Re: Justification for the SAT

[Eric Crump <ecrump@INTERVERSITY.ORG>]

On Sat, 1 Sep 2001, Stephen McGinnis wrote:
> The fundamental problem is the inherent bias in the assessment reform
> community.  There is an unquestioned belief that somehow teachers assign
> grades in a perfect manner that never contains bias.

Not entirely unquestioned. I may be in the minority, but I think grades
are worse than tests. A number of reasons, including: They are inherently
and profoundly subjective evaluations disguised as objective by people
(teachers) who really ought to know better. They are more deeply embedded
in the education system, so deeply, I think, that they might be considered
part of its bones (therefore reform of evaluation is difficult because
people rightly sense that if you pull grading out the whole skeleton will
implode).

If you (or anybody else) is interested, I host a discussion list on the
subject of (un)grading. We talk about the history of grading, the problems
with grading, and plot for the demise of grading.

http://www.interversity.org/lists/ungrading

or send email to majordomo@interversity.org and in the message body put:
subscribe ungrading

Holler if you run into trouble or have questions.

--Eric Crump

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