Unalienable rights to an "A"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/wcvb/20071004/lo_wcvb/14266692

Maybe he just wants some practice in making a court filing ...

gsabc wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/s/wcvb/20071004/lo_wcvb/14266692

Maybe he just wants some practice in making a court filing ...

He's suing because they grade on a curve. I have to agree with him; I think that's a garbage way to grade.

Bob Juch wrote:
He's suing because they grade on a curve. I have to agree with him; I think that's a garbage way to grade.

All of Law School was graded on a curve. If you know the grading system going in, there's no grounds for complaining about the application.

If they didn't disclose that the course was going to be graded on the curve, then he might have a legitimate complaint.

Grading on a curve is an identification of laziness and ineptitude on the part of the instructor.

If the grades are so low that you need a curve to get a bell-curve results, then you are a poor teacher, or you have stupid students in which case they should all flunk.

In this case the curve was down, which makes no sense in an academic world.

Bottom line, the measure of acheivement in learning should not depend on how those around you learned. Either you learned it or didn't.

How would this person have fared against students taking the same test next semester, or last semester? Should his grade be different given the same results?

What if he were the only one not to cheat, yet got 92% of the questions correct? So he gets a 'C' rather than an 'A'?

When I took Greek in college, the Professor used a curve based on the average of our class and the past several classes to take the test. He took the tests back up after we reviewed them, and he used the same test every semester. Worked for me.

I have mixed feelings about grading on a curve. I got an A- in statistics, but as hard as I worked, I just couldn't grasp regression analysis, and I know my raw scores should have resulted in a C. I've never been in a class where grading on a curve would have lowered my grade.

Back in my HR days, I spoke to a couple HR college classes, and holy cow, one class was a bunch of duds. I hope to high heaven that the only reason they were in the class was for some kind of elective credit, not because they intended to go into HR. Anyway, the prof told me later that two students got a B, the highest grade, the rest C or lower. If he'd curved them with the preceding class, they might have dropped to a C. If he'd curved that class only, they would have received As, but IMHO they wouldn't have deserved it.