Sure, you could do that, just know that there are few people more hated than someone who strikebreaks on their peers.
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While the idea of suddenly not having to grade an exam at all is a delightful thought, i don’t think any good teacher would really hope for that outcome. Even though i would be proud of my students for their cleverness and solidarity, i would be worried that there would be people making it past the class who hadn’t (and couldn’t*) demonstrate a basic ability with the topic.
* There’s always at least one who never seems to let any bit of the ideas of the course (other than some symbols (which will be used incorrectly)) get into their head.
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It pretty much is, at least if you don’t want to have serious trouble with the administration and parents.
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Kind of stupid to grade on a curve (I could just stop there, actually), but then it’s doubly stupid to grade on a curve and say that you think it’s a pity that students are so competitive.
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That’s probably because the grading system was a Prisoner’s Dilemma manqué, since there was literally no punishment deficit for solidarity. As others have noted, curving to something lower than an A would introduce a dilemma.
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I’m surprised we didn’t have a thread on this when it happened all those years ago.
As you know, the main function of the final exam has been accomplished the instant before the students show up. Unless, of course, the students have found a technical way to avoid needing to review the term’s material.
the presumed adversarial relationship between students and profs IS a problem
It is a structural artifact of our system. Where I went to college there were no grades for the last couple of years and exams were written and administered by eternal examiners at the end of our senior year; this put the faculty and students into a more cooperative relationship, one I have missed since moving to this side of the lectern.
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The whole point to grade off a curve starting at the highest is to inflate the grades of the students since the bulk of students will be closer to the top performer in the class. Very few times does the top performer vastly outperform the people under them.
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Speaking from personal experience as someone who curved grades, I did it so I could free myself up to construct longer, multi-part questions on the exams. I liked doing this because it allowed me to see if a large swath of the class was missing crucial parts of reasoning without overly penalizing them for what could easily have been a failure on my part. Learning is best if it can go both ways.
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That sounds ominous. 
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This is from 2013.
Only if you don’t know that the answer to all of the questions is “Fhtagn”.
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Sometimes the reason to curve is a failure to structure a good exam on the part of the teacher or the institution. My son attended a very competitive Magnet School and the algebra midterm came from the district not the teacher or the school. Apparently the other schools giving honors algebra had longer periods than his school for the test and the average score of 5 highly motivated classes was below 70.
Remember these kids are the elite not the slackers. So one of the two algebra teachers curved the grades but the other refused to! We had to go to the school administration about this teacher who has been problematic about this kind of thing in other cases. If you’re failing at teaching standard material to the best and brightest kids, then you must share some of the blame. Please note this school gets the best and brightest kids, not necessarily the best and brightest teachers.
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If you have enough students there’s nothing wrong with grading on the curve, as long as you’re aware that your class might be an outlier. The curve is the one thing that actually ensures you get a fair grade and you don’t get stuck with the prof who translates their poor lecturing and unrealistic expectations into crappy grades for the entire class.
No, the students found a loophole, and the prof was a good guy who let them exploit it because he thought it was really cool, and the lesson was worth more than the grade distribution (or the flack he’d get from the department).
Just because the story lacks a villain you don’t need to invent one.
I mean the prof wasn’t even grading on a curve, all he said was the top mark gets an A.
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“Curving” has a couple of different meanings, and can cause some confusion in these discussions. I think the criticism here is to just mechanically fitting the scores to a standard Gaussian distribution, and assigning letters based on fixed locations along the distribtion. However, adjusting the grade cutoffs so that they conform to an informed notion of what an A, B, etc student should get on a given exam is also called “curving”, though it is a completely different thing.
Some faculty have perfected the art of writing their exams (or their grading rubrics) so that 90 is meaningfully an A, 80 a B, and so on. I’ve never been able to do that, and as a result have grade cutoffs that look more like 73A, 48B, 39C, etc. depending on what problems I put on the exam. This is grading on “a” curve, though not grading on “the” curve.
Added: Damn. Distribution. (And external in the previous post.) And I don’t even have the excuse of posting from a cll phone. Cell. Sht.).
(PPS: And what’s with the “.).”??)
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Speaking as a professional in the field (got the degree and everything) this is an excellent performance on the part of the class, well deserving of an A. This is exactly the kind of thing they’re supposed to be training for - analysis, game theory, least cost path to maximum success, &etc. That’s the kind of person I want to hire, not someone who stays in the prescribed path regardless of what ruin the path leads to, or who refuses to join with others for a common goal.
It’s different for you because you’re in a field that revolves on knowledge accumulation and integration of continuously accruing insight - hacking the test structure is not an appropriate way to demonstrate ability in your profession. In my profession - well, OK, my primary one, anyway - being able to do less work for an optimal result is demonstrating proficiency. Computer scientists can look up anything they need to know, but they can’t look up organizational ability or hacking prowess.
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I’m honestly done applauding lazy, well-connected people who always fail upwards
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Nonsense. Netiquette dictates we must be outraged at someone, either the “lazy kids”, the “embattled prof” or the “evil administrators/parents” looming behind the scene! /s
Seriously though, I get that this hits close to home for teachers and students alike, but why people are outraged over something the students and prof themselves don’t seem to be sort of baffles me. It’s not like this is a trend. No one is going to be shuffled out into the world unprepared because they hacked one test, and no credible uni is going to let this go on to any degree where that will happen because their reputation would crater.
I’m not picking a side in an argument that was so long ago the students have all graduated or dropped out anyway. Show me that this has become a thing since then and I’ll worry. That I’m not outright condemning the student’s actions doesn’t mean I’m applauding them, and it certainly doesn’t mean I’m hostile to this or any other professor.
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And along with that a societal narrative that college = jobs training program, rather than the production of a public good: an educated populace, which benefits all.
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Frankly, I think your authentic desire to educate others comes through consistently in your commentary here on the bbs. Over the course of my academic career, I’ve dealt with a lot of teachers who were clearly only in it for the paycheck, and that made me really appreciate the few who are in education because they actually care.
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Yup, totally worth it.
