Grading

I taught a course about giving grades to students.  What are some indicators a teacher could use to decide who gets a high grade and who doesn’t?  I thought of these indicators:

1. Judgment – “I think...”

2. % questions - 90% correct equals...

3. % peers - The top 10% of the students will receive...

4. Effort - You don’t know much but you try so hard.

5. Improvement - You aren’t quite so bad as you were.

6. Contract - A clear list of what must be done to earn each grade.

Teaching that over and over instilled in me the habit of asking what indicators were being used to decide a ranking.  In American politics, we use votes: if I get the most votes, I get elected.  

When I first used a spreadsheet, it offered me instant sorting in several different ways: high score leading down to low score.  I could put the student names in alphabetical order and given high grades to the first several name, lower grades after that.  Statisticians sometimes calculate the number of standard deviations each student is above or below the arithmetic mean, the “average”.  Putting all students in order by how far above and below the average is putting them in order by “average-ness”.  I don’t recommend that for a grading indicator.