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< | Note to the reader: this paper is still in the editing stage (it probably will be for a while), but any comments, observations, suggestions, or other criticisms are more than welcome.
Putting Grades in Their Place, but Where Do They Go? | >
> | Putting Grades in Their Place | | | -- By AnthonyTiberio - 16 Feb 2012
Grades Are Stupid
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< | Eben is correct: grades are stupid. Perhaps not everyone has yet realized this, but everyone has probably at least felt this to some degree, perhaps very recently. Evaluations, however, are not stupid. As Eben points out, thorough, frequent, sympathetic, and effective evaluations of a student's work are essential in helping the student both learn more and derive more satisfaction from learning. Grades do not further these ends. Eben thinks that grades not only fail to further these ends, but grades actually impede students in their attempt to achieve these ends. I agree. Now, let's explore where it leads. Some questions immediately come to mind. Since grades are a type of evaluation and some forms of evaluations are desirable, precisely why are grades such a stupid and unjust form of evaluation? Is this true of other sorts of evaluations that are not technically “grades”? Finally, can any sort of "grading" system be salvaged and serve some useful end? After some exploration of these questions, I think it is possible to conclude that some grading schemes, or at least some grade-like evaluations, can be a useful beginning, in at least some contexts, for an outsider (i.e. not the student) in his quest for a qualified applicant, for whatever that may be.
Beef with Grades
First, let us attempt to air some different, but related, grievances with grades. One, they purport to measure some particular academic ability that they, in fact, do not accurately reflect for a variety of reasons. Performance on a written examination on tort law, for example, is intended to test one’s knowledge of core tort concepts. Doing well on such a test is only, if anything, sufficient for demonstrating proficiency in torts. It is possible that one was too rushed, too tired, too stressed, too unprepared, etc. Thus, doing well on a torts exam cannot be a necessary condition for being proficient in torts despite often being treated as such. It is more likely that the test determines, well, how well one takes the test. Moreover, it is graded on a curve. The grade assigned cannot be an objective evaluation of how well one knows the material because, by design, the grade reflects how ‘well’ one did solely in comparison to others taking the test. This way of grading is also troubling in that it takes one sample on which one’s entire grade is based. When reasoning inductively, the more data one uses the more solid the foundation that one’s generalization sits upon. It strains credulity near its breaking point to use this one piece of data as a measure of much at all.
Two, evaluations are arbitrary. Evaluations can be arbitrary either because they are not carried out in a systematically uniform way, or because they merely test arbitrarily chosen portions of the tested subject. Idiosyncratic preferences of the evaluator appear in both ways. Undoubtedly, we are all familiar with having an essay grade determined by how much the professor ‘liked’ it, or you, irrespective of the work’s more objective characteristics. This is a common complaint of the humanities or the ‘soft’ sciences, yet this applies to the ‘hard’ sciences as well, albeit in subtler ways. For instance, a math test may appear to be an objective measurement of one’s ability. But, why does the test only include two questions on derivations and not more? Why those derivations? Why is partial credit given for some sorts of partial work rather than others? Etc. | >
> | Eben is correct: grades are stupid. Perhaps not everyone has yet realized this, but everyone has probably at least felt this to some degree, perhaps very recently. Evaluations, however, are not stupid. As Eben points out, thorough, frequent, sympathetic, and effective evaluations of a student's work are essential in helping the student both learn more and derive more satisfaction from learning. Eben thinks that grades not only fail to further these ends, but grades actually impede students in their attempt to achieve these ends. I agree: grades in fact often have this effect. But, this does not have to be the case. Grades can be a form of evaluation that serve a practically useful end for people other than the student, however limited that use is. As Eben points out, one cannot honestly think that grades are representative of very much about a student’s ability or that grades help students learn and grow. Yet, it does not follow that grades are inherently stupid or unjust. I contend that we allow them to do what they should not do, thereby making them coincidentally unjust. We take them to be accurate quantitative measurements of one’s intellectual abilities when, in reality, they are crude proxies for what is, at heart, an oversimplified qualitative judgment: how well a student did at a certain task. This oversimplified qualitative judgment can only serve very a limited purpose, as any oversimplification can when serving as a proxy or answer for an involved question. Grades can be a useful beginning in an admissions committee’s quest for a qualified applicant only in practically necessary contexts. Though, this use is quite limited and should never replace utilizing more informed qualitative judgments of a student’s abilities. | | | | |
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< | Diagnosis | >
> | Why Grades Are Stupid | | | | |
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< | There are, of course, other problems with grades; yet, the good news is that each of the above problems is not inherent to grading, or evaluation, in general. The real problem lies not with the grades, but in what we do with the grades. Grades are intended to help us and others gauge our progress and abilities relative to our peers. | >
> | Eben argues that grades are inherently unjust because they “purport to reduce the evaluation of learning to a single number on a short, obscure scale.” He elaborates: “Reduction of multi-variate qualitative measurements to grades implies an algorithm implementing a model for collapsing space by throwing away information. Each turns complex surfaces captured in the evaluations…into a single numerical score, by turning a series of qualitative judgments into quantities and then operating on a vector of quantities to produce the score.” While this nicely captures the mechanics of a particular grading system, it is misleading to think that all grading systems have to operate this way in virtue of the nature of grading itself. That is, the quantification of qualitative judgments is not a necessary component of grading. What is necessary is the use of one, or both, of two kinds of qualitative judgments: this work is better than that work, and/or this work is tremendous, good, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory. These are not quantitative judgments. It is true that grading requires labeling those qualitative judgments with a symbol, but this is merely shorthand for an operational definition (such as, B = satisfactory work). This is an oversimplification of a multi-faceted evaluation, but it is not a quantitative judgment. Thinking it is a quantitative judgment entails thinking that any value judgment is quantitative, which does not seem correct. | | | | |
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< | There are two parties concerned with grades: employers (or future admission committees) and ourselves. Each ought to realize the particular shortcomings of grades and place the appropriate amount of value on them. For our own purposes, this involves realizing that grades don’t do anything except stand in as a very rough proxy for how well one did compared to one’s peers. That means that one’s letter grades should play little to no role in affecting how one approaches academic improvement. What matters is the student’s response to careful feedback from others. For employers’ purposes, this involves realizing the near meaninglessness of fine-grained distinctions between students and that grades are but one small imperfect piece of a picture of one’s abilities.
The problem cannot be that grades are inherently unjust or stupid because complaining about their inaccuracy, arbitrariness, and unfairness assumes that the grades are failing to get ‘it’ right. The ‘it’ that we are after is real and useful. The ‘it’ is one’s knowledge. Jettisoning grades altogether would not help us know who has more or less of ‘it.’ We need to make sure that grades are doing a better job at ranking people by ‘it’ and we need to realize the imperfect relation between grades and ‘it’ reflects teachers’ imperfect abilities as evaluators.
One might think that the problem with grades is one of reduction by thinking that it is a mistake to reduce something qualitative, namely knowledge, to something quantitative, namely grades. This is mistaken. Grades are not actually quantitative despite appearances to the contrary. They serve to rank students relative to their peers (even if the class is not on a curve, the grade will only be useful when the outsider knows roughly where the grade falls amongst other students at the institution, at that time). Ranking students relative to their peers requires no use of quantities. It is a rough ranking of qualities in the same way that we prioritize other non-quantifiable values in our own lives. Upholding a promise to my best friend is clearly more valuable than sleeping in until noon. Precisely how much more valuable? Who knows? | >
> | Eben does not think that the problem with grades is their reliance on qualitative judgments because qualitative judgments are required in order for any evaluation to take place. Eben, though, thinks that the problem with grades lies in their transformation of qualitative judgments into quantitative ones. While I think this is mistaken, Eben does put his finger on what I take to be the crux of the problem. The problem is that in order to assign a label/grade the evaluator needs to jettison much of the fine-grained evaluative judgments. This potentially leads to ignoring relevant information or incorporating irrelevant information. Grades, by their nature, do force an evaluator to make difficult comparisons of work that may excel and lag in very different ways. Thus, it is inherent in the nature of grading to force one to simplify complex evaluative judgments. This is precisely why we should not take grades for being informative of very much. | | | | |
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< | Nonsense. Grades are
quantities. They purport to measure performance, and in each case
they are representative of a ranking, usually one more precise than
the grade itself discloses. Your argument to the contrary in the
paragraph above is incoherent. I discuss this matter at adequate
length in the essay you are criticizing, which would give you a
starting point for a discussion of grading by someone who actually
does it, but you don't engage with my points at all.
The Necessity of Grades | >
> | Extremely Limited Use | | | | |
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< | Grades are essential. They are needed to get things done. Imagine I am looking to hire someone and all I have is a pile of fresh graduates. Who am I going to pick? I could spend the time reading detailed evaluations from professors, reading all of the student’s written work, etc. All of this would be relevant information, but it is too time-consuming. I need to parse through the masses, and quickly.
Also nonsense. You
don't hire lawyers; I do. Do you really think that when I hire a
lawyer I pay any significant attention to grades at all? In the last
seven years I have hired more than 36 lawyers for full or part-time
jobs. Never once, on any occasion, have I looked at a transcript in
the course of hiring, as opposed to teaching, a lawyer. My
colleagues and I interview the lawyers I hire. We ascertain their
skills by asking questions and listening to the answers, by reading
people's writing, and—sometimes—by talking to others with
whom they've worked. I rarely extend a long-term offer to someone
who hasn't worked with me for a summer, or a term or two, even if
they've been my student, let alone if they have not.
Clients don't look at transcripts when they hire lawyers, either. No
client of mine has ever seen my transcript, or ever asked to do so.
None ever will, you can be sure.
So an argument about "employers" as consumers of grades must restrict
itself to the forms of "employment" that aren't retention by clients
and aren't the formation of serious work relationships with
well-managed existing work teams of knowledgeable lawyers hiring
colleagues or trainees. Are there such residual "employers" who do
not retain or hire in a rational fashion, for whom a transcript might
be important? Certainly. Do they matter? No. Enough to distort
good pedagogy for? Hell no.
Should we assuage our obsession with grades? Sure. Should we seek more careful feedback on work? Sure. But, do we need evaluations packaged in small, quickly digestible forms in order to get things done? You bet. Thankfully, we have those. They are called grades. | >
> | Can these oversimplified evaluations serve some use? I think so, but the use is not very helpful, at least not for students. I take it that the common view of grades is that they are intended to serve as a representation of the quality of one's knowledge with respect to some set of information or skill set. We then use this representation in two ways: to serve as a guide for the students themselves in the further cultivation of these skills and knowledge, and as a guide for others to predict how the student will perform in a new situation. It is clear that grades fail miserably at the former goal because such an oversimplification cannot function as the effective and thorough feedback required for real learning to take place. For the latter goal of determining how well one will perform in a future situation, the appropriateness of grades to make this determination is dependent upon the context. The only time grades appear useful is if one is trying to sort through a multitude of students very quickly. And even if we don't do this via grades directly, we may do it by the school that one attends (which is, in turn, partly based on grades). But, grades should never completely replace substantive and complex evaluative judgments. At a maximum, grades should only serve as temporary proxies in lieu of these judgments if practical rationality demands it. While this is a rational approach in some contexts, it is not clear that admissions/hiring committees need to put themselves into this situation. Predicting how well-suited one will be at performing future tasks is not easy, and we should not let only grades guide our predictions. | | | | |
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< | You haven't answered any
arguments on the other side of any of your propositions, just ignored
them. You haven't given evidence for any position you have taken,
you have just asserted them. You haven't checked your judgment
against anyone's counter argument, not even the document you are
purporting to respond to.
It's hard to figure out what the purpose of the draft is. Naturally
I will be a very interested reader of a critique of my ideas. And if
you have a new idea that helps to modify or reverse conclusions I
have come to over twenty-five years, I am likely to be particularly
interested. But if you have nothing new to say, and only weak or
even immaterial objections to offer, based primarily on inexperience,
doesn't it seem likely that your self-editorial inquiry would lead
you to write about something where the bar is likely to be set lower?
So you want to say that I am wrong about grades? Terrific. You must
add something to the discourse, something I don't know, haven't
seen, haven't thought about, or have incorrectly evaluated.
Attempting to subtract from my argument by simple assertion of my
wrongness isn't likely to work, nor are broad statements about what
happens in a world that I have long inhabited and you have not yet
arrived in.
Let's find out what your additions to the discussion are, and let's
put them at the top and up front in the essay. Let's find out what
propositions of mine you need to controvert in order to succeed, and
let's see what the strongest lines of attack on them might be, and
how you might go about learning what you would need to learn in order
to command those arguments. Then, if you're really determined to
wager your "grade" on the success of your performance, at least you
won't be setting out frivolously on the path that leads you to "B-".
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