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Give Me A A-minus Or We Go To Court!

Brian Marquis is upset because he was given a C for his 92.1% effort. On a straight grading scale, I can see his point. This would typically be a strong B on most straight grading scales. However, the teachers assistant decided to grade on a curve and thus Mr Marquis's average was basically that...average...a C. Now he is concerned that "this" class will be the reason he may not get into law school...

https://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews....&src=rss&rpc=22

While it should not be humorous, I do get a chuckle out of this because of my past experience in school. It is not unheard of that teachers use the curve to grade on rather than a straight scale. This is particularly true when they expect either the average grades to be very high (this case) or very low (a few particular mechanical or electrical engineering classes in my past). I actually had a mechanical thermodynamics class where there was a 37% average test score. On one test I got a 27% and that was a B grade after the curve. For that class, a A grade was higher than 52%! If you straight graded the class, we all failed. This particular teacher liked to do this type of testing (homework didn't have anything to do with test questions) because he said it toughened us up for the real world.

In everyone of my classes, teachers told us on the first day what grading scale they would use for determining grades. Now they are free to change and actually do from time to time. However, my experience was that they threatened to use a straight grading scale and then when the class averages were extremely low they changed their minds and graded on a curve. Typically, this caused several people to drop the class before the deadline because of their low average and the threat to use a straight scale.

None the less, I would think that if Mr Marquis does not get into the law school of his choosing, it has something to do with the entire body of his work rather than one class.

What do you think...should he get his A-minus?

Edited: Vincenzo on 8th Feb, 2007 - 3:19am

Court To We A-minus Me Give

I'm not sure on this one, but by all accounts it does look like he should have got at least a B.
I think if this young man is so convinced that his score has been marked wrong, and his whole future career depends on it, it would be wise to have it re-marked externally by somebody else--at least that way you get a non biased answer!

I have seen this happen with some of my Son's fellow students, and to say the least it's very distressing. If you know it's done fairly, I think most people would be upset but just learn to live with it, but when you feel that you've actually been wronged, it's important that it gets fully sorted correctly!

Give Me A A-minus Or We Go To Court! UFO & Writing Art Education Sciences

I agree with V, if this one class keeps him out of law school, then the rest of his body of work is suspect. Getting one C should impair his ability to get into college. You just have to accept that if a teach grades on a a curve and the average is high, then you have to do better than the average to get a better than average grade. I have been in curve classes, and I just expected, based on the average scores of the class, that I needed to be in the top 5% of the class.