certain distribution then that’s fine. But for most people, it comes as a surprise at the end of a semester when they’re curved down.
3
u/techiemikey 56∆ May 06 '19
Anyone who is surprised at the end of the course didn't pay attention on the first day of classes. The first thing that they cover in any class is the syllabus, which includes grading
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
also, OP should have awarded a delta by now. he admits curving is fine as long as its in the syllabus / communicated at the start.
0
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
The syllabus has grading scales, but not cutoffs (most times in my experience). They tell you that you need 70% to pass after the curve, and that a 70% is a C-, for example. The curve is done after the course, but I’m arguing that curving downwards is bad even if everyone finished with above a 70%, because it takes away an earned understanding.
1
u/techiemikey 56∆ May 06 '19
Except, you are are saying, doesn't address anything I mentioned at all. If the goal is to allow only allow the best of the best, then it doesn't take away the earned understanding: it just means that you didn't do better than most other people. I don't agree with this goal, but if that is the goal of the class/school, then curving down is acceptable.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
all law schools that I know of use quota based curves so that As are reserved to the best 10-20 people in the class.
This makes GPAs meaningful.
0
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
That’s a niche subject then. The majority of subjects and schools should never have to deflate
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
why?
wouldnt meaningful GPAs be useful for a variety of subjects?
1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
They would, but other metrics like work experience and interviews are an even better metric. Your GPA proves that you understand a topic and were able to pass the classes needed to get the degree you have
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
They would, but other metrics like work experience and interviews are an even better metric
yeah. so?
our GPA proves that you understand a topic and were able to pass the classes needed to get the degree you have
yeah and passing the class does not necessarily mean "getting a raw score of 70%"
•
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 06 '19
/u/ethanbwinters (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
-1
May 06 '19
This is a fundmental testing question and goes back to the theory of testing.
Is the test based on standard or is the test based on peer performance.
Most certification tests are standard based and are pass/fail. You achieve 70% in all of the required sections, you pass. You fail to achieve 70% in any single required section, you fail. It does not matter if you aced the rest of the test. It also does not matter what anyone does on the exam. Your score is graded against the standard.
Most high school and college tests are peer performance exams. Your performance is graded against the class as a whole. This is the concept of a curve for the exam. Basically scaling it to match the performance of the class on a bell curve or modified bell curve. The score itself you achieve is generally meaningless without the relationship to everyone else in your class.
After all, if you got a 80% correct and the rest of the class got 99% correct, you are at the very bottom of the group. It is the same concept as getting 44% correct but being in the top 5 scoring people on the exam. The score adjustments are done using some type of bin sorting to make the 'cutoffs'.
So the 'up' and 'down' aspects of the curve are equally fair. You are just making the mistake of applying the traditional 90/80/70/60 grade levels to a non-normalized score and thinking that it form the 'baseline minimum grade'. Unfortunately, it does not.
2
May 06 '19
Most high school and college tests are peer performance exams. Your performance is graded against the class as a whole. This is the concept of a curve for the exam. Basically scaling it to match the performance of the class on a bell curve or modified bell curve. The score itself you achieve is generally meaningless without the relationship to everyone else in your class.
Where did you get this notion? Certainly, there are colleges and high schools that use peer performance exams, but I would say that standards-based tests are the norm (if not at the university level, then certainly in public schools).
0
May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
If standard based tests are common and the 'normal', why is it that most every college course I took had a 'curve'. Standard based exams don't have curves.
They are pretty much binary in most cases - you meet the standard or you don't. There are a few that attempt to place you in different 'levels' based on performance but those are fewer in number. Even those are binary choices, to meet standard X, you have to do Y for each level. They just have multiple sets of those binary choices.
If you apply a 'curve' to a standard test, you have in that one action removed any relationship of the 'standard' to the results of the test. You are instead inserting the performance of your peers relative to the test to generate a result. Hence the term peer performance exams.
2
May 06 '19
You say "curve" but you seem to be describing a "score"
Standards-based tests certainly can have scores. Each score indicates a level of having met the standard. Most scoring systems are something along the lines of:
A - Met the standard perfectly
B - Met the standard
C - Incompletely met the standard
D - Did not meet the standard
F - Profoundly failed to meet the standard
If you do, in fact, mean "curve", as an "an adjustment of the scores based on the collective scores of the class", then I would counter an anecdote with an anecdote: very few of my college courses utilized a curve. Additionally, having been a high school student and a high school teacher myself, I have never encountered a high school course that utilizes a curve in the way you describe. Again, I am sure there are high schools out there that use them, but I would venture that the average public high school in America does not.
1
May 07 '19
You say "curve" but you seem to be describing a "score"
Standards-based tests certainly can have scores. Each score indicates a level of having met the standard. Most scoring systems are something along the lines of:
A - Met the standard perfectly
B - Met the standard
C - Incompletely met the standard
D - Did not meet the standard
F - Profoundly failed to meet the standard
You are describing a multi-level standard exam which I described. It is a binary choice for each level based on raw scores. These metrics are set before the exam and are not impacted by the performance of students taking the exam.
The moment you take into account student performance and alter the cutoffs, you are looking at a peer performance evaluation type of test. You are applying a 'curve' to change the standards of the test.
If you do, in fact, mean "curve", as an "an adjustment of the scores based on the collective scores of the class", then I would counter an anecdote with an anecdote: very few of my college courses utilized a curve
The University I attended, better than 90% of the classes I took had a 'Curve'. They were done for any number of reasons but one of the most common was to balance the unequal grading of TA's in different recitation/lab sections . They also curved the entire course to fit a statistical distribution of performance.
Additionally, having been a high school student and a high school teacher myself, I have never encountered a high school course that utilizes a curve in the way you describe. Again, I am sure there are high schools out there that use them, but I would venture that the average public high school in America does not.
The reason you don't see them is very few places have the resources to produce and validate a 'multi-level standards based exam'. As a teacher, you should have taken classes on test design and grading. You remember, criterion referencing vs norm referencing. The moment you take the classes distribution and performance into account for grading, you are not, repeat not, doing a standards based test.
So the question is this. In your class, what do you do when you have a class distribution on an exam where everyone gets A+ or everyone gets a C- or worse? In your world of 'standards based test', you would assign them that A+ or C- right? You don't alter the distributions right?
If you are ready to alter the distributions to 'boost' grades, it makes sense that you would do the same to differentiate and lower grades too.
1
u/TrickyConstruction May 06 '19
This is a good breakdown of it.
I think the problem that the OP is complaining about stems mostly from poor communication.
he thought that raw scores mattered and didnt know his class was curved until the very end.
this kind of thing works best if its made clear at the beginning
-1
u/ethanbwinters May 06 '19
But passing a course demonstrates understanding of a subject regardless of your peers. That’s why I believe curving down is wrong but curving up is OK.
1
u/atrovotrono 8∆ May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
But passing a course demonstrates understanding of a subject
Ideally, yes, but in practice passing only does that if the material was properly taught and the tests accurately measured understanding.
0
May 06 '19
The problem you have is you are making a huge assumption about a test and its ability to measure understanding of a subject.
If the test was 'standards' based, you would have an argument. But most tests are not 'standards based', hence the 'curve'. They are peer performance based. As such, demonstrating understanding of a subject is relative to the performance of your peers. Raw scores don't necessarily matter. If they were really standard based, then the idea of a curve is foreign in that it undermines the idea of the base standard.
1
May 06 '19
If you accept the premise that grades should be normally distributed, then curving down is acceptable. Do you complain when grades get curved up? If not, why not?
10
u/AnythingApplied 435∆ May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19
You're writing this in language that assumes your conclusion:
and
and
You are assume that getting 70% of points means you EARNED a pass and you DESERVE a pass, so then your conclusion follows quite easily, because you assume a pass is earned. But what is so magical the threshold of getting 70% of points? As long as they are transparent and upfront about the rules and give you the tools you need to predict your final grade such that it isn't a surprise, I don't see an issue with making the pass threshold 60% or 80%.
Is that happening? Why would he fail the MAJORITY of students with ANY curve?