When I read this over the weekend I immediately thought of this thread.
Why We Should Stop Grading Students on a Curve
The goal is to fight grade inflation, but the forced curve suffers from two serious flaws. One: It arbitrarily limits the number of students who can excel. If your forced curve allows for only seven A’s, but 10 students have mastered the material, three of them will be unfairly punished. (I’ve found a huge variation in overall performance among the classes I teach.)
After analyzing grading systems, the economists Pradeep Dubey and John Geanakoplos concluded that a forced grade curve is a disincentive to study. “Absolute grading is better than grading on a curve,” they wrote.
The more important argument against grade curves is that they create an atmosphere that’s toxic by pitting students against one another.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/opinion/sunday/why-we-should-stop-grading-students-on-a-curve.html
Couldn’t agree more. The author gets off on a tangent about student leaders being the ones who help others, but the comments on the disadvantages of the forced bell curve are relevant for discussion, I think.