Letters and Numbers and Grades, Oh My!

I so enjoy being able to work with a GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistant) in my composition courses. Our GTA program is set up so that experienced faculty work closely with individual GTAs (who will become composition instructors in later semesters); together, we engage in lots of discussion about the hows and whys of our work: how and why we design our courses, shape our assignments, run our classes, and respond to student writing as we do, for example. I love having an interested partner with whom to talk about all of those things. I might not have all the best teaching strategies figured out, but I want always to be able to explain my reasoning for why I do X or Y or Z, and I want always to treat my students ethically and with their best interests in mind.

I also appreciate having the GTA’s extra pair of eyes: she pays close attention to what’s happening in the classroom—especially to students’ reactions to various moments in class—and her observations are incredibly useful to me.

Case in point:

On Wednesday, a student asked why the grading scale for my course is a 8-point instead of a 10-point. An excellent question, really. Certainly a fair question. I wasn’t expecting it, though, and I’m afraid I spent way too much time on my answer (which, ironically, I’m spending even more time on here in my blog). Ms. Hornback, the GTA paired with that class, mentioned afterward that she thought even though I’d talked for a long time about the grading scale, the class still hadn’t “gotten” it.

I figure Ms. Hornback was right. It was an awfully circular discussion, trying to cover too much, too quickly, and going in too many different directions at once.

I could’ve answered the grading scale question a lot of different ways. I could simply have said, for instance, that I’m trying to raise the bar. Or that I’m just exercising my faculty right to set my grading policies—that I use an 8-point scale basically just because I can. Those would have been easy answers, and both are partly true. But neither gets at the heart of the reason.

I use the 8-point scale, as I tried to explain to the class, in part because I think it helps create the illusion of extra difficulty, conveys the idea that the course will be extra challenging. So, I use it to send a message. The word “illusion” in the last sentence is key, though: I also tried to explain that grading scales are incredibly arbitrary and that, in fact, I could use any typical grading scale in the course and my students would earn the same grades—a “B” in the 8-point scale would also be a “B” in the 10-point scale.

As I write that, I can see why my students might have been confused, even with an example sketched on the board. If an essay earns 82 points, and that’s a “B”-range grade with one scale and a “C”-range grade in another, how could I possibly be right in saying that a “B” in one is the same as a “B” in the other?

Here’s why: For writing courses, I don’t start with a number grade pulled out of the air (though I’m afraid that’s the sort of thing many students have received on lots of writing assignments, and it certainly helps explain their preferences for 10-point grading scales). Instead, I assign letter grades to formal assignments, and then I use a conversion scale so that my letter grades translate into number grades, which are then easy to average with consistency and fairness.

A little more explanation for how a “B” is a “B” is a “B”: If, in my grading scale, a “B” ranges from 85-92, I’ll let the number in the middle of those equal the solid “B.” So, a “B”=88.5. (“B+” and “B-” are numbers close to the ends of the span, and other letter grades follow that same pattern.) If I use the ten-point scale, however, the “B” range is 80-89. The number in the middle of those—the solid “B” grade, in my system—is 84.5.

So, in the 10-point system, the “B” translates into a lower number than in the 8-point system, which means that earning a “B” in either system is equally easy (or difficult).

If you’ve stuck with me this far, I’d love for you to comment as to whether you follow my explanation. I didn’t much intend to blog this week on grading scales, but there are a couple of points this all (sort of) leads to that I think are important to make. Here they are:

• Many students experience education as something that simply “happens to” them—with elements that may seem unclear or even unfair.
• For various reasons, many students would never question, for example, how a professor arrived at a particular grade.
• As students, you have a right to understand, and as faculty, we have an obligation to be able to articulate--and have good reasons for--why we do what we do.

Those are my “big picture” observations, things I’d like you to remember during your time at MC.

And now an observation about myself, as a teacher: I think sometimes I’m too honest and open. By telling you the 8-point scale gives the illusion of difficulty, I’ve negated the illusion. Being honest with you feels “right,” but I hope I haven’t made the course seem less challenging—it has to be challenging, after all, or you’re wasting your money and we’re all wasting our time.

Later in the semester we should return to questions of grading and education and of how much an “A” (or “B” or “C”) that was easy to earn is really even worth. . . .

A point of advice, as I close: some of the most challenging professors I ever studied under used a 10-point scale. Don't let a grading scale give you a false sense of security.