Grading systems are obviously broken. Why isn't anyone fixing them?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176349

by algoshift • 15 years ago

6 6 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I am working on a series of educational apps for iOS and other mobile platforms. Part of this is coming-up with a grading system that makes sense. The objective isn't to simply provide a grade that corresponds to how a student tested. That would simply reflect how someone did on that particular test. The goal is to grade knowledge, not test results.

Having lived and studied in three different cultures in different parts of the world I can say that, from my experience, grading in the US and abroad is pretty much the same. Other parts of the world might use a 0 to 10 scale while US schools like the A through F symbols. In the end the result is the same: You are grading test-taking performance, not knowledge.

Any entrepreneur knows full-well that test performance does not matter. How many times have you failed before succeeding? Failure is a part of learning. Some might argue that failure is the start of learning.

Yet another example is that of a skilled athlete, say, a gymnast. It might take weeks or months of failure to master one particular move that lasts barely past one second. After hundreds of failures the gymnast gets it right and it is part of their skill set. Countless other examples abound.

The problem with test-style grading is that it does not encode acquired knowledge. It encodes isolated and aggregate test scores. And, to add further insult to injury, you get to average test scores at the end of the year, semester or quarter to get your grade. The resulting number is meaningless.

Imagine that we applied this to the aforementioned gymnast. They would get grades below 5 or 6 most of the time due to constant failures while learning. Then, once they figure it out they start getting 10's. Well, if you average hundreds of scores at 5 or below with a few dozen 10's you'll get an average score that does not represent what this person can now actually do. And therein lies the problem.

So, I've been looking at grading systems that allow one to place greater weight on success when compared to failure in order to encode acquired knowledge rather than average test scores.

I'd be interested to learn from others who may have traveled this road and what they may have learned in the process.

An even greater topic is how to go about changing the way schools grade for the benefit of all involved.

Thank you,

-Martin

PM: x@y.z where x = martin y = algoshift z = com

logjam• 15 years ago

Robert Pirsig advocated the abolition of grading. From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

"The student’s biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and -whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don’t whip me, I won’t work." He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.

"This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civilization, "the system", is pulled by mules. This is a common, vocational, "location" point of view, but it’s not the [true learning]’s attitude. [True learning]’s attitude is that civilization, or " the system ", or "society", or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. The purpose of abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man."

"So he would come back to our degreeless and gradeless school, but with a difference. He’d no longer be a grade-motivated person. He’d be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He’d be a free man. He wouldn’t need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He’d be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they’d better come up with it. "

"Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldn’t stop with rote engineering information. Physics and mathematics were going to come within his sphere of interest because he’d see he needed them. Metallurgy and electrical engineering would come up for attention. And, in the process of intellectual maturing that these abstract studies gave him, he would be likely to branch out into other theoretical areas that weren’t directly related to machines but had become a part of a newer larger goal. This larger goal wouldn’t be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on."

"It would be the real thing."

algoshift• 15 years ago

I don't think that the abolition of grading is a good idea. You need some way to communicate what someone has learned. Current grading systems are meaningless. I can't hire someone with a perfect 4.0 and assume that they really know their stuff.

The example I use all the time is from when I was in college taking subjects like physics and calculus. A few of us were very much hands-on kind of guys that grew up making things and generally connecting with the real world. Other students had never done anything beyond high-school science class. Never a splinter in their finger or trying to make balsa-wood contraption fly.

There was a stark contrast between testing in math and physics because of this. There was a bunch of students that were test taking machines when it came to calculus. Always got A's.

However, when it came time to apply that to a physics test they failed --sometimes miserably-- because there was no real understanding or knowledge.

I find myself re-living some of that as I now help my kids learn science. Dad is no famous for taking the algebra explanation to the garage and grabbing a tape measure, some wood and a handsaw. The function y = x can have a myriad of different domain values depending on what it is you happen to be talking about. This is not what they teach in school and it certainly isn't what they are testing for.

Anyhow, grades need to encode real knowledge. This is what I am striving for in the apps I am working on and hope that some day schools figure it out as well.

curt• 15 years ago

In undergrad after your first year my college had an open book policy for all engineering courses. Tests were usually 2-3 questions (~2hrs long) and you could use any resource you wanted just like you would at a job. There was no memorization, they only tested your ability to solve a problem.

Feel the same way that's why I really didn't care about 'grades' or 'majors'. Sadly most people need the physiological motivation of the grading system. If I wanted to learn something I took the class: engineering, comp sci, bio, whatever I felt like. In grad school I never even opened a report card, they just went right in the trash. You're there to learn, not to get grades. But again most people cant work like that.

phaet0n• 15 years ago

I think the fundamental issue is that no one asks the simple question, "What is the goal of testing/grading?"

I think is in order for the _student_ to evaluate their mastery of the given discipline.

Everything else, I feel, stems from a distortion of this process for other purposes.

As for grading in schools, I cannot say anything reasonable because I got good grades, although I hated school. However, I recall my art teacher in middle school who would sit you down and ask you about your aim with your work and what you thought you deserved, and then she'd settle on a grade. I found it really strange, because I was too young to understand. I would often overestimate my grade, but what she wanted of me was to figure out what I expected of myself and to develop the ability to evaluate that.

It's profound that someone would want that of you at 12 years of age.

I'll never forget it, though I only understood it many, many years later.

_delirium• 15 years ago

Most project-based university courses sort of use a system like that, at least over the timeframe of the course. Often there will be intermediate checkpoints, but they rarely count for a lot, and if you turn in a great final project, that usually overrides anything else. So basically you have 14 weeks to acquire and apply the knowledge. True in humanities courses to some extent also; in many philosophy courses, for example, there are some short essays and responses throughout the semester, but you could do badly on those and still get an A if you turned in a top-quality final paper that showed the prof that, by the end of the course, you had figured out how to develop and communicate a good philosophy argument.

It's true that you might want to do this over a timeframe longer than 14 weeks, though.

rabidonrails• 15 years ago

After reading all the comments I find myself at the tipping point of a truly great idea -- no doubt inspired by the questions brought forth by Martin.

If the end goal of schooling is to learn AND be able to apply knowledge, then what can be used to show a child the benefit of understanding knowledge? That is, could you construct a situation in which a child in, say, third grade would want to repeat a course without outside pressure?

If we can assume that adults are willing to make this decision based on a couple of key factors: e.g. 1. the need to provide for themselves (and family) 2. curiosity - the desire to innovate, is there a way to convey or reinterpret these ideas to a child?

My thoughts anyway and kudos to logjam for quoting Pirsig...that's awesome.

Grading systems are obviously broken. Why isn't anyone fixing them?

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