Are Grades Distributed Fairly English Language Essay

Are Grades Distributed Fairly English Language EssayElliott Miles, a retired educator and university president, discusses a disturbing trend on college camp habituates grade inflation. Before you read, think of these questions In the American education system, what does a grade of A mean? A grade of B, C, D? What about a grade of F? In your university courses, what grades do most assimilators receive? Do you think the grades are distributed fairly(1) Most American universities today still use the traditional marking system of A-B-C-D-F, with A meaning excellent, B near, C satisfactory or average, D unsatisfactory but passing, and F of course failing. triumphion some feel that this system has shortcomings (too inexact, too artificial, too subjective), it does represent the possible range of a students bestow, and most students and faculty members are comfort open or at least familiar with it. So far so good. However, American universities since the mid 1960s make increasingly been affected by the problem of grade inflation. This refers to the angle of inclination of many faculty members to over-evaluate the quality of a students work and consequently to assign her/him a grade higher than the work deserves. The reason this practice is c onlyed inflation, a bound borrowed from economics, is that it resembles paying too high a price for a given item, for example twenty dollars for a loaf of bread. The problem is common among American universities, including so far our most prestigious institutions, such as Harvard. As Craig Lambert reports in his article Desperately Seeking Summa, the grade of A there accounted for about xxii percent of all grades in 1966-67, whereas by 1991-92 it had come to account for forty-three percent almost double.(2) The trend toward inflated grades began in the mid-1960s probably because that was a snip of great unrest on college campuses in the United States. There were widespread student protests against the Vietnam War an d civil authority in general, frequently with the support and appointment of the faculty. Under these circumstances, grading standards began to shift for the worse. Faculty members became more and more unwilling to give students a D, let alone an F the grade of C came to announce a minimal pass, B to represent satisfactory, and A to mean better than a B. Today, students and faculty alike have this new, watered-d give system in their heads, although their universitys official grading policy may be unchanged from previous times.(3) Why is this a problem? After all, a student is unlikely to feel put upon if his/her work is over-valued. However, when a faculty member records that a student has done excellent work, when in fact the work might only be pretty good or merely fair, that faculty member has committed two faults. First, he/she has told a lie about the students work, misrepresenting the students achievements. How would we react if the misrepresentation went the opposite way i f the student had done excellent work, but the faculty member assigned a grade of B or even C? This would strike us all as dreadful, yet faculty members who assign falsely high grades are showing matchly faulty judgment. Inaccurate grading is inaccurate grading, no existenceation which direction it takes.(4) The second fault is that the faculty member has broken faith with all those who will be harmed by the dishonesty. Most obvious among these are the students who in reality did do excellent or good work. It is grossly unfair to students who earned real As or Bs if their accomplishments are devalued by the at large(p) standards applied to others. To illustrate with an example from the workplace would it be fair for two employees to receive the same raise when one had done excellent work and the other only mediocre?(5) Grade inflation also harms anyone who must evaluate a students record, such as admissions officers at other universities and at professional schools. For instanc e, medical checkup and law schools never have enough spaces for all applicants and hence must choose only the best qualified. When admissions officers evaluate the transcript of a student who authentic inflated grades as an under graduate, they get a false idea of that students past performance as well as his/her potential for future success in a rigorous professional curriculum. For a similar reason, potential employers are harmed when they are presented with an inflated academic transcript faced with seemingly equal candidates, they may give a desirable position to a less deserving applicant because they had a false understanding of that persons actual abilities.(6) And finally, our society at large is harmed because grade inflation undermines the integrity of the universities, which is one of our greatest assets. If university faculty members cannot be trusted to give an honest evaluation of each students academic work, public disappointment will inevitably set in and rightly so. The solution to the problem, though difficult, is simple each faculty member should make a conscious(p) decision to assign grades based on the actual quality of a students work, realizing that not every student will be able to earn the highest, or even the second highest, grade. One of my former students made the point very concisely in an essay that she wrote on grade inflation Lets put the rectitude back in the A.Author of articleElliott MilesTitle of articleLets Put the Excellence Back in the ATitle of the bookRefining man Skills Rhetoric and GrammarAuthor of bookReginal L. Smally, Mark K. Reutten and Joann R. KozyrevPublisherHeinle HeinleDate2001PlaceAustraliaChoose one or more of the following questions to inspire your reader reception paragraph.1. How do the impressions of the consultation change (or do they) after the second reading? Does the audience think any differently? Is the topic one that would make readers deficiency to learn more? Why or why not? What is i t that a reader would want to research for additional information?2. Sometimes articles touch their audience, reminding them of their own life, as part of the larger human experience. Are there connections between the article and the audiences own life? Or, does the article remind its audience of an event (or events) that happened to somebody they know? Does the article have a connection to a previous book or article?3. If you were the author, would you have changed anything in the article and ideas? Do you have a negative connotation associated with the idea? What would you chance?4. Does the article leave the audience with questions they would like to ask? What are they? Would the audience like to direct their questions at a particular character or an idea? What questions would the audience like to ask the author of the article? Are they questions that the audience may be able to answer by reading more about the authors life and/or works? What are the questions and how would they be answered?5. Is there an idea in the book that makes the audience stop and think, or prompts questions? Identify the idea and explain the responses.6. Has the article changed the reader in any way? The way you look at this theme or behave if you were to talk about this theme? What did you learn that you never knew before?7. Capture what it is about the book that stands out (or doesnt stand out).