You might read the headline and say, "I am sick of everyone sueing everyone all the time."
But, when you read the story, you see that something happened here that happens often in college.
The teacher doesn't know how to teach or grade.
In my experience, college professors are very knowledgeable in their subject matter. However, they have no clue how to teach that knowledge effectively to students, and they do not know how to properly evaluate student's performance or understanding of that knowledge.
I remember getting a 54% on a test in a biology class, which was "curved" to an A. Why? Because the teacher did not know how to write a test that was effective in testing students knowledge.
Here is what happened in this case:
At the start of the semester last fall, Marquis said, Cushing told the class that students would take three tests, each worth 25 percent of the final grade, for a total of 75 percent. Four papers, each worth 5 percent, would comprise 20 percent of the grade. Class participation would decide the rest.
Based on that formula, Marquis figured he scored a 92.5 percent, or an A-minus. But when the Lanesborough resident checked his grade online in early January, he saw a C and e-mailed Cushing to complain.
Cushing wrote back that he graded the students more stringently on the third exam because they had had a full semester to learn how to write for a philosophy class. As a result, Cushing wrote, Marquis got an 84 for the class. But the students' numerical scores struck Cushing as too high, so he graded everyone on a curve before assigning letter grades. Marquis ended up with a C.
"As I am entering grades, I consider whether or not they seem fair," he wrote Marquis. ". . . I thought your grade was a good reflection of your work."
Marquis e-mailed Porter, the ombudsman. But she said faculty have their own grading scales and that one professor might view an 84 as an A-minus, while another might view it as a C.
The teacher changed his grading style, he changed the standard...not fair to the student.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Student takes his C to federal court
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12 comments:
"I remember getting a 54% on a test in a biology class, which was "curved" to an A. Why? Because the teacher did not know how to write a test that was effective in testing students knowledge."
Umm... wrong. Some people get 90% on those tests. Its not fair to them if the test is easy. Further.. this has nothing to do with the link. Perhaps when you have a personal comment or story you could actually relate it to what you are pointing out.
Could that be because so many teachers have been composing tests using computer software, throwing off the formula for, example, a multiple-test quiz, by inserting FITB, essays, etc., on a template not designed to handle such modifications?
Could this be why the weight of the content of individual questions becomes skewed?
The problem is "No Child's Behind Left", the most counterproductive, regressive education program ever conceived of.
The children have become robotic and the teachers wooden. What a society.
IMHO, it, and every shred of thought it ever inspired, should be abandoned.
Forthwith.
I don't have time to debate NCLB, Hash has a point but it only partially correct.
Congrats Hash for making somewhat of an argument...unlike parklife...but NCLB has NOTHING to do with this case or my point.
Hash, take your complaints to Ted Kennedy. He wrote NCLB.
Park, go back to smelling foul on the park bench and getting arrested for vagrancy.
"Hash, take your complaints to Ted Kennedy. He wrote NCLB."
Fudgie, take your complaints to Armstrong Williams...I think you speak his language far better than I do...
"Park, go back to smelling foul on the park bench and getting arrested for vagrancy..."
Fudgie, it's your idols that are the ones known for never shaving, showering, or wearing deodorant...
wait a minute hash, you can't blow off pcd's comment...Kennedy did write the NCLB law...
"wait a minute hash, you can't blow off pcd's comment...Kennedy did write the NCLB law..."
Of course I can, game, in the context fudgie tried to pull off. When Kennedy worked on the bill, he never intended for it to be the unfunded mandate it became. There was a whole lot of meat in that bill besides simple testing criteria and slush funds for "faith-based" orgs that turned out to be anything but...
There were well-meaning Democrats who worked on that bill who struggled to distance themselves from it when they saw how neocons would rape our nation's children and our educators with it.
It is fudgie that does not get to admit that, oh, okay, this bill is bad, but we'll only cop to it if we can smear some Democratic scapegoat with the blame for our implementation of it.
"he never intended for it to be the unfunded mandate"
So when you criticize borrow and spend, you're actually advocating spend and spend. Wonderful...
If the Democrats really hate Bush's prescription drug benefit and steps toward nationalist education, why not repeal them? Oh-- but Pelosi and Clinton are trying to expand government involvement in these areas, not limit them. Your outrage on this issue is phony.
"So when you criticize borrow and spend, you're actually advocating spend and spend. Wonderful..."
No, I'm advocating responsibility, transparency, oversight, and not living above your means and encouraging your neighbor to do the same.
The neocons have raped the American people's coffers to shore up the failed corporations they support, bail out ill-fated military operations, provide foreign aid, weaponry, and strategic air systems to other nations that our own boots on the ground could only dream of having access to, and raided America's treasury through the device of the private US Federal Reserve, in order to guarantee that the regular people never see their way out of the whole, and we are now beholden to true superpowers with sinister designs...
Play word games all you want, jason, this is the legacy your crafty geniuses have left for our grandchildren.
that is always the Left's answer...we need more money, THEN everything will work...even though nothing they create ever does
Hey, it was the Fed that made your money worthless...don't go blaming the "Left" for the problems in your own backyard.
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