In education school, I was taught that the purpose of grading was to rank-order students — to create a system whereby the highest-achieving students were ranked at the top and the lowest-achieving students were at the bottom. But recently there have been worries that grade inflation is making it difficult to use grades to rank students.
At most Ivy League schools, nearly 50 percent of grades given are A or A minus. When dozens of students have perfect GPAs, how do you determine who is best? If the average GPA at a school is 3.4, then what’s the point of having a four-point scale: half the students are being ranked on the basis of 1/6 of the grading scale.
Worse, some professors give As to nearly every student, compounding the difficulty of determining who did best in their class. When other professors grade tougher, there’s a disincentive for students to take their class, no matter how worthy the subject matter.
Amy Perfors has identified a better system for calculating GPA, one which attempts to mitigate these problems:
The model, which is Bayesian, calculates “achievement index” scores for each student as latent variables that best explain the grade cutoffs for each class in the university. As a result, it captures several phenomena: (a) if a class is hard and full of very good students, then a high grade is more indicative of ability (and a low grade less indicative of lack of ability); (b) if a class is easy and full of poor students, then a high grade doesn’t mean much; (c) if a certain instructor always gives As then the grade isn’t that meaningful — though it’s more meaningful if the only people who take the class in the first place are the extremely bright, hard-working students. Your “achievement index” score thus reflects your actual grades as well as the difficulty level of the classes you have chosen.
Makes some sense. And, of course, ultimately when professors realize that the difficulty of their class is factored into students’ GPAs, it becomes in their best interest to grade tougher — that will be the way to attract the best students to their class, since getting an A in an easy class won’t do much to help a bright student’s GPA.
The program is currently under serious consideration at UNC-Chapel Hill, but it has aroused some controversy. (Perfors links to an article in the faculty newspaper about the controversy, but the link is broken — I think because the UNC site doesn’t support permanent links. I found the article using Google’s cache, and I’m reprinting the whole thing below the fold.)
Perfors can’t understand why students are objecting to the system, but I have one guess: Students believe they have figured out a way to work the system, so any change in the system will be viewed as harmful. If tried-and-true tactics such as taking easy classes to boost grades won’t work any more, then they’re concerned that they’ll fail under the new regime. It’s not really a fear of the new system, it’s simply fear of any change.
As promised, the UNC article is below.
Faculty members and students aired their questions and comments about the proposed Achievement Index, a statistical measure of student performance, at a special April 13 forum of the Faculty Council.
The forum was held to provide additional information before the council votes on the Educational Policy Committee’s proposal to use the Achievement Index as a way to address variations in grading practices across the University. The index, designed to supplement GPA, measures each undergraduate’s performance relative to his or her classmates. If adopted, it could be listed on a student’s transcript and used in designating honors of distinction and highest distinction.
Faculty Chair Joe Templeton welcomed the group of faculty members and students. “You’re here, which suggests a commitment to excellence in undergraduate education at Carolina. We’re all here because we want Carolina to be as good as it can possibly be,” he said. “It’s helpful to recognize that both as students and as faculty so that when we get down to the details of an achievement index — about which we might disagree violently — we’ll recognize that we’re all trying to get to the same point, although there might be different pathways to get there.”
A panel of six fielded questions and offered comments. Panelists were Beverly Foster, nursing, and chair of the Educational Policy Committee; Suzanne Gulledge, education; Peter Gordon, psychology, and chair of the committee’s Subcommittee on Grading; Mike Radionchenko, the committee’s undergraduate representative; Andrew Perrin, sociology, and committee member; and Bill Balthrop, communication studies.
Initial questions focused on the impetus for the Achievement Index and how it would address grade inflation and perceived inequities in grading.
“There has been a long-standing faculty discussion on grade inflation and an exploration of possible solutions,” Foster said. “The committee’s intent was to get an issue of concern to many — and one possible approach — on the table and out for discussion.”
The measure addresses both grade inflation and inequities in grading, which are inexorably linked, explained Perrin. “The index says that when we’re comparing students to each other, which we do anyway, we attempt to factor out differences in grading practices,” he said. “Our hope is actually to reduce the pressure on grades.”
Gordon explained that the index recognized the use of grades for different purposes and didn’t negate the value of standard-based evaluation. “The Achievement Index is complicated, and that’s unfortunate, but it stems from a desire to make sure the method doesn’t penalize a student who does well in a class in which a high percentage of students do well.”
Gulledge described the Achievement Index as a tool that should help correct some of the imperfections of GPA assessment. “My sense is that the index shines light in some murky places, because it invites us to think about teaching for mastery. It is not a panacea and to suggest that is a mis-intent of the proposal,” she said. “I would be opposed to it if we don’t have an oversight committee to look at the issue of competition or how grades can be poorly used. I’m not afraid to try it, but I don’t want it to be the sum total of our assessment.”
Students were concerned about the extent to which the index would foster competition among students and whether it would discourage students from taking courses in disciplines in which they thought they might not perform well.
Student representative Mike Radionchenko said the Achievement Index had the potential to change Carolina’s campus climate by providing a disincentive for students to work cooperatively.
Eve Carson, student body president, agreed. “It takes license from the students to control our academic performance because we would be evaluated not only by our personal performance but also by the performance of other students at Carolina,” she said. Currently, Carolina emphasizes a culture of encouragement and initiative, she explained, not cutthroat competition.
Students also were concerned about the unknown impact on their acceptance into graduate and professional schools and future employment. “Would you give your child a medicine if you didn’t know its side effects?” Radionchenko said.
An audience member asked about the impact on leakage in honors courses. “When Peter started down this path, I was skeptical, because the impact on honors courses was one of my concerns,” Balthrop said. “But the committee found compelling evidence that for students who take honors courses, the Achievement Index in fact works to their benefit.”
Others asked how the index would affect courses that were based on participation, such as music ensembles and dramatic arts classes, or on small collaborative seminars, such as first-year writing classes.
A more radical proposal than this one was considered at Duke University about 10 years ago, Perrin said. That proposal called for replacing GPA with an achievement-adjusted GPA, but the idea was rejected. “If we adopt the Achievement Index, it is crucial that we evaluate the impact on the campus culture within the next few years,” he said.
While the students were largely opposed to the new measure, faculty members were split in their support.
Bobbi Owen, dramatic art, described the formula as a little mysterious, but something that probably could be addressed through implementation.
Course selection, however, was a question mark. “Some people are concerned that there might be a perverse incentive toward the larger low-level courses rather than smaller high-level courses,” she said.
Alice Poehls, University registrar, raised the issue of cost in incorporating the index in the University’s new student database system, which already included a GPA calculation. “If we go with the Achievement Index in addition to GPA, we could either ask for expensive modifications to the software or we could run it as a side system with interfaces,” she said. “I hope we recognize that if we choose now to invest in the Achievement Index as a modification, we might preclude other modifications that might be beneficial to a broader student population.”
Gordon said that he was concerned about the issue of cost. “I don’t expect this to be implemented outside the registrar’s regular budget,” he said. “But the cost per grade or cost per student is miniscule compared to anything else we can do to affect how the University evaluates its students.”
Frank Wilson, orthopaedics, called the Achievement Index the best thing to come along in addressing grading problems in the last 30 years. “If we’re going to be the leading public university, we have to lead,” he said. “We can’t develop a single perfect answer to all the inequities involved in the GPA. Complex problems have complex solutions. This first step will get better with time.”
At its April 27 meeting, the council will vote whether to adopt the resolution. If the vote is positive, a special implementation task force will be appointed to study the feasibility of incorporating the Achievement Index at Carolina.
“A positive vote will endorse the concept of the Achievement Index but will not make it mandatory to put it into effect at any time,” said Council Secretary Joe Ferrell. “A negative vote will prevent it from going forward.”
For more information about the Achievement Index and how it is calculated, refer to www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun.