Just when you think academic standards have fallen enough . . .

Some schools are considering mandating a minimum score of 50.

It's no surprise that the Chapel Hill school district considered a minimum of 61. (As in Lake Woebegon, all their students are above average.)

Comments

[Chris]

It seems silly, but I think the logic is basically sound. It goes something like this:

Say that your grade comes from three homework assignments, all weighted equally. For some reason, you really mess one up (maybe you misunderstood the assignment and did it on the wrong topic) and got a 0. Just to pass the class, you have to get at least a 90 on each of the other two assignments. The best you can hope for is a D in the class, even if you get 100% on the other two. That hardly seems reasonable.

The basic problem is a small sample set. If you really want to know a student's level of proficiency, you should give out 100 assignments, throw out the top 5 and the bottom 5, and then take the average of the rest. If a kid really doesn't know the material, he will still fail. But, at least you won't snare a kid who had some outlier grade.

(Of course, trying to convince teachers that they need to grade 100 items per student may have its own problems.)

[Johnhenry]

I understand the thinking and even sympathathize with it a bit.

How about just go to a 4 point grade system with A=4, B=3, C=2 D=1, F=0. This is what colleges (at least where I have taught) do.

If a student completely boots an assignment, they get an F and a zero. The zero does not hurt as bad as a 0 in a 100 point system.

I'm with Chris on this.

How does your school grade, Craig? 4 point system?

[Johnhenry]

I just did the math and realized that it doesn't matter whether you use a 4 point or a 100 point system. 4 100's plus a 0 will give 80% (B-) under either scheme.

So, as they say: "Never mind".

Leave the floor at zero. Don't give anyone an unearned 60.

I do agree with Chris that there should be a reasonable number of grading opportunities so that one bad grade can be made up for.

If there are only 2 tests and the student gets zero on one, there is no way they can get better than 50% of the course. If there are 10, and they get zero on one, they can still get an A for the course.