Grades part 1

On August first the Times education section ran an article on a math teacher who had had his grades changed by his principal. He had failed a fifth year senior and he was upset that the grades had been changed. Usually I support teachers that do things like this, but I don’t think I support this guy. Of course I do not know the whole story. I do know the principal and she probably handled the situation badly.

The math teacher and the Times made a big deal over the fact that 45 is the lowest grade you can give someone. They should get over it. No one seems to be upset that you get a 200 on the SAT’s for spelling your name correctly. Why should they be upset that 45 is the starting grade? In college you can only get an A, B, C, D and fail. This doesn’t bother anyone. I suspect that the people complaining weren’t complaining about the fact that the average grade in a college is no longer a C. It was when I went to college. 45 is just a number. It has significance in the New York City system only in that it indicates a student who not only failed, but also missed a lot of school. It is not an average. Teachers need to stop thinking of it this way.

The problem is that many teachers feel that they can create an objective way to measure students. Math and science people are particularly susceptible to this kind of thinking, but I have seen English teachers who work that way also. What happens is that a teacher creates an elaborate system of homework, attendance, tests and class participation. Each activity is scored and then weighted. The numbers are then added up and a concise numerical grade is given. This allows for the possibility that a student could have an average of 30 or 10 or 87. This would seem like science, but in truth it is bad science.

You need to answer the basic question about grades. What do they mean? What do they measure? On a very basic level when an institution gives a student a grade it is saying that the student has achieved a certain intellectual level. At this moment I am on my way to Albany to help write the Regents Exams. Students take a Regents and get a precise grade. I remember that I received a 98 on the Algebra Regents. It is amazing that I remember this because it was 46 years ago. Does my 98 means that I was not as smart as someone who got a 100 but smarter than someone who received a 95. Of course not. It does mean that. I forgot to check one problem and my teacher took off 2 points. This is not a precise measure of my intellect. Certainly I knew more algebra than someone who received a 65, but the student who receives a 95 was at least my equal and may have actually known more of the whole curriculum than I did.

I think that New York City might be better served if we switched to a straight letter grade system. I would encourage teachers to think of student in a more holistic way. Putting a number on something does not make it a measurement of anything significant. Numbers are just numbers.