Explain grades to someone who has zero experience with them.

[dragons in the flower bed]

I didn't go to high school or college. I was unschooled. The last time I received a traditional report card I was still young enough to get a P for "progress shown" or an N for "needs improvement."

 

When I tutored I did narrative assessments, skill by skill, because I worked with LD kids.

 

I have no idea what it means to grade on a curve or what weighted grades might be. I don't know how teachers compose grades -- some combination of test results and . . . and what? Sometimes grades are percentages and sometimes they're decimals. What's up with that?

 

Nothing I can Google up on grading assumes the extreme lack of foundational understanding a mostly-unschooled person can have.

 

Now I have to give my homeschooled children grades so they can have transcripts. Help! Please!

[kiana]

What do you need the transcript for?

 

For something unofficial and with sub-high-school kids I'd honestly go with A-excellent, B-good, C-okay, D-marginal, F-duh, instead of worrying about making it fit a syllabus like high school.

[letsplaymath]

What do you need the transcript for?

 

For something unofficial and with sub-high-school kids I'd honestly go with A-excellent, B-good, C-okay, D-marginal, F-duh, instead of worrying about making it fit a syllabus like high school.

For elementary and middle school, I don't bother with grades of any sort. When it comes to their official high school, what Kiana described is almost exactly my method -- usually the student and I sit down together and discuss their level of understanding/accomplishment in each class we list on the transcript.

 

My kids go to the community college for dual credit their last year of high school, so they do have some grades other than Mommy-grades. (And they've all discovered that Mommy-grades are tougher!) I've graduated four students so far, and the community college and the University of Illinois have both accepted our transcripts without question.

[klmama]

In traditional schools, grades are usually a combination of things. Tests, quizzes, daily homework, long-term projects, and participation could all play a part. Usually, the teacher decides ahead of time what percentage of a grade each of those parts will play.

 

Teachers also set up a grading scale to help them determine what grades to give. One common one is 90-100=A, 80-89=B, 70-79=C, 60-69=D, 0-59=F. There are many others. If you google, you'll come up with a variety of grading scales.

 

In high school, students are usually not graded on a curve. That's done in college, where professors decide that only a certain number of people will get As, a certain number will get Bs, etc. The bulk will get Cs, even if they have very high percentages correct.

[Emmy]

Rose - if the subject you are grading is clear cut (like math) you can simply assign grade letters based on the percentage of correct answers. A common grading plan would be:

 

90% and above = A

80% - 89% = B

70% - 79% = C

60% - 69% = D

 

In some classes that I took in high school or college, the teacher would grader on a harder scale. Something like this:

 

94% and above = A

86% - 93% = B

78% - 84% = C

70% - 77% = D

 

Personally, I'm more comfortable with the latter scale, but I think the former is more common.

 

HTH

[snowbeltmom]

 

Now I have to give my homeschooled children grades so they can have transcripts. Help! Please!

 

You can have a transcript and not issue grades. I have read of other families that did not issue grades on the transcript, and their children were accepted to highly selective colleges.

[letsplaymath]

I have no idea what it means to grade on a curve or what weighted grades might be. I don't know how teachers compose grades -- some combination of test results and . . . and what? Sometimes grades are percentages and sometimes they're decimals. What's up with that?

 

Grade on a curve = Adjusting the grades to fit your class, so that whether the students bomb the test or do really well, you will get the same average grade. A teacher would do this because he/she assumes that performance on the test reflects as much on the teacher as on the student -- perhaps he/she wrote a test that's unreasonably difficult or unreasonably easy -- but that there should be a certain proportion of A, B, C, etc. students in any classroom.

 

Weighted grades = Counting some grades more heavily than others when computing an average grade. For instance, a teacher might weight the final exam as 50% of the class grade, four tests at 10% each, and then homework as the final 10% of the grade. Teachers usually have at least a little discretion on how they weight the grades.

 

Percentages vs. decimals = These can be written either way, at the teacher's discretion. For example, 80% is the same as 0.80. Usually, these grades are for recordkeeping during a class, and then are translated into a final A, B, C, etc. for the transcript, based on whatever weighting system the teacher prefers.

 

Grade point average = What gets more confusing is that most schools use a 4-point or 6-point scale when averaging grades between classes -- that is, to get an overall idea of how well the student has done. For example, an A is worth 4 points, B 3 points, etc. The point value of the grade is multiplied by the number of credits for that class, then those numbers are added together for all classes, and finally you divide by the total number of credits earned. In high school, a full year course usually counts as one credit (or 1/2 credit for a one semester class), but in college the credits are usually determined by how many lecture hours the class meets each week and range from 1-6 credits for a one semester class. The grade point average is usually rounded to two or three decimal places and is reported in a prominent place on the transcript, normally at the top.

 

Weighted grades = Coming back to this topic again, some schools weight certain classes more heavily when calculating the grade point average, perhaps by assigning additional credits to an AP class or something. I've never been at a school that did this, so I'm not sure how it works. But if you do it, you may want to mention it on the transcript.

[Ester Maria]

I. These are two basic ones you can assess one's knowledge: with one (more common) approach the point of reference is the level of the mastery of content, while with the other (less common) one the point of reference are others in the group (where you typically do a Gauss distribution of grades). Sort of absolute knowledge of an individual (to the best it can be tested) vs. a knowledge relative to a group. That is, by the way, what percentiles on the standardized tests are - a type of measuring the kids against each other, rather than measure each kid in accordance with a set sdtandard. When you are in 50% percentile, it says nothing about your actual knowledge, only about how many people you are better or worse at. A Gauss-graded C can be 70% of actual content in one case, and 90% of actual content in another case, depending on the group. And so forth. Because of that, relative knowledge is typically not tested, only on standardized tests which are their own purpose.

 

II. When it comes to, thus, measuring each student against a common set of expectations, the first thing to decide on is what those expectations are and whether you test exclusively academic knowledge of the material (I recommend this) or you water it down by including also fuzzy elements such as "participation", "diligence", "pluses for daily work" etc. I recommend, though nearly everyone will disagree with me because the US school tradition is different, to be as concrete as possible (i.e. test actual knowledge only).

 

III. The third thing to decide is the modality and frequence of testing. HOW to grade largely depends on what kind of exam do you make, whether it is a cumulative credit (many smaller tests over the term), one final exam that is comprehensive (100% of the grade), or oral + written exams. Some types of exams are more subjective (open-ended questions, etc.), some are more factual (multiple choice / fill in the blanks / etc.) but lose out on depth, etc. You must first know very precisely HOW you are going to test.

 

"Weighing" a grade means that if you have more than one element of the grade to consider, how much weight in the final grade you will give to each element. So you may give 50% of weight to the final exam, with 20% being given for shorter quizzes, 10% for participation, and 20% for an essay, for example. Those are percentages of the final grade.

I say (and nearly everyone will disagree) to spare yourself some math and just do comprehensive exams at the end of each term and call it 100% of the grade. Even those exams typically consists of several independent parts, but you have much less math fuss.

 

IV. The fourth grade to keep in mind are your personal criteria for each grade, and here is where people differ vastly if you do not do strictly factual tests (that are easy to correct and grade). Nearly everyone will roughly agree that 60% is a D mark, 70% a C mark, 80% a B mark, and 90% an A mark, but things are not always straightforward when you grade things such as essays, open-ended questions, oral presentations, i.e. everything which is not easy-to-numerize kind of test. I am afraid that in each of those cases you will have to reach your own standards, the oscillations can be quite big, but it is important for you to think through what YOU are okay with for each grade.

 

An A typically standards for excellent / distinct work; a B for a solid, good work; a C for modest and average accomplished; a D for sufficient, but without further distinction (read: "barely passes the basic requirements"). Even if you do not opt for letter grades, percentages and decimals can typically be conveyed to letter grades anyway, they only allow you for further differentiation (which is often unnecessary, differences in a few % are basicaly useless to mark). The 10-point scale allows for some additional differentiation (with 5 failing and 5 passing grades), but it is rarely used. In academic setting % or higher-point scales are prefered because there are many candidates and subtle differences start to matter more than in high school.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Ester Maria

[JennyD]

Not to take the OP's question too far afield, but I find it so strange that colleges want parents to generate grades for homeschooled students. Even apart from the wildly misaligned incentives, a grade for a one-person class that has been specifically designed for that one person and taught by a person who presumably teaches at most a few students seems largely meaningless to me, at least for the purpose of a college admissions office. The only plausible reason for requiring grades that I can think of is that maybe they have to have GPAs for purposes of reporting admission statistics to U.S. News and World Report?

Edited January 7, 2012 by JennyD

[elegantlion]

I asked about oral exams a while ago, got some great responses. You might find something helpful here.

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=254584&highlight=oral+exams+elegantlion

[Mama Lynx]

Rose,

 

I grew up in public school, and traditional college. Now, when faced with giving my kids grades, I find that I can't do it. They don't make any sense to me in a homeschool setting.

 

In a classroom, grades give an indication of how well the child is mastering the material. This is necessary because the teacher generally 1) cannot spend enough individual tutoring time with each students to ensure mastery for all; and 2) must move on, regardless of whether students master the material or not.

 

For our high-school transcripts, I'm going to grade based on a combination of how well they met my expectations, and how well they do on outside evaluations. (My oldest will get an A in biology because he made a good score on a public school bio assessment, and a good score on the SAT II subject exam. He will get a B in algebra because he scored lower on the public school assessment, and took longer to finish the material than he could have if he was more diligent - it was his favorite subject to slack off on.)

[Ester Maria]

Not to take the OP's question too far afield, but I find it so strange that colleges want parents to generate grades for homeschooled students. Even apart from the wildly misaligned incentives, a grade for a one-person class that has been specifically designed for that one person and taught by a person who presumably teaches at most a few students seems largely meaningless to me, at least for the purpose of a college admissions office. The only plausible reason for requiring grades that I can think of is that maybe they have to have GPAs for purposes of reporting admission statistics to U.S. News and World Report?

Forgive me if I am presumptuous, but it seems to me there is a false assumption here that a student always masters the class that is tailored to him - that is not correct, IME. When put to outside or independent evaluations, or given tests which simulate those (since the content is fairly defined in most courses), one can see to what extent it has been mastered and allows for a comparison with other students who took the course on the same level of education. That is why you can privately give Bs and Cs because you have very stringent criteria, but still have your kids have impeccable As in those same subjects on outside evaluations which test the grade-appropriate "standard" content... AND vice-versa. Some parents think that if the child has done their best they deserve an A... not so. Sometimes one's best is simply not good enough for an A, despite of having had a "tailored" course. There IS a more or less well-defined "canon of knowledge" for most HS courses (comparable syllabi, comparable with SAT subject tests, with the sequences in typical textbooks, etc.), even if you are creative and do your own thing... at the end of the day, you have to step back and try to "objectify" what was learned, especially if the goal is to present that you have a "comparable" course of studies to the typical one (graduation requirements, etc.). Because of that, I think it is very good to give those grades OR (perhaps even better, to reduce parent subjectivity) to have the kids externally tested (i.e. making the SAT subject test grade the class grade, or the online class grade the class grade, etc.). Of course, some people will choose differently, but I do not see any inherent inconsistencies with homeschooling or individual instruction and grading. In my eyes, homeschooling is typically only a different "modality" of the same thing - but the content, sequence, materials used, etc., are largely comparable with what is done in schools and the knowledge can thus be somewhat "objectified".

 

What I am trying to say is, there still is *distinction*. There still is such a thing as A performance, B performance, etc. in a privately tutored student, just like there is in school, IF you have a well-defined content. I privately tutored languages, one of the most messed up areas for grading, and I still knew, if I had to grade, how I would grade my students on most typical scales used in accordance with the content they studied.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Ester Maria

[JennyD]

Forgive me if I am presumptuous, but it seems to me there is a false assumption here that a student always masters the class that is tailored to him - that is not correct, IME. When put to outside or independent evaluations, or given tests which simulate those (since the content is fairly defined in most courses), one can see to what extent it has been mastered and allows for a comparison with other students who took the course on the same level of education. That is why you can privately give Bs and Cs because you have very stringent criteria, but still have your kids have impeccable As in those same subjects on outside evaluations which test the grade-appropriate "standard" content... AND vice-versa. Some parents think that if the child has done their best they deserve an A... not so. Sometimes one's best is simply not good enough for an A, despite of having had a "tailored" course. There IS a more or less well-defined "canon of knowledge" for most HS courses (comparable syllabi, comparable with SAT subject tests, with the sequences in typical textbooks, etc.), even if you are creative and do your own thing... at the end of the day, you have to step back and try to "objectify" what was learned, especially if the goal is to present that you have a "comparable" course of studies to the typical one (graduation requirements, etc.). Because of that, I think it is very good to give those grades OR (perhaps even better, to reduce parent subjectivity) to have the kids externally tested (i.e. making the SAT subject test grade the class grade, or the online class grade the class grade, etc.). Of course, some people will choose differently, but I do not see any inherent inconsistencies with homeschooling or individual instruction and grading. In my eyes, homeschooling is typically only a different "modality" of the same thing - but the content, sequence, materials used, etc., are largely comparable with what is done in schools and the knowledge can thus be somewhat "objectified".

 

What I am trying to say is, there still is *distinction*. There still is such a thing as A performance, B performance, etc. in a privately tutored student, just like there is in school, IF you have a well-defined content. I privately tutored languages, one of the most messed up areas for grading, and I still knew, if I had to grade, how I would grade my students on most typical scales used in accordance with the content they studied.

 

We are not anywhere near high school yet, so I will have to take your word for it that high school class content is fairly standardized, but I do find that somewhat surprising. (Or are you not talking about the US?) I have always thought that there were wild disparities in what is taught in various high schools across the country. Are there really such clear benchmarks?

 

I can absolutely see the need for external evaluations for a homeschooled student applying to college. That makes perfect sense to me. But it still seems very strange to me that colleges want the parent-generated grades. If you were a college admissions officer, would you really pay any attention to them?

Edited January 7, 2012 by JennyD

[Mama Lynx]

Jenny,

 

Most people use the content defined by their state or local school system as a guideline.

 

I think that colleges want the grades so that they can fill in the boxes. Many colleges ask for corroborating evidence of homeschool achievement, such as SAT II scores, etc.

[kiana]

Forgive me if I am presumptuous, but it seems to me there is a false assumption here that a student always masters the class that is tailored to him - that is not correct, IME. When put to outside or independent evaluations, or given tests which simulate those (since the content is fairly defined in most courses), one can see to what extent it has been mastered and allows for a comparison with other students who took the course on the same level of education. That is why you can privately give Bs and Cs because you have very stringent criteria, but still have your kids have impeccable As in those same subjects on outside evaluations which test the grade-appropriate "standard" content... AND vice-versa. Some parents think that if the child has done their best they deserve an A... not so. Sometimes one's best is simply not good enough for an A, despite of having had a "tailored" course. There IS a more or less well-defined "canon of knowledge" for most HS courses (comparable syllabi, comparable with SAT subject tests, with the sequences in typical textbooks, etc.), even if you are creative and do your own thing... at the end of the day, you have to step back and try to "objectify" what was learned, especially if the goal is to present that you have a "comparable" course of studies to the typical one (graduation requirements, etc.). Because of that, I think it is very good to give those grades OR (perhaps even better, to reduce parent subjectivity) to have the kids externally tested (i.e. making the SAT subject test grade the class grade, or the online class grade the class grade, etc.). Of course, some people will choose differently, but I do not see any inherent inconsistencies with homeschooling or individual instruction and grading. In my eyes, homeschooling is typically only a different "modality" of the same thing - but the content, sequence, materials used, etc., are largely comparable with what is done in schools and the knowledge can thus be somewhat "objectified".

 

What I am trying to say is, there still is *distinction*. There still is such a thing as A performance, B performance, etc. in a privately tutored student, just like there is in school, IF you have a well-defined content. I privately tutored languages, one of the most messed up areas for grading, and I still knew, if I had to grade, how I would grade my students on most typical scales used in accordance with the content they studied.

 

Yes. And this is totally true.

 

I also see no problem with "In my book, this is a B, but for the school's consumption this is an A because it would be an A in school."

 

In one of my classes at undergrad, the professor would mark all papers -- then on the VERY BEST papers, those that were A+, he would re-mark as if in graduate school. The A went in the gradebook, but on the paper it would say "In graduate school, this would be a B+ paper, and here is what you need to do to have an A paper for graduate school. Nevertheless, this is very fine work for an undergraduate."

[kiana]

We are not anywhere near high school yet, so I will have to take your word for it that high school class content is fairly standardized, but I do find that somewhat surprising. (Or are you not talking about the US?) I have always thought that there were wild disparities in what is taught in various high schools across the country. Are there really such clear benchmarks?

 

I can absolutely see the need for external evaluations for a homeschooled student applying to college. That makes perfect sense to me. But it still seems very strange to me that colleges want the parent-generated grades. If you were a college admissions officer, would you really pay any attention to them?

 

They do pay a lot more attention to the external sources. And as a matter of fact, my brother got into an Ivy League school based on my mother's transcript with "Pass" for all grades and a year of state university. But his SATs were excellent and his external grades were very good. That's one reason I really wouldn't worry too much over the grades -- homeschool grading according to a syllabus in high school is really more for the student, imo.

[emubird]

The student gets an A if they learned most of the material the teacher expected them to learn. A B means they learned a bit less, etc. That's about it. Percentages mean nothing, in fact.

 

There really is NO hard and fast way to grade anything. Even math grades are highly subjective. A grade is based on what the teacher expected. A teacher can expect a lot or a little. Getting all the math problems right on a test might only mean that the test didn't test very deeply. Getting very few right might only mean that the test was particularly challenging and maybe a better learning experience than an easy test.

 

I grade my kids based on what I expect them to learn in each subject. My expectations are shaped by similar classes I've had in high school and college, in addition to ones I've taught in college. I think it would be impossible to give any sort of meaningful grade if I didn't have that model of expectation in the back of my mind. But that being said, I don't test much. If my child knows the material, I tend see that. If they don't know it, we just work on it more.

 

But I also think grading is a big scam. If a student bombs a test, but then comes back and learns the material, why should that bad grade stay with them? Much of grading is really about competition and ranking, not about learning. As homeschoolers, we can focus much more on the learning. As a result, I tend to give my kids the benefit of the doubt. If they struggle for a long time with a concept, but they finally get it, it's that final understanding that I would grade, not all the struggle in the middle.

 

In my experience, very few college professors will turn a strict percentage grade into a letter grade. They move the grade cutoffs around and give the benefit of the doubt to lots of students who on the border. They count a lot of "participation" -- a lot of the grade in a math or science class might be based solely on the fact that a student turned in their homework, regardless of how they did on it. Professors are trying to encourage students to think and interact with the material, so they may not want to grade homework too harshly. (There's plenty of room for harsh grading on exams if the professor wants to do that.) Students in these classes may not be aware of all this. The professor may have said at the beginning of class that 90 and above would be an A, but that doesn't mean they will stick with it. A lot happens when the final grades are getting calculated that the students never see. For a lot of professors, the grade cut offs may sink quite a bit, when they really sit down and think about how hard their tests were.

 

In fact, I can really only think of a couple college professors who graded on a strict 90 percent and above is an A type of scale. And, to be honest, those professors taught pretty awful classes. There wasn't much content. As there wasn't much to test, the professor couldn't do much to distinguish between students' performance. In order to get any kind of grade spread, they had to ask nitpicky questions about the little content the course did offer, and then deduct points for tiny mistakes.

[elegantlion]

Forgive me if I am presumptuous, but it seems to me there is a false assumption here that a student always masters the class that is tailored to him - that is not correct, IME.

 

:iagree: I started grading again this year, 8th grade. I'm working on my consistency in applying grades. I custom design/will custom design many of ds's classes.

 

So far he is unmotivated by grades and continues to give B effort in more than one subject. Traditional tests seem pointless to him, but he's not quite at the point where he can give me a written essay for each subject either.

 

The oral exam thread I linked earlier has given me some good ideas that I plan to implement this semester (still working on how exactly to do that).

 

I plan on having him read the book, Study is Hard Work this year.

[Dana]

In my experience, very few college professors will turn a strict percentage grade into a letter grade. They move the grade cutoffs around and give the benefit of the doubt to lots of students who on the border. They count a lot of "participation" -- a lot of the grade in a math or science class might be based solely on the fact that a student turned in their homework, regardless of how they did on it. Professors are trying to encourage students to think and interact with the material, so they may not want to grade homework too harshly. (There's plenty of room for harsh grading on exams if the professor wants to do that.) Students in these classes may not be aware of all this. The professor may have said at the beginning of class that 90 and above would be an A, but that doesn't mean they will stick with it. A lot happens when the final grades are getting calculated that the students never see. For a lot of professors, the grade cut offs may sink quite a bit, when they really sit down and think about how hard their tests were.

 

In fact, I can really only think of a couple college professors who graded on a strict 90 percent and above is an A type of scale. And, to be honest, those professors taught pretty awful classes. There wasn't much content. As there wasn't much to test, the professor couldn't do much to distinguish between students' performance. In order to get any kind of grade spread, they had to ask nitpicky questions about the little content the course did offer, and then deduct points for tiny mistakes.

 

This has not been my experience in my undergrad or grad programs or at the two cc's I've taught at.

[Ester Maria]

We are not anywhere near high school yet, so I will have to take your word for it that high school class content is fairly standardized, but I do find that somewhat surprising. (Or are you not talking about the US?) I have always thought that there were wild disparities in what is taught in various high schools across the country. Are there really such clear benchmarks?

It depends on what you consider a clear benchmark. :)

 

The US, unlike some other countries, does not have a standard national curriculum that is expected to be taught at all schools, nor a list of approved textbooks which follow that standard national curriculum, nor precise standards either on the federal or on the state level. This may be a good thing or it may be a bad thing, depending on how you look at it - but it is in line with the "standard" American practice of erring on the side of choice. So, individual districts and individual teachers are given quite a hands off treatment as to what exactly they teach and how exactly they grade it.

 

However, this is not to say that even in such very diverse system there have not, with time, emerged some tacit "standards" of what gets into which course offered, mainly through an attempt to standardize some subject exams which would confirm that the student who has taken them has mastered a certain minimum content. So, you have SAT subject exams and for course which are supposedly college level (and may or may not be in reality :glare:) you have AP exams. You also have a bunch of syllabi and sequences from individual schools and if you compare those, you will find that there are some, albeit tacit, standards. For example, you cannot spend all four years of high school Latin doing grammar, because that is typically not done - a four year progression includes other things as well, grammar typically occupies only half of that time. I mean, in theory, you could label your courses Latin 1-4 and cover what is effectively only Latin 1-2 by those tacit and quite shared standards, but then what you are doing is a slight misrepresentation because people automatically assume certain things when they see Latin 1-4, unless it is clear from your documentation what you did; and even when it is clear, they tend to think you are "padding up" the transcript if you give four full credits for the work that is two credits' worth, i.e. you are not really playing "fair", in spite of the fact that there are no very precise rules as to what constitutes "fair play". You can "skirt the edges" so to speak - by, for example, making the third year the transit year and saving some grammar for that year too rather than finishing it all in two years - but you cannot really award double credit for Latin 1-2 that you spread over four years and call it Latin 1-4.

 

There are typically no problems if you are an "overachiever" - your transcript also does not represent quite well what you did - but it does ensure you did cover that tacit minimum (along with a lot of other things). You do not claim to have dono something you did not do. So, having an algebra course that goes above and beyond what is typically covered in algebra and calling algebra, with your documentation, if anything, can make you look good. But the reverse is not true: working with an obviously middle school level courses on a high school level, or awarding four credits instead of two, can lead to questioning of the legitimacy of your transcript and make you look like somebody who is trying to get a way with a lot less work than expected on this level of education.

 

There is a lot of freedom given to you as to how you are going to cover high school biology, but you cannot legitimately call it a biology course if you only did interest-led unit studies of a human eye and reptiles, because there are some tacit standards as to what breadth has to be covered within a single course. That is why things like SAT subject exams are pretty good orientirs, although not something set in stone: because there are some standards as to content. You cannot claim a full course credit on such a "lopsized" study of the area - you can do extra study on reptiles in addition to having covered all of the "standard" content, but not instead of it and call it biology.

 

All of the above are fairly extreme examples - in most circumstances one can adapt things a little without going that extreme - but it seems to me that a principle is shown the best if I give you extreme examples.

 

Now, as regards grading: grading should be, in theory, an "objectified" knowledge as regards the program. You always have some program - some bibliography, some spine, etc. - even if you do your own thing, and like we saw earlier, you typically make your program in accordance with those tacit expectations. But, nobody can enter a student's head and see what they "know" - the grade only measures demonstrated knowledge. Grading is about creating situations in which a student can demonstrate that knowledge independently - and those situations are created the way that they represent the course material. IOW, again if we look at biology, you cannot test reptiles alone and call it a biology grade; even though you cannot test everything, your tests have to be such that they test a representable sample of what you did.

 

My personal preference is that the grade reflect exclusively demonstrated knowledge (and not participation, homework, etc. - I find those irrelevant and/or fuzzy, so I base it all on exams, although I know that most schools and universities have switched to the "whole student" model rather than "business only" one I grew up with which tested only demonstrated knowledge). Other people may choose differently and weigh the final grade, but now I talk exclusively about the grades which are a product of testing demonstrated knowledge.

 

I said earlier that the testing is never fully fair in that you cannot enter one's mind, but only create a situation in which they have to show what they know, and make it such that it roughly represents a course. Of course, it is always a gamble - I had situations in which I knew 80% of the material perfectly, but the questions were drawn roughly from that 20%, so the grade I was offered (and refused and retook the exam ;)) was not roughly a B, but roughly a D; likewise, there are opposite situations too, in which you learn 20%, but get so incredibly lucky that the exam is skewed into that direction, so you not only do not fail it, but pass it with an average grade. These considerations, however, are a point at which one has to throw in the towel of "ultra-planning" and say that c'est la vie and life is not always fair. You can do your best to make an intellectually honest test that represents the program, but much of it still depends on the student and on factors such as, well, luck. This may partially be prevented by making extra-factual tests (fill in the blank kind of thing with ONE right answer and similar things) which are perhaps easy to grade, but the moment you start testing trivia, you are giving up on testing some depth (which is why I prefer open-ended questions, but open-ended questions which are drawn from as representable material as possible, but require synthesis and contextualization in one's own words). Of course, how you are going to test things also depends on the content, you cannot apply the same approach to history and foreign language, because the goals are different and the modality of learning is different.

 

I am pretty thorough as an examiner because I learned how to do it from my own professors, and I have also learned that having a component of the oral exam is a huge help in estimating just how well somebody understands the content if they have to rapidly think about it and make desired connections in real-time conversations, with additional questions being asked to clarify things, etc. I like to think I am one of those people with whom you cannot really get away with things :lol:, but then again, who knows. I like to think that I typically catch "manipulations", attempts to derail to a topic the students know about instead of answering what was asked, too generalized statements and lack of factual backing-up of one's claims, etc. After all, I am familiar with all of those techniques because I was a student too in the past. :tongue_smilie: I think I am not doing them a favor if I allow that to continue, I want them to have conceptual distinction in what they are talking about, and concrete knowledge (rather than vague impressions and recalls), as well as an understanding of the limits of that knowledge - not only "political skills" of turning testing situations into their favor. So, I do not let them get away with it, I do not tailor tests specifically to what I know they know (nor do I try to "set them up" by doing the opposite! - I try to be as objective as I can as to the program), I do not allow them to make one project on something they love and call it the final grade, etc. I am "old school". ;)

[Ester Maria]

I can absolutely see the need for external evaluations for a homeschooled student applying to college. That makes perfect sense to me. But it still seems very strange to me that colleges want the parent-generated grades. If you were a college admissions officer, would you really pay any attention to them?

Personally, I would look at the external evaluations, yes. Many of them level the testing field and I like that. If you do everything via external evaluations, you do not even have to have mommy grades, or you can have them "privately" for your own purposes (especially if your own program differs from the tested one, so you do not want to handicap your kids by giving them Bs and Cs for far more advanced content), but officially claim the grades of external evaluations.

[Riverland]

Then there are the public school teachers who base a portion of the grades on completely irrelevant matters. Many of our ps teachers, middle through high school, award points for things like: donating tissues, hand sanitizer, batteries, colored pencils, markers, etc. Also many of them award points when parents initial the syllabus, progress reports, other hand-outs, or attend worthless open houses. These things have nothing to do with what the student has learned, but are factored into his grade. My DD missed 'participation points' (earned simply by being in class) for a few days when she was sick. The teacher told her she could make them up by cleaning the classroom!