| |
    
|
Plus/Minus grading system a poor fit for the University
by Laura Walbrink
I support the idea of a uniform grading policy at the University. Allowing grading policies to vary by college and campus creates unnecessary confusion. But why the complicated plus/minus system? Let's keep it simple by limiting grades to five letters: A, B, C, D, and F.
Administrators favor the plus/minus system because it allows professors to recognize more levels of student achievement than the cruder five-grade scale. As a Nov. 26, 1996, Minnesota Daily editorial asked, "If students work hard to receive an 89 percent in a class, do they deserve to get a plain old B on their transcript? This same ordinary B would also be awarded to students who . . . manage to pull off just 80 percent."
This perfectly reasonable question, however, assumes that a student's percentage in a course can be easily determined. A plus/minus system would work well in a course in which: (1) the distribution of scores on all tests and assignments follows a nice 90%-80%-70%-60% bell curve; and (2) all items on those tests and assignments are either absolutely correct or absolutely incorrect.
So, fellow IT students, how many of you have ever had a course like that at the University of Minnesota? A course in which the professor didn't make the top score of 62 percent an A and then arbitrarily curve the rest of the grades? A course in which you couldn't needle the TA for some more "partial credit" on an exam or assignment?
If you've ever managed to calculate your grade in a course down to an actual number (like 89 percent, for example), you've probably noticed that it's been tainted by curves and "holistic" grading, and that your so-called 89 percent is both generous and overly-precise. Reflecting on that might dull some of your hostility towards your classmate with the 80 percent.
From a professor's perspective, the plus/minus proposal looks even more ridiculous-but scarier, because professors suffer the wrath of displeased students. Imagine that you are a composition instructor who faces the daunting task of grading 100 papers. You sort them into five piles: the A pile, the B pile, and so on. Not too challenging, right? An A paper is fairly easy to distinguish from a B paper.
Now you try sorting the B pile into three smaller piles: B+, B, and B-. Becomes a little trickier, doesn't it? What, after all, separates a B+ paper from a B paper? Using the plus/minus system in this instance demands applying refined standards to the often imprecise science of grading writing.
A student's grade in a course at the University is not, thankfully, usually reducible to a single percentile. While that may seem frustrating to some, it reflects well on this institution. It says that what students learn here cannot be measured by Scantron sheets. Grades, already given more meaning than they merit, are a necessary evil: graduate schools use them for admission, and employers sometimes peek at them, too. A plus/minus system, however, forces students and professors to dwell on grades, which distracts them from their respective aims: to learn and to teach.
