Yeah, stuff like Dyslexia does not exist ;)
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Yeah, stuff like Dyslexia does not exist ;)
It's important that you can always place blame on anyone who fails; that makes it okay to beat them, rape them, or pull their guts out, or whatever the GOP train loves this week.
Dyslexia is an interesting one. I've often wondered how people who think like lewk on these matters feel about dyslexia and other such problems.
Obviously, dyslexics just aren't trying hard enough if they need specialized help. They should fall into the gifted intelligence group, and be able to "fake" literacy all the way through to HS graduation. Cher says so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
By the way, if the precursor to Dyslexia is diagnosed at age 3 to 4 then chances are good for it not to develop during school, given a special therapy.
Seems to have its roots in a problem to recognize phonems. And a diagnosis during school would be too late as there's too much going on - learning to read, to write and so on.
Ooh thanks for that one, i'd never even considered that dyslexia may be rooted in a problem with spoken language :)
I was referring to the teacher making the choice on marking the answer right or wrong. There is no half right on spelling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
Though really the child probably chose to be lazy if they do poorly on a test. Most children are fully capable of passing the joke standards America has in schools, its typically a matter of priorities.
you called it, folks: dyslexia doesn't exist
I knew that you'd focus on one minor detail. You're obviously incapable of looking at the big picture - get it into your head: MOST OF THE TIME THERE IS NO BINARY WRONG OR RIGHT!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Stop telling me something where I KNOW that it isn't so because I have DONE that myself. Instead of your moronic ramblings about something you don't know the first thing about because YOU HAVE NO PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE in the matter. Just stop.
And yes, Lewk, you can create such a things as "half an error" - I already told you. You're obviously failing to read: An error in placing a comma is not considered as "bad" as spelling a word wrong. So, maybe, just maybe, you could actually switch on your brain, read what I'm writing and STOP to harp on stuff I already tried to explain to you. You're obviously challenged in the reading department because you fail to comprehend bits of information and just jump to conclusions which are WRONG.
I thus have to give you an F in languages. Because you're either daft or willfully stupid. Which, following your logic, is one and the same.
You have to remember, Khen, that Lewk's Weltanschauung demands from the education system two things; it must examine and determine the worth of each individual, and it must punish transgressions. Failure, of any kind and for any reason, is always someone's fault, therefore the construction of a system for meting out punishments and rewards according to the choices of the consumers (the children) is both sensible and necessary. Where there's sin, there's a sinner, and choosing failure is most definitely a grave sin. He who does not work, does not eat, and so on, and so forth.
The structure of his perception of reality also requires that children are brought into the miasma of social darwinism as soon as possible. The children, and especially their parents and future employers, need the ability to determine exactly how many dollars each child is worth, and for this reason a binary grading scheme will not do. And additionally, since failure is always a choice, there's no wrong being committed anywhere. The stupid choose their stupidity, and they deserve scorn, dejection and poverty. People need to be judged constantly and intently in all areas of life, because how else can there be order and structure in the universe?
Yeah failing a spelling test doesn't have dire consequences. But thanks for playing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
I am unsure what one is meant to glean from this. That children's grades are meaningless?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
You forgot dyslexia. It's like you're embarrassed to admit its existence
Another fail. This was a pretty simple example of a test. Do you think that tests in higher grades of school, college or university become simpler instead of gaining complexity? Those can have dire consequences.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
For example, one of the determining factors if you're allowed to progress from Bachelor to Master is the Bachelor's exam. Which includes a work of several months, yielding quite a lot of pages to read through and possibly an actual product (ranging from web pages to a program to a physics or chemistry experiment).
How do you grade that one with multiple choice, Lewk?
You don't, they're clearly complex and out of fear you end up giving everyone grades within a super narrow range. Meanwhile your republican colleagues teaching college level addition can grade properly free from the fear and doubt brought on by complexity. I'm kidding, that's probably not a fair characterisation
Well, you convinced me!Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
What I'm saying is your going way over the top over a single test.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
Though I really don't get your point about "punishing" "sin" "failure" nonsense. Grades are designed to determine someone's proficiency. If you are not proficient, for whatever reason, it should be documented appropriately. You don't auto pass a dyslexic just because they have a harder time spelling. Spelling of course may be a bad example due to spell check but overall teachers should never help someone pass unless they actually have learned/demonstrated the subject.
Are you suggesting that we should give out better grades for some people because they are not as able as others?
Lewk. Grades are "not designed to determine someone's proficiency". That would imply that someone actually sat down, thought about all the pitfalls and did something about it.
Instead we have quasi-mythical mumbo-jumbo where everyone thinks that he knows what grades are about.
Let's compare it to medicine, or a typical House episode:
First you have him trying get the patient's history (anamnesis). From that and the symptoms displayed he arrives at the patient's current status (diagnosis). And from that he'll give us the patient's further outlook (prognosis).
For all three stages he'll use a lot of words (complicated, multi-syllable ones) to accurately describe the patient's past, present and future.
With me so far?
Great.
Now imagine this: He then takes the patient's records for this case and replaces the detailed documentation for ananmesis, diagnosis and prognosis each with a single letter from A to F. Then, thinking that this is still too complicated, he again picks one of those at random, arriving at one single letter.
Upon having done so, he hands this single letter over to the next-best doctor without uttering another word, expecting him to cure the patient.
How successful, do you think, this doctor will be?
Yeah grading just is not that complicated. Why do you think students typically get similar grades from class to class? How is it that bright folks get 4.0 GPA in college? Because the control over the grade is mostly in the hands of the students. Yes some subjective bias exists but ultimately if you are proficient in whatever subject you are taking you will likely get a better grade.
Lets flip this to the real world for a second. You have to rate 10 employees, you have challenges just like in grading. Do you throw up your hands and just mark pass fail and give high performers the same bonus/raise as an average performer? No that's retarded.
Hang on, why aren't teachers being graded? Why aren't you being graded as an employer?
Is a 4.0 GPA from Stanford equivalent to a 4.0 GPA from OminousGamer's couch?
Anyway, crappy knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a 4.0 GPA, why are we wasting time on grades? :downcast:
Well, again, you don't know what you're talking about. For example (and this is just one example), teachers who were told that a particular pupil was a great performer almost automatically gave him good grades. While teachers who were told that the same pupil was a bad performer gave him bad grades... That's called the Halo effect.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Ah, and I see: Pupils getting constant grades automatically verifies the validity of grades. I'd love for you to present that particular argument to a professor in Statistics.
Well, what exactly do you mean by the word "performance"? How do you measure that? I mean, in Sales it would be pretty clear-cut: The profit you yielded for the company. However, you'd also have to define some kind of grading system there as well - I mean, what about the sales guy who got a foot in the door in one important market, but in order to do so, he had to offer a serious initial rebate?Quote:
Lets flip this to the real world for a second. You have to rate 10 employees, you have challenges just like in grading. Do you throw up your hands and just mark pass fail and give high performers the same bonus/raise as an average performer? No that's retarded.
And how do you measure performance in Techsupport? In Development? In Marketing?
Take Development: Do you use a moronic measurement like LoC (Line of Codes)? In that case, I could easily triple my LoC by simply replacing:
x = (question == "test") ? true : false
by
if question == "test
x = true
else
x = false
end
Or you could base it on the number of tests you're writing (yielding a lot of "assert true" tests) And so on. Which means that every kind of metric is flawed in some way. And if you don't recognize the flaws, you'll be doomed to deal with sub-par metrics which don't actually reflect reality.
The lack of comprehension displayed here doesn't really invite further discourse, as ideas aren't being exchanged. I would posit it is not 'nonsense' but perhaps in your case introspection has lead to a different theory of the conservative mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
I think we're losing track of the most important question:
why is it important for teachers to grade students on a five point scale?
Answering that question is key to understanding the madness on both sides of the issue, and being able to come to an answer that we can all agree on helps us define the problems associated with grading as well as to uncover possible solutions.
Any takers? Any suggestions besides "because it is"?
Let's take a stab at identifying one of the problems. There it is, right there in your post. For whatever reason. At the same time, you're working with the a priori belief that the reason is that the kid is lazy, stupid, etc. In other discussions, you want to blame the teachers or blame the schools or even blame the parents. You can't have your cake and eat it too, Lewk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Well, it is because the people responsible believe that it yields some kind of meaningful metric.
I mean, it's even worse in Germany: We have numbers as grades.
Which means that they'll do averages. And a pupil getting a 2.3 average sounds oh-so scientific that it has to be true!
Nevermind that this would be a 2.3 ± 1 in any serious scientific publication (numbers made up on the spot, people!)
How would one determine the error bars in the case of one student? Deviation across several semesters?Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
Well, first of all you'd have to actually quantify the errors. Then you'd have to define what a grade actually means. And then you could think about defining the error bars ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
Yeah, that was my reasoning too, but since you're closer to the edumacation business then I am, figured it was worth to ask.
Sure creating metrics that reflect reality is important. Just talking on a general level though, companies "rack and stack" employees. Employees are given "grades" so to speak and are given varying levels of bonus/raises and perks. This is true to one degree or another from menial labor in a fast food store to finance folks on wall street.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
A measurement does not need to be perfect to be used. The contempt you have against grades is just odd.
Each person is responsible for their own achievement and failings. However there is an influence factor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Just like a criminal is 100% responsible for their crimes. However they are more likely to be a criminal if their parents did not teach them right and wrong. Does that absolve the criminal from his crimes? Of course not but we shouldn't put our hands in the sand and say that people do not have influence over others.
When it comes to teaching, incompetent teachers can waste students time, teach them incorrect things, fail to motivate and a whole host of other bad behaviors. This incidentally is why its important to not fully rely on grades only because teachers can be subjective. Objective tests administered by a third party is the best way to determine if learning has occurred.
A five point scale is more accurate than a 2 point scale (pass/fail). A 100 point scale is even more accurate. Those 100 points those fit into categories such as (90 to 100 = A).Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
The compulsion to use a bad ranking tool just because it's easy reflects a deep-seated belief that ranking people is so important, in and of itself, that it must be done by any means possible. Where does this belief--that ranking is important for it's own sake, so important that it's better to do it poorly and unfairly and with dire consequences than to not do it--come from?
That's false. If your data is inaccurate you won't get more accuracy by increasing the scales.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Case in point: Physics. We had multimeters which were able to display currents with up to 8 digits behind the delimiter. Did that mean that we were actually able to capture data with such a precision? Nope.
Another example: You have the numbers 2, 4, 5, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 4, 3, 2 which yield an average of 2,6363... Does that mean that you have an average of infinite precision? Nope. Since your original data did not have any significant digits behind the delimiter, your average should reflect that fact.
Which means that your scale has to reflect the precision of your data. You could up your scale to a 1,000,000,000 point scale. Does that mean that you can actually measure that precise? Nope.
If your initial data points are rubbish, trying to do statistical nonsense like yours is like gilding a turd. It may look pretty - but it still is a turd at its core.
Addendum: During the last three years at school, we were switched from the usual 1 to 6 (1 being best, 6 being worst) grades to a point scale ranging from 0 to 15 (0 being worst, 15 being best).
Even then, for one teacher that did not suffice and he had to differentiate further and divided every point into three additional niveaus (like, 13+, 13 and 13-).
We always puzzled about what a 0- was to mean. Maybe: "Would have been better if he hadn't attended classes"?
Our grades actually have numeric values. A=4.0, B=3.0, and so forth. What to do with +/-'s, if they exist, varies, but the base grade per letter is constant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
More on topic, while the grade scale does have it's problems, especially in more subjective subjects, pass/fail has it's own set of problems, and doesn't even fully address the problems with the grade scale. Subjective grading can still impact the outcome, and you lose information on whether a student had only barely passed a subject, or whether they demonstrated complete mastery of it.
There are some groups that try to counter the subjectiveness of letter grades by finding a more relative ranking, which makes some sense since everyone's grades can be expected to skew in the same way for many of the problems/modifiers in a given education system. In a case like this, the professor who gives a wide spread of grades versus the professor who gives a narrower spread won't matter. Grading on a curve is a way to translate relative grading into the letter scale, and the class rankings is the way to do the reverse. However, this of course has it's own issues. If you're in a class full of geniuses, a low ranking/curved grade is still probably something to be proud of, but it won't really look like it.
IMO, a five point absolute grading scale is preferable, because you don't lose as much information as in pass/fail, it minimizes the misinformation that could creep in through a more discrete scale, and it judges the students on their own competency alone. YMMV, and I doubt I'd convince anyone with different preferences to switch.
tl/dr: All grading systems have their problems.
I had a professor who'd give A-- and B++. :p Though that's mostly a matter of grade inflation at grad school (B is pass, which means anything less than an A- is considered a bad grade).
By the way, as someone who's graded 6 semesters worth of classes, I could tell you that it really isn't very hard to give accurate grades at the bottom and upper tiers. It's very obvious what an A paper (or exam) is, just like it's obvious what's a C, a D, or an F. The only problems I ever have is differentiating between B-/B, B/B+, B+/A-. Even then, there's a clear difference between a B and an A-. And I've graded for classes that emphasized papers, exams using multiple choice, and exams using essays.
Edit: I think the real problem isn't comparing an A- to a B+ from the same grader; it's being able to compare grades given by different graders.
The ability to engage in higher-order thinking? What else do you think our brains are doing all day *and all night*? They're processing, classifying, and archiving.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
If you pigeon hole three test scores into A B C D categories there will have to be rounding taking place. If someone has 3 A 1 B 1 C what does that give you? To use an American public school metric that could have been a 90, 90, 91, 80, and 75. Or it could have been a 100, 100, 100, 89, 79. Which is going to get you a more accurate measurement of student achievement?Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
As far as bad data that all depends on the test. If the grader can't grade something accurately (again not perfectly) why would you trust them to do pass/fail correctly?
Because education should be a reflection of real world. And people are ranked. When you decide to give a promotion to someone you will look at all of the people who want the job and measure them against each other. Ditto for hiring, ditto for raises, ditto for choice assignments.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Furthermore grading allows someone to measure how much they have learned. Forget comparing for a second but if a child made a 100 on a test that is a huge difference then a 70. However in a pass/fail paradigm those kind of pin point grades could not be assigned.
I love Poe's law.