Race to the bottom: Red Grader, Blue Grader

[Aimless]

Khendraja'aro - So if I can sum up your argument in one sentence what would I say? Its hard to evaluate people therefore we shouldn't do it.

"It's hard to properly evaluate people on complex skills and we should acknowledge our limitations as well as limit their negative results.

Pass/fail eliminates comparisons with the group. Yes ranking people and rating people telling one group they are better in x y z then another group IS important.

On everything? All the time? Is this a matter of FAITH to you? If embarrassing people is so important to you you can also let them know their scores and how it compares to the rest of their class. Did you know that? Did you even think of that? On a side note would you like us to rate and rank your posts from now on?

Fuzzy - You're being dumb. I support free markets and for all of my adult life I've never existed in a country that has had true free markets. So that little theory fails.

No, because the idea of a free market is a very real and familiar idea to you. You imagine you know what it is and how it would be.

Nessus - And what is wrong with gauging people's worth? That's rather important in society, business and yes academia.

It's wrong if you can't do it well and if doing it wrong has negative consequences. It's also retarded to conflate "worth" with "performance on college assignment". Apropos of gauging worth in academia, one way to do that is to look at the number of citations you get. It's an easy and straightforward method that you would find very appealing. It's also a bad method that has negative consequences on research as well as on the dissemination of truth.

[Nessus]

Nessus - And what is wrong with gauging people's worth? That's rather important in society, business and yes academia.

It is unfortunate that so much of the written word has been denied to you.

[Khendraja'aro]

Khendraja'aro - So if I can sum up your argument in one sentence what would I say? Its hard to evaluate people therefore we shouldn't do it. Insane. Pass/fail eliminates comparisons with the group. Yes ranking people and rating people telling one group they are better in x y z then another group IS important.

That would be a "fail". There's a reason why I wrote so much: You can't simply sum it up on one sentence.

Yes, pass/fail eliminates comparisons within the group. It does so for a reason: Because the comparisons are not reliable in the first place. Yes, rating and ranking people is important to some aspects of life - and it should be done with proper measurement methods and not flawed ones.

I remember the first time I actually graded a test - it's hard. It was only a spelling test, but I still had to decide the boundaries for the grades and what constituted "half" an error and what was a "full" error. And then I was subjected to temptation to adjust the boundaries (downwards) after I had corrected all the tests of the class. And I also had to deal with human error - sometimes I was not sure about the spelling because it was shoddy writing. But at which point was I not to accept a shoddily written word anymore?

And that was only a spelling test - which is actually pretty clear-cut.

[Aimless]

Anyone who correctly writes a word in shoddy handwriting should be flunked, because they enabled a real criminal to escape justice. Teaching should be easy, anyone who makes it difficult should be flunked

[Lewkowski]

That would be a "fail". There's a reason why I wrote so much: You can't simply sum it up on one sentence.

Yes, pass/fail eliminates comparisons within the group. It does so for a reason: Because the comparisons are not reliable in the first place. Yes, rating and ranking people is important to some aspects of life - and it should be done with proper measurement methods and not flawed ones.

I remember the first time I actually graded a test - it's hard. It was only a spelling test, but I still had to decide the boundaries for the grades and what constituted "half" an error and what was a "full" error. And then I was subjected to temptation to adjust the boundaries (downwards) after I had corrected all the tests of the class. And I also had to deal with human error - sometimes I was not sure about the spelling because it was shoddy writing. But at which point was I not to accept a shoddily written word anymore?

And that was only a spelling test - which is actually pretty clear-cut.

What the hell is "half an error" in spelling? Spelling is a binary right/wrong process.

Again simply because you find some something difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. And pass/fail can still be subject to human error as well. Oh I know how about we do pass/fail on every single question on the test? And if the test has a 100 questions and the person got 70 of them right its a 70. And if they got 95 questions right its a 95. Gee that wasn't so hard to turn pass/fail into a grade now was it?

[Khendraja'aro]

What the hell is "half an error" in spelling? Spelling is a binary right/wrong process.

Again simply because you find some something difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. And pass/fail can still be subject to human error as well. Oh I know how about we do pass/fail on every single question on the test? And if the test has a 100 questions and the person got 70 of them right its a 70. And if they got 95 questions right its a 95. Gee that wasn't so hard to turn pass/fail into a grade now was it?

Oh, yes. But what if someone used a semicolon instead of a proper comma (or vice-versa)? Are missing commas (or a comma too many) as important as wrongly spellled words?

And, again, you can't do multiple choice on everything. I already adressed that. And what if someone answers your precious questions half-right? Or what if the calculation process for a task is perfectly done save for one little error which skews the result - how do you grade that task then?

Again, please engage your brain (I know it's a challenge!): Grading is not the easy task you make it out to be. You have never done that, obviously. I have. I'm astounded that you, who has no knowledge and experience of such matters proceeds to tell me who actually has to deal with such issues that I'm wrong.

Do you also want to tell me that the sky is black during the day while you're at it?

[GGT]

What the hell is "half an error" in spelling? Spelling is a binary right/wrong process.

That's a funny admission, coming from a poor speller.

[Lewkowski]

That's a funny admission, coming from a poor speller.

There are only two choices. The word is spelled right or the word is spelled wrong.

[Aimless]

I think if the kid's misspelling is an attempt at trolling he should get half a point

[Nessus]

Note that it's a choice being done there; the child chooses to fail, through stupidity or laziness.

[Khendraja'aro]

Yeah, stuff like Dyslexia does not exist

[Nessus]

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.

[Aimless]

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.

[GGT]

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.

[Khendraja'aro]

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.

[Aimless]

Ooh thanks for that one, i'd never even considered that dyslexia may be rooted in a problem with spoken language

[Lewkowski]

Note that it's a choice being done there; the child chooses to fail, through stupidity or laziness.

I was referring to the teacher making the choice on marking the answer right or wrong. There is no half right on spelling.

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.

[Aimless]

you called it, folks: dyslexia doesn't exist

[Khendraja'aro]

I was referring to the teacher making the choice on marking the answer right or wrong. There is no half right on spelling.

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.

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!

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.

[Nessus]

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?

[Lewkowski]

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.

[Nessus]

Yeah failing a spelling test doesn't have dire consequences. But thanks for playing.

I am unsure what one is meant to glean from this. That children's grades are meaningless?

[Aimless]

You forgot dyslexia. It's like you're embarrassed to admit its existence

[Khendraja'aro]

Yeah failing a spelling test doesn't have dire consequences. But thanks for playing.

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.

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?

[Aimless]

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

[Khendraja'aro]

I'm kidding, that's probably not a fair characterisation

Well, you convinced me!

[Lewkowski]

I am unsure what one is meant to glean from this. That children's grades are meaningless?

What I'm saying is your going way over the top over a single test.

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?

[Khendraja'aro]

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?

[Lewkowski]

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.

[Aimless]

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?