On the grade reform debate

-- By AaronShepard - 04 Mar 2009

Throughout this class, one of the things I have enjoyed the most is conceptualizing how the various authors we have read would react to some present situations. I am writing this paper based on my related thoughts on the grade debate. How do you frame this issue in an overall context? Does it invoke the Holmesian ‘bad man’, where rationalization subverts the ineffective language of morality? Would Arnold merely say that grades are there to help us consciously maintain control of something that would otherwise get out of hand? How do the various options and rationalizations reflect societal values?

• This is not a good beginning to an essay, because it's sterile. You want to begin with a proposition that engages the reader's attention. Talking about why you like hearing the sound of your own voice on the current subject is anything but.

Differentiation

The most cited reason for maintaining the current system in favor of one more geared towards a pass/fail regime is that there would be a lack of differentiation between students in the latter schema.

• That would be "among students." And why do you need the pompous but unhelpful "in the latter schema" at all? It adds nothing but weight.

Employers have been extremely pro-maintaining the current system,

• Why do you need a horrendous construction like that? How about "Employers strongly support the current system, according to the dean."? That says everything in fewer words that don't break rules against mistreatment of the reader's grammar.

according to Dean Schizer at a recent town hall debate. Having grades allows them to sort through applicants, and discard those who fail to meet a certain threshold. While employers might end up getting rid of terrific applicants who, for whatever reason, don’t have terrific grades, this is potentially necessary when rifling through numerous applicants for (rapidly decreasing) job slots.

• Bullshit. The fewer the lawyers you need and the more you know about why you need them the less purpose is served by "differentiation" on the transcript. I hire lawyers every season, and I am almost entirely unconcerned with their grades. I know what skills I need them to have, and I can winnow the CVs for myself on that basis, then test on those skills directly through the interviewing process. It's when you're hiring a commodity in bulk that you need bulk rating attributes. But it is not in the student's interest to be hired as bulk labor, so whether that type of employer prefers commodity standards (like "Prime" and "Choice") when buying its meat is of no concern to you.

What exactly do grades demonstrate though? Clearly they have an Arnold-esque aspect of controlling and sorting our organization, but do they reflect anything of substance? One of the typical responses to those who seek to keep the current system is that nowhere in the real world is one required to write about never-before-seen questions in a 3 hour time slot, without access to the gentle embrace of Westlaw or LexisNexis? Furthermore, what if one were having a bad day, or simply doesn’t perform well in an exam format? Does that mean anything?

• Now you are asking whether exams are a good form of evaluation, not whether grades are a good way of reporting the results of evaluation. The confusion should be cleared up, because no reader will miss it, and you discredit what you have to say by apparently thinking in a muddled manner.

My thoughts in response to this issue are that grades are but a limited tool to evaluate a student.

• Then your thoughts are a resounding truism. Nothing less jejune to offer at this point is a sign of real trouble.

Certainly, there will be a correlation between the relative abilities of <span style="background-color: #cc6688; color: yellow; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px">a student and <span style="background-color: #cc6688; color: yellow; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px">their grades;

• Being gender-neutral is a good goal. But nothing requires you to destroy English grammar in order to achieve it. Don't EVER make an agreement mistake, which looks illiterate, in order to achieve a general social purpose.

however, I suspect that that correlation isn’t all that strong.

• You want us to accept your suspicion as some form of evidence in support of an argument?

Furthermore, how do you define the necessary abilities when it comes to a specific job? I would additionally suspect that a very high percentage of Columbia Law School grads have the intellectual ability to succeed at job X, especially if that job is at a typical firm.

• Your suspicion here is even more ludicrous than your suspicion above. I can tell you what skills and qualities I want in each individual lawyer I hire, as well as the general intellectual and social requirements for successful incorporation in our existing team. Once again, you are confusing the question of how to select a lawyer with the problem of how to hire commodity laborers in a sweatshop.

When it comes to who would be the most successful at that position though, I would think that several facets of the individual student would be more correlated to success than merely his ability to successful complete a three hour exam. An anti-social, intellectually circumscribed student might be excellent at regurgitating information for three hours, but one could guess that he would be less successful working in a populated office.

• This again confuses the issue of how to evaluate with how to report the results of evaluation. You can't succeed in your analysis if these are constantly conflated.

The overall summation of my thoughts on this issue are that grades play too large of a role, and that while employers may like the increased differentiation, everyone (including them) would be better off by focusing on the intangibles of an applicant (such as the interview, relevant experience, etc.).

• So this "overall summation of [your] thoughts on this issue" is again the pompous presentation of a truism.

Obviously at some level employers do this, and the academic successes of a student are more important in some professional fields than in others. But in most, it would seem that there are many more important and applicable standards by which to judge, and perhaps everyone would be better off by focusing more attention on those, rather than purely on grades.

• But this confuses how hiring staff in law firms should work with how teachers should report the evaluation of their students. Unless we have somehow resolved the intermediate question in favor of the conclusion that education is primarily carried on for the benefit of purchasers of canned skilled meat. You didn't show how you reached that intermediate conclusion, probably because you didn't really think about it.

Student Effort

A related aspect to differentiation is the result the lack of it would have on student effort.

• This should have been written in English rather than Bureaucrat. How about "It is often suggested that students will work less hard if not threatened by bad grades."?

This would be clearly apparent in a pure pass/fail system, especially if the fail option maintained its somewhat mythical status.

• It wouldn't be apparent unless one accepted the premises, in which case I suppose it would be apparent elsewhere too.

If everyone passes, the theory goes, no one works hard. However, while this may be true in a system on the extreme end of the spectrum, would it still be true in a modified pass/fail system, such as one that was purportedly proposed here in response to the ones instituted at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale?

• Huh?

I tend to think not.

• "Tend to think" is like "suspect." You cannot persuade us on the basis of your thinking's tendency.

Virtually all of us at are law school because we want to be,

• What does "virtually" mean? Usually it means "not really."

and because we have at least some interest in learning about the legal system. Unlike my required Biology 101 class in undergrad, the things that I am learning here I not only find interesting, but also know that they will be helpful professionally. Understandably, I think most students would prefer to not have to work so hard; I don’t know many people who read 50 pages of property law concerning defeasible torts with vigor (although I actually very much like my current property class). Still, this is a far cry from saying that if the grading system were reformed, people would ‘go into the tank’.

• What is the argument of the previous graf? And did you mean "defeasible fees" rather than "defeasible torts"?

Incentives

A professor brought up in the town hall meeting that if classes were made pass/fail, students would have little incentive to come to class and participate. However, even now, classes aren’t exactly a bastion of free expression and participation. I’m fairly certain I can predict with reasonable accuracy before any given class just who will speak, for how long, and whether they will actually ask a question or merely express their elongated opinion. Professors can encourage participation of course, but for the many reasons we discussed in this class earlier, students are frequently loath to do it. Hence, it does not seem to me that changing the grading system would shift opportunity cost all that much.

• Confusion on confusion. If work were unevaluated, would people have reduced incentives to perform it? Perhaps. But whether to evaluate is a different question than whether to report the results of evaluation through letter grades.

Conclusion

In general, there are other aspects to consider here.

• That's a CONCLUSION?

Would changing the grade curve reduce stress, and increase communal willingness to work together? Would students become more adventurous in their class selection? I tend to think that both of those questions should be answered in the affirmative. Still, as a professional school, Columbia has to respond to what would be best in preparing students for the professional world. In this sense, some differentiation is still required, to perhaps at least meet the managing aspects that Arnold discusses.

• No conclusion at all. And a last sentence that throws some Arnold back in, for no reason other than to vindicate the first paragraph's claim that all of this was supposed to hook up to the reading through your imaginative reapplication of Arnold and Holmes. But you did no such thing, and probably shouldn't have been trying. It would have been enough to write a clear and well-focused argument about grades. That you can achieve in a second draft, which will be quite different from this one, I suspect.