What do grades signify?
Amazing list of what grades might signify…posted to WPA by Reid:
From: Writing Program Administration on behalf of E Shelley Reid
Sent: Sun 12/9/2007 11:46 AM
Subject: grading history & national assessments
I can’t possibly come close to replicating CeeJ’s multidimensional
living-grid description, but I’ve been thinking it’s interesting to
have both of these threads on assessment running side by side (or
helix-by-helix).
In these conversations so far, and in others I’ve seen/heard
recently, I’ve noted that a letter grade, or a collection of letter
grades, can be….
* a principled assessment of a student’s work
* an inflated gift to a student (”those kids today!”)
* a response to an unbalanced power situation
* a contributor to an unbalanced power situation
* an expression of an individual’s assessment ethos
* an expression of a community’s assessment ethos
* a controlling factor for getting a scholarship or loan or job
* a controlling factor in keeping one’s NTT job
* a signifier of one’s status as tenured
* a trustworthy measure of students’ learning
* an untrustworthy measure of students’ learning
* a trustworthy (?) measure of students’ suffering
* a trustworthy (?) measure of faculty’s rigor
* a trustworthy (?) measure of faculty’s nurturing/caring
* a measure of educational value
* a measure of consumer value
* a measure of economic workload and/or exchange
* a predictor of future success
* an indication of past successes or failures
* an indication of personal merit
* an indication of socioeconomic or cultural resources
* a….what else?