<p>Dread. What does learning how challenging coursework is have to do with a teacher unilaterally practicing grade deflation?</p>
<p>You are conflating two unrelated things</p>
<p>@eastcoascrazy–I have reread the original post, and I do see that I may have brought some of my own baggage to this discussion, for which I apologize. But I also see the teacher reported to have said that students who got a C should be perfectly OK with that because a C represents satisfactory achievement. I still think that’s ridiculously out of touch. </p>
<p>And the assertion that came along later in this thread (at least, i think it did, but it’s kind of hard to stay on top of all the details when I’m on my phone and not wearing my reading glasses! ) that a C is “average” does not, IMO, reflect an approach to grading that’s going to help students any more than grading with an A- median will.</p>
<p>I hate teachers like this. While it is unfair, my honest belief (or at least hope) is that almost everyone will have a teacher like this at some point so perhaps it evens out. I am in AP Calculus right now and I got the hard teacher. I heard that the students with the other teacher just took a test and the average was a 97. Meanwhile there has never been more than 2 As on any single given test in my class thus far… It really irks me that I will end up with a B just because of my teacher, so it looks like I can’t handle college work (when in reality it’s just that my teacher went to Harvard and writes all his own crazy problems). But that’s life, I suppose. I just wish that I could be happy having the teacher that’s actually going to teach me stuff, yet in today’s society I have to resent it…</p>
<p>Sometimes teachers mark really tough in the first marking period to show the students that they mean business. But they tend to ease up as the year goes on and students either live up to the expectations of their teachers or do not.</p>
<p>My daughter specifically picked a teacher like OP’s because she wanted to actually LEARN physics. (She knew she’d have to have it in college and wanted to be prepared.) This so impressed her counselor that he wrote about it in his college recommendation letter: that daughter chose the demanding, old-school teacher who’d most likely give her a C instead of the teacher everyone else wanted, the one that gave out lots of As and B+s. In her college interview later, the admissions person commented on it. Who knows, maybe that’s what got her in…</p>
<p>The grade deflator is as bad as the grade inflator. If a teacher is tough and just makes the students work harder for the good grades, I think that’s excellent. However, there are teachers out there, no matter how a student does, that will refuse to give an A (usually near the beginning of the term). Those teachers are no better than the ones that gives As just for breathing.</p>
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<p>I didn’t get the idea from the OP that she was as upset about her dd earning a C- in fact she stated that she isn’t saying her kid didn’t deserve the C. What bothers her (and me ) is the teacher’s attitude that this is perfectly ok and she implied that if the student wasn’t content with it, that they were too concerned about their grade and not what they learned.
When I taught, I found that the kids who really learned the material got the best grades. Go figure. Maybe those kids getting Cs know that and want to earn their A by learning the material. Teaching is her job. She has a bunch of bright, motivated students in her honors class, and telling them that they should be satisfied with a C is kinda nuts. (Not saying those who received it shouldn’t have- just that wanting to do better is normal and, imo, the right response, not the “grade grubbing” response.)</p>
<p>@poetgrl Unilateral grade deflation would be everyone getting a C. </p>
<p>Creating a more difficult test so that the standard deviation of scores is wider and the average is lower is something very different. By administering a more difficult exam, it gives the motivated student the opportunity to distinguish themselves by putting in extra work and learning the material more in depth.</p>
<p>When the class average is 94 with a SD of 2 there is no room to stand out because it really isn’t reasonable to argue that there is any difference between a 95 and a 93.</p>
<p>BTW, I agree with those who would disturbed if the teacher said that they should be satisfied with a C. Of course, you never know how the conversation went.</p>
<p>version a:
Q: I can’t handle a C - I need to get to HYP - What do I need to do to fix it?
A: You should be satisfied with a C.</p>
<p>version b:
Q: I’m really upset that I got a C - what do I need to do differently?
A: You should be satisfied with a C.</p>
<p>Version a is a student grubbing for grades and then selectively hearing what they want to hear. Version b is a teacher with a problem. Very similar conversations that can be easily convoluted by the student’s retelling.</p>
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Then why not just give everyone an A at the outset? And if everyone is getting an A, regardless, then why bother making them do anything? Don’t even bother coming to class or opening the book. Hell, don’t even HAVE class. Just give everyone A’s in all the things they have signed up for and let them go home. Then at least no one is at a disadvantage in the college app process. Anyone who wants to LEARN something has plenty of time at home to self-study any topic they like.
\rant</p>
<p>@Cakebatter (post #43). You are going to have the last laugh when you get to college and you breeze through your remaining calc courses and the students who had the easy teacher don’t have a clue how to do the problems they are being given in the college calc classes. They also might have to start at the first calc class because they didn’t get a 4 or a 5 on the AP test and you’ll be in the second calc class and not having any problems figuring out the homework.</p>
<p>Here is an example of grade inflation.</p>
<p>[Research</a> & Accountability / SAT, ACT, PSAT, AP and IB Performance Reports](<a href=“http://www.houstonisd.org/Page/38527]Research”>Research & Accountability / SAT, ACT, PSAT, AP and IB Performance Reports)</p>
<p>Read the AP report (see link on the right side of the page).</p>
<p>On page 8, figures 4-10, you will see that the modal AP score for students who got A grades in the AP course was 1.</p>
<p>This was also true specifically for art/music, English, science, and social studies AP tests. Foreign language was an exception, where A and B students in AP courses had modal scores of 4 on the AP tests. Math was another exception, where A students in AP courses had modal scores of 5 on the AP tests (but B students had modal AP scores of 1).</p>
<p>Yes, one might argue that high school grading standards are not necessarily the same as AP scoring standards. But should large numbers of A students in high school AP courses be getting scores of 1 on the AP tests?</p>
<p>I could have sworn I had “harder” teachers than most students. I remember one year, I got a 92.97 percent for the semester, but the teacher kept it at an A- despite my misgivings. For two years of biology (honors and AP) I had the one teacher where an A was 95% (on top of administering the most difficult tests among the bio teachers). Or the one year where I had to do 18 hours of English homework a week, whereas my friends with a different teacher maybe had a third of that (in fact, that year, we really had no idea of our grades until the end of the semester, when the teacher gave us an index card with our grade written on it-- I think if he had his way, we wouldn’t have had grades at all). </p>
<p>Yeah it sucked, but in the end I firmly believe I benefited far more from these challenges than my peers who got the “easier” teachers. I learned that the pursuit of knowledge a) is more important than a letter grade and b) doesn’t come cheap. </p>
<p>Did I end up getting an A in biology? Yeah, both years. But after hearing my teacher’s spiel about knowledge and grades at the beginning of my honors year, it wasn’t my primary focus. My goal was to develop a thorough understanding of the concepts taught. And I worked like crap to achieve that goal. In college, I ended up taking the biology sequence that all the pre-meds take, and I had the top score on the final one quarter (out of hundreds of students). There is a definite link there. </p>
<p>Long story short, embrace the challenges now, then take them to the bank later.</p>
<p>Given that we’re getting the teacher’s remarks third hand, I’ll not so sure the teacher said the students should be “perfectly satisfied” with a C. She may have said something along the lines of “C is a perfectly acceptable grade. It is not a failing grade.” This statement does not mean the student should be satisfied with the grade.</p>
<p>If the teacher is handing back a test (one test) where the average grade is a C, I don’t see a problem. What is the average grade in your child’s classes where this would cause a parent to ask if the teacher is nuts? </p>
<p>I guess I’m confused. My daughter has gotten C’s on exams. She goes to the teacher to look at the test and see what she got wrong. She works with the teacher on her weak points and hopefully her grade goes up. </p>
<p>I truly hate it when I ask her to go to the teacher for help and the teacher says to bring in a box of tissue for extra credit.</p>
<p>When we went to open house, my son’s calc BC teacher told the parents to expect a full letter grade lower in this class than on their previous math classes. His contention was if he leveled the class at the point where the kids all got good grades, they wouldn’t do well on the BC exam. He focuses on teaching the material in depth, and his students’ past results on the BC exam are really strong. As this class is mainly seniors, the parents and kids all seem a little more relaxed about the grading, if sometimes a little flummoxed.</p>
<p>There are probably a handful of juniors and one sophomore in the class, for whom the grade might matter a little more. But they are also probably strong math students to be in that class in the first place so I think it works out…but my kid is the lone sophomore so I don’t know the other parents as well as I would if my son were in the same grade as the other kids.</p>
<p>Perhaps my bar is a little lower than most on this thread, but I have not had an issue with this when my children have had this experience. It’s upsetting to my daughter, but it does make her work harder. And frankly, when the average has been in the 70’s and that’s where she is, I look at the test and I usually agree that while she knew the material, she really didn’t have mastery of it. In fact, my son will say his favorite teacher ever was one who graded like this. He finally felt challenged and believed that the teacher would make him a better writer. His understanding of the material was very deep. He ended up with a B+ in the course. To this day, I can ask him any question on global history, and he can have an intelligent well thought out answer. It was the most engaged I have ever seen him in school. It wasn’t just because of the grading policy, but gratuitous A’s never appealed to him.</p>
<p>I will qualify all of this by saying if the teacher isn’t teaching, or the test does not reflect what was taught, then I would not be happy with a 70. We have had this experience, too.</p>
<p>I have known plenty of top 10 students in our high school who go off to college, and struggle the first year because they are being challenged for the first time. These are bright kids who have not been served well by the rampant grade inflation. Our school is one of the best schools in our area and year after year produces some of the highest test scores, etc.</p>
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I guess it’s valuable to learn that there are some unreasonable people out there that you have to find some way to get around, avoid, or appease.</p>
<p>Does anybody really think that a single teacher should apply a significantly different grading system from other teachers in the school? I repeat that it’s particularly nuts to think this if you really think GPA is important–a teacher like this lowers her students’ GPA compared to other students who simply had the good fortune to be placed in a different section of the same subject.</p>
<p>Plus, why should we think that tough graders like this are actually better teachers? That has not been my observation. Rather, they tend to be very rigid individuals.</p>
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<p>Tough grading is not the same as excellent teaching. So, thanks. Also, when somebody says that the entire class got a C on the test, I just wonder what the heck the teacher was teaching in the class. Why did the teacher fail so miserably?</p>
<p>That said, the other issue on this thread seems to be more about too many kids who don’t belong in AP or IB being in AP/IB. When we were kids, you only ended up in these classes if you were doing that level of work already and were IDd by the school, not parents. So, we all got our fives on the tests. Was that the teachers? Or was that just the fact that we were able to do the work without much effort?</p>
<p>I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not sure this push for AP is creating mastery in the students. The whole system seems to be a little out of whack these days, imho.</p>
<p>YMMV</p>
<p>poetgrl - In my daughter’s school, one cannot simply take AP level. They must get the recommendation of the teachers and show mastery of the pre-requisites first before doing so. As a result, it’s highly unlikely for students to have scores of AP classes like I’ve seen some kids on CC claiming to have. The lack of uniformity is challenging, I think.</p>
<p>Ultimately, a great teacher that ensures her students understand the material is the goal. The question is if these teachers that routinely have Cs from most of their students are actually encouraging the students to strive to be better or just not good enough at teaching the material. There’s no way to know based on the OP’s short post. However, if the teacher never gives out A’s, I am inclined to say it’s less the students and more the teacher. If that teacher does give out A’s but only to students that work very hard, then it’s likely the students.</p>
<p>Tough grading is not the same as excellent teaching, but there is a strong correlation between the two.</p>
<p>If students know at the outset that more than half the class will be awarded A grades, their motivation drops. Certainly there are some who are truly interested in learning for its own sake. However, a majority of students are motivated to work based on the reward available. Consider the reductio absurdum - if all students are guaranteed an A whether they work hard or never even show up, many (most?) will likely put forth little, if any effort.</p>
<p>Excellent teaching results from the instructor effectively conveying information as well as motivating the student to master the material. Grades have proven to be an outstanding motivation tool - grade inflation eliminates this tool.</p>