Achievement Levels
I was just looking through the Growing Success document for an assignment in one of my classes, and it struck me just how arbitrary our grading system is. I don't really understand why we convert from "acheivement levels" to percentages (why not just one or the other), and why these acheivement levels aren't evenly distributed.
There was a grid in the book which showed all of the conversions using a 1-, 1, 1+, -2, 2, 2+ etc. system converted to a percentage system. But the system is skewed such that for instance, a level 4- spans from an 80-86... 7 percentage points, but a level 3+ spans from 77-79... only 3 percentage points.
I remember this difference in my school experience... it didn't make sense to me that an "A" spanned from 80-100%, but a "B" was only from 70-79%. It's like the people setting up the system decided that every ten percent from 50 percent onwards would be a different letter grade. And then when they got to 80 percent, they decided, nah, this should all be one thing.
Students are expected to get in the range of 70-79% to meet the provincial standard. This is also known as a level 3.
If we split up all the passing grades in groups of ten, then that 70-79 range would be the average.
50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-100
This makes sense... that the standard should be made such that the average person can pass it. But why aren't there 5 categories, each spanning 10 percent? It seems weird though that in terms of passing grades, the person achieving the provincial standard is in the middle, but in terms of levels, they're 3 out of 4.
Could it be that students would feel better being at the 3rd of 4 levels, instead of at the 3rd of 5 levels. Maybe it would make 100% less achievable to someone working at a lower level. I would assume that the people designing the system also took into consideration the fact that there isn't generally a even distribution of grades, so that would have been factored in somehow. Thoughts?
There was a grid in the book which showed all of the conversions using a 1-, 1, 1+, -2, 2, 2+ etc. system converted to a percentage system. But the system is skewed such that for instance, a level 4- spans from an 80-86... 7 percentage points, but a level 3+ spans from 77-79... only 3 percentage points.
I remember this difference in my school experience... it didn't make sense to me that an "A" spanned from 80-100%, but a "B" was only from 70-79%. It's like the people setting up the system decided that every ten percent from 50 percent onwards would be a different letter grade. And then when they got to 80 percent, they decided, nah, this should all be one thing.
Students are expected to get in the range of 70-79% to meet the provincial standard. This is also known as a level 3.
If we split up all the passing grades in groups of ten, then that 70-79 range would be the average.
50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-100
This makes sense... that the standard should be made such that the average person can pass it. But why aren't there 5 categories, each spanning 10 percent? It seems weird though that in terms of passing grades, the person achieving the provincial standard is in the middle, but in terms of levels, they're 3 out of 4.
Could it be that students would feel better being at the 3rd of 4 levels, instead of at the 3rd of 5 levels. Maybe it would make 100% less achievable to someone working at a lower level. I would assume that the people designing the system also took into consideration the fact that there isn't generally a even distribution of grades, so that would have been factored in somehow. Thoughts?
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