Thursday, July 09, 2009

Satisfactory

I guess my main issue with the rubric below is that I don't think anyone really works in a universe where "C" means "Satisfactory." "Adequate" or "Acceptable" maybe, but I believe in general we live in a world where getting a C has a negative connotation.

I guess maybe that's not how it's supposed to be. In a bell curve scenario where a 75% C would be average I guess it would be appropriate for average to be Satisfactory. Except that I think that we've inflated things in such a way that a middle B is typically average and really things look more like this:

A - Excellent
B - Good
C - Minimally Acceptable
D - Truthfully not acceptable, but not worth jamming you up
F - Fail
I guess that's not the world we're supposed to be in, but I can't help thinking that it is.

There's another aspect of this thing that's been bugging me. The thought is that these are fine as instantaneous metrics, but that what would be more useful would be something that indicates more about progress. These don't indicate and direction, they are scalar and what we really need is a vector. In that world a C could have the suffix "but we're really expecting improvement" or "this is a disturbing part of a trend" or even "all things being equal this isn't something to worry about."

No, I take it back. It's all about grade inflation and that the average is too high. Maybe next year I will just start marking on a real curve, same number of R's and A's, same number of B's and D's, and C can be average... and satisfactory.

1 comment:

Walt said...

Well, we expect 75% of our students to be able to score above average, don't we?

The real question is average of which group? Even though CMU may be tough, I don't think it's as easy to argue on a resume that a 2.0 at CMU beats a 3.5 at random U.