To: Members of Faculty Council
From: Laura Rediehs
Date: April 7, 2003
Re: Change of the Grading System at St. Lawrence
I would like to propose that faculty at St. Lawrence consider changing the grading scale from our current numerical 4.0 scale to a non-numerical grading system consisting of the three grades HP (high pass), P (pass) and NC (no credit). The meanings of these grades would be:
HP: The student has demonstrated an exceptional mastery of the material studied in the course, warranting the instructor’s strong recommendation that the student seriously consider more advanced study of this subject.
P: The student has demonstrated sufficient mastery of the most important material studied in this course to warrant receiving full credit towards graduation.
NC: The student has not demonstrated sufficient mastery of the material studied in this course to warrant receiving credit towards graduation.
The transcript shall list all courses attempted, and shall indicate the following numerical ratios (expressed as ratios):
A. Total number of courses passed (at P or HP level) / total attempted
B. Total HP / total passed (P + HP)
C. For each major: total HP / total passed (P + HP)
Ratio A above can be used for identifying students in crisis. Ratio B can be used for determining overall honors, and Ratio C can be used for determining major honors. [If the general spirit of this grading proposal is regarded as worthy of continued consideration, perhaps Academic Affairs would wish to specify how exactly to determine “crisis level” or “honors level.”]
Other than these purposes, these numbers must not be officially tied to other aspects of students’ lives. That is, specific minimum ratios should not be made requirements within St. Lawrence for financial aid, study abroad, or other aspects of students’ lives.
Rationale:
1. Our current grading scale, while conforming well to standard grading practices in the United States, has doubtful numerical integrity. First of all, not all instructors define grades in the same way; even strictly numerically, different instructors, for example, translate the 100-point scale to the 4.0 scale differently. Secondly, the averaging together of all grades into the “Grade-Point Average” (GPA) results in numbers with no stable meanings from student to student. Some of the most highly capable students may take courses that challenge them and may therefore have lower GPAs than less capable students who only choose courses in which they think they will receive high grades.
2. The tying of students’ GPA to so many aspects of their lives makes the grading system a coercive structure that often inhibits students from taking the intellectual risks that good education demands. Students feel justified in caring more about their grades than their education because their financial aid, parental support, athletic participation, or acceptance into study abroad programs, for example, may depend upon maintaining a specific GPA. This attitude of caring more about grades than education can undermine instructors’ pedagogical goals, inhibit effective communication of feedback from instructor to student, and can also discourage the development of students’ independent thought and internal sources of intellectual motivation.
3. This modified pass/fail grading system that I am proposing is an improvement upon a simple pass/fail system in providing a high-pass grade that offers extra incentive for students to try to do extremely well in their studies. Students considering graduate or professional study beyond the undergraduate level should be especially encouraged to seek HP grades, particularly in their majors.
4. There is nothing in this system that precludes individual instructors’ deciding to establish more detailed grading systems within their classes (on our current 4.0 scale, a letter-grade scale, or a 100-point scale, for example). The reported “public” grades would still be limited to the HP/P/NC grades, however. This preserves the privacy of the details of the feedback between instructor and student. By ensuring that privacy, instructors may feel more free to be more honest and set higher standards in their internal grading because students will not have reason to try to negotiate higher grades to be able to keep their scholarships, for example. Students may then be able to “listen” to the grades with more humble openness and less defensiveness.
5. My own thinking about how the HP/P/NC grades would roughly compare to our current grades is that the minimum threshold for P should be around a 2.0 (since that is the “satisfactory” grade that currently represents the overall minimum required for graduation), and that the threshold for HP should be 4.0, or, on a letter grade scale, perhaps even A+ (not merely A). The HP should be a truly extraordinary grade. However, by saying this, I am not advocating giving these grades numerical values. As mentioned in number 1 above, I am seriously doubtful that giving grades numerical values that are averaged together has any numerical integrity or stable meaningfulness whatsoever.
6. This grading system has the virtue of being simple and easy to comprehend quickly. It is a virtue for non-standard grading systems to be easy to understand. A student’s transcript would look very similar to transcripts from other schools and would lend itself well to a careful qualitative reading. The numerical information provided would be helpful and more meaningful than GPA information.
7. This grading system would also lend itself well to being supplemented by more detailed qualitative information provided by the academic advising portfolio system that we may be developing in the near future. Together, the two sets of information would provide more information than current transcripts, and would also constitute a system that is easier to manage and perhaps easier to interpret than the system of narrative evaluations by instructors provided by those colleges and universities that use narrative evaluations in place of standard grades.
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