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The difficulty with combating grade inflation is that no one school can do it alone. One school doing it just disadvantages their students when these grades ar

The difficulty with combating grade inflation is that no one school can do it alone. One school doing it just disadvantages their students when these grades are compared. A much more accurate system, IMHO, would be to switch over to a ranking/percentile order within the school, and use standardized tests for rough cross-school comparisons. Sure, it's not perfect, but it seems better than what we have now. Also, it provides a great argument for instructors when students inevitably come-a-grade-grubbing. "I can't bump your score, because that would inexorably bump DOWN someone else's score, and that wouldn't be fair to the other students."

na85 7y ago
They tried the standardized tests thing in Ontario when I was in school, so I guess the 90s. All it led to was teachers teaching to the test.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  I thought the AP tests were very good. I took 13 of them. The tests themselves were just good tests of knowledge and skills so teaching to the test meant teaching relevant content. Standardized _aptitude_ tests were always bad because they’re supposed to test basic skills but do so with lots of curveball tricks or specific formats... so teachers taught the specifics of the test
- iamatworknow 7y ago
  That was (and I believe still is) the case in New York as well. My teachers would complain about it directly to us students, and the transition from the standardized test scheme to college was kinda bumpy as a result (since the closest thing to a standardized test you could prepare for there were maybe the exams from previous years for that professor).
improbable22 7y ago
One downside of class ranking is that it incentivises destructive behaviour. Law schools often do this, and I heard many stories of things like (in the days of physical books...) moving the perfect references, a week before the deadline, to an unrelated shelf in order to trip up your classmates. By contrast the science students tended to collaborate on everything outside of an exam room, and learned a lot from each other this way. Even if their grades were less perfectly reflective of individual understanding.
- liara_k 7y ago
  My experience in law school was that, while this sort of destructive behavior thing did occasionally happen, it's way overblown. In all the courses I took, the missing book thing (1) happened _once_, during the first year, (2) was corrected within hours, (3) because of #2, was never shown to be out of malice rather than ignorance (4) had substantial negative social consequences for the person suspected (i.e., rumors, lack of trust) ANYWAY, and (5) never happened again throughout my entire law school experience. Nor did the competition prevent the formation of study groups. There were also some upsides to the competition in terms of motivation and focus, though admittedly with extremely ambitious law students it was a little over the top for the first year. But based on my experience teaching undergraduates, the middle ~60-70% of the class would benefit from an environment with more immediate competitive pressure.
  - improbable22 7y ago
    OK, I'm glad to hear... you are literally the first person ever to tell me law school wasn't as bad as it sounds!
  - asdff 7y ago
    I think that depends on your law school, to be honest it probably gets easier the more prestigious your school is. I have a friend right now who goes to a decent, but not top 10 law school. There is an insane level of competition going on in mid tier law schools, because the jobs which comfortably pay tuition are only offered to the top 15% of the class and there is a glut of people looking for jobs and holding a J.D. right now. Any short of that class standing, and good luck paying back 150k on your 45k salary with bleak prospects, hopefully you don't have undergrad debt either. Last semester, six laptops were stolen from the law library, accessible only to law students and staff. People feed lies about basic coursework questions. The culture in the mid tier is super toxic.

na85 7y ago

They tried the standardized tests thing in Ontario when I was in school, so I guess the 90s. All it led to was teachers teaching to the test.

b_tterc_p 7y ago
I thought the AP tests were very good. I took 13 of them. The tests themselves were just good tests of knowledge and skills so teaching to the test meant teaching relevant content. Standardized _aptitude_ tests were always bad because they’re supposed to test basic skills but do so with lots of curveball tricks or specific formats... so teachers taught the specifics of the test
iamatworknow 7y ago
That was (and I believe still is) the case in New York as well. My teachers would complain about it directly to us students, and the transition from the standardized test scheme to college was kinda bumpy as a result (since the closest thing to a standardized test you could prepare for there were maybe the exams from previous years for that professor).

improbable22 7y ago

One downside of class ranking is that it incentivises destructive behaviour. Law schools often do this, and I heard many stories of things like (in the days of physical books...) moving the perfect references, a week before the deadline, to an unrelated shelf in order to trip up your classmates. By contrast the science students tended to collaborate on everything outside of an exam room, and learned a lot from each other this way. Even if their grades were less perfectly reflective of individual understanding.

liara_k 7y ago
My experience in law school was that, while this sort of destructive behavior thing did occasionally happen, it's way overblown. In all the courses I took, the missing book thing (1) happened _once_, during the first year, (2) was corrected within hours, (3) because of #2, was never shown to be out of malice rather than ignorance (4) had substantial negative social consequences for the person suspected (i.e., rumors, lack of trust) ANYWAY, and (5) never happened again throughout my entire law school experience. Nor did the competition prevent the formation of study groups. There were also some upsides to the competition in terms of motivation and focus, though admittedly with extremely ambitious law students it was a little over the top for the first year. But based on my experience teaching undergraduates, the middle ~60-70% of the class would benefit from an environment with more immediate competitive pressure.
- improbable22 7y ago
  OK, I'm glad to hear... you are literally the first person ever to tell me law school wasn't as bad as it sounds!
- asdff 7y ago
  I think that depends on your law school, to be honest it probably gets easier the more prestigious your school is. I have a friend right now who goes to a decent, but not top 10 law school. There is an insane level of competition going on in mid tier law schools, because the jobs which comfortably pay tuition are only offered to the top 15% of the class and there is a glut of people looking for jobs and holding a J.D. right now. Any short of that class standing, and good luck paying back 150k on your 45k salary with bleak prospects, hopefully you don't have undergrad debt either. Last semester, six laptops were stolen from the law library, accessible only to law students and staff. People feed lies about basic coursework questions. The culture in the mid tier is super toxic.