Re: FW: Grading Alternative

["John E. Purchase, Ed. D." <jopur@muskoka.com>]

On the topic of Grades and Grading Alternatives, Wayne Mack asked the following questions (in
quotes):

"What is the aim of informing people of their proficiency
(or more truthfully their deficiency) in a skill or knowledge
set?"

One informs people of their proficiency in learning so that they have knowledge to use in
decision-making.    If the feedback on a student's performance occurs during the learning process,
it is FORMATIVE and helps manage learning time and effort effectively.  The student (with or without
teacher or parent guidance) can decide which topics need to be concentrated on and which do not.  If
the information is received at the completion of a stage of learning, it is SUMMATIVE.  It informs a
different kind of decision-making.

"What good does it do to inform people that they have only
acquired 90%, 80%, 70%, etc. of the knowledge they need?"

So they can use the information formatively if they feel that what they have is not enough for their
needs.

"What good does it do to business or society to have
people with significant gaps in the knowledge they require?"

If business is concentrating on finding recruits who are not qualified to work,  business is in
trouble.   Business  concentrates on candidates who offer the degree of competency the business
requires.

"Individual businesses may attempt to weed out those
without a specific grade level, but what do we as society
do with the 'weeded out' people?

I am not sure what Wayne means here.   Most businesses, when they have the quality of staff they
believe they need, could care less about those who are not employed by them except to be customers
for their goods and services.   There are no "weeded out people" except as society itself has
created but it must also be acknowledged that each person also has an obligation to society to do
his or her share, including maximising every learning opportunity which society feels obligated to
provide, and more.

"We need to focus efforts on teaching instead of evaluating."

One cannot focus on teaching without focussing on evaluating (and the other component in the cycle,
"objectives").  They inform and feed back on each other and if one is omitted the others are
meaningless.

Grading is part of the process of providing decision-making information.    If there are
alternatives to presenting such decision-making information, society and its education systems
should be interested to know and to test them out.  Many alternatives have been proposed and
tried.   What I find intriguing is that the systems seem to return to the short-cut symbols and
their real, implied, and imagined meanings.   Is that inertia, laziness, custom, or does grading
actually have merit?

John E. Purchase

[Moderator's Note:  Grades and grading is one of the topics that can rapidly
morph away from our Deming-based Aim here on the DEN.  It is certainly a fertile
topic for discussion.  When I was moderator of TQM/CQI in Higher Education, the
discussions "raged on" for years.  Here -- we need to remember our aim and 
work to keep the discussions in context.  Thanks.
==========================================================================