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From experience, many teachers dislike it when students compare grades, but that often shows the discrepancies and irregularities in the grading system. What other methods should teachers implement in order to keep grading transparent and fair?

Consider the following situations in your answer:

  1. Curved Grades

  2. The possibility of an error in grading, which leads to an imbalance in the grade distribution.

Some teachers immediately assume that just because a student wants to compare papers that he/she is just interested in increasing their grade. This is not the case! Some teachers make mistakes so instead of brushing it off, by assuming that students want to "grade-lawyer" or the like, they should consider the possibility that an error has been made. The goal of this question is to reduce such responses.

Stephan Kolassa
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Eddy
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    Too short for an answer: I personally don't care if students compare grades, but, for the student, it takes the focus off of what is most important. (What do you think that is?) – Mad Jack May 17 '16 at 17:50
  • @MadJack For me, grades are the least of importance. How well you understand the topic is clearly the more important thing. However, grades should represent that understanding. Therefore, if comparing grades reveals that X got higher than Y but didn't understand the topic as well as Y, then clearly the grade matters and is of importance. – Eddy May 17 '16 at 18:00
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    @MadJack I agree with you, but consider a final grade which is past the point of making any effort. For example when grades are curved, those efforts don't always translate to a better outcome and that creates problems. – Eddy May 17 '16 at 18:15
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    It is not at all evident to me that "many teachers dislike it", nor that comparison "often shows the discrepancies and irregularities..." since it is not clear to me that there are widespread discrepancies and irregularities. I do understand that the impulse to compare is based on a suspicion that there are secret injustices being perpetrated, but it is not at all clear that (e.g., in the U.S., in mathematics) there are significant discrepancies. Why would one believe that "many teachers dislike it", and so on? – paul garrett May 17 '16 at 18:28
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    If it was the case that for instance. Jessica got an A because she put in her best paper of the year but Sarah got a B- because while her paper was superior to Jessica's best work it was only slightly better than we we would expect from Jessica then yes those grades would be an unfair means of comparison. The problem is that grades aren't supposed to work like that. While there should be some degree of wiggle, in theory grades should closely (though arguably not literally in some cases) track with a student's quality. Teachers shouldn't (and don't to my knowledge) care. – Wolfkin May 17 '16 at 18:42
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    In my exp they often discourage grade comp not b/c of indescrepencies but because grade comparisons can inhibit personal progress. If Jessica gets her best mark of the year she might see herself as improving and be motivated/pleased by it, but by comparing it to Sarah's "Horrible grade" which is still marks above hers, she might feel dejected and less motivated to improve. I know MANY teachers dislike grade comp for THOSE reasons. Which again are student oriented reasons (i.e. Don't do it because it's not good for you) not teacher oriented reasons (i.e .Don't do it because it's bad for me) – Wolfkin May 17 '16 at 18:46
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    @paulgarrett It depends on the course. In a mathematics course, it is often the case that the answer is either right or wrong, so I doubt discrepancies would appear there except when giving partial grades. In other courses, such as an Ethics course, the grading scheme is less clear. Further, when combined with curved grades the distribution of grades is no longer clear and perhaps fair. Obviously, transparency plays a major role in this.

    Anyhow, this has become a conversation rather than an answer to the question so I'm going to stop here.

     – Eddy May 17 '16 at 19:15
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    By the way, it is not at all the case (probably contrary to myth) that "math questions have direct answers", and so on. The explanation is what is usually wanted, which is a narrative, etc. – paul garrett May 17 '16 at 19:20
  • @paulgarrett I wanted to avoid that myth in my edits, that's why I used the word "often". It depends on the level of the course and the type of question( MC), I suspect. – Eddy May 17 '16 at 19:22
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    Many teachers dislike it when students compare grades -- [citation needed] – JeffE May 17 '16 at 20:55
  • @JeffE Added from experience. I must urge the reader not to assume that just because they haven't met those type of teachers that they don't exist--they very much do even if not in an institution that they were or are currently in. – Eddy May 17 '16 at 21:24
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    I voted to close, because the real question is in the premise(s). Maybe rewrite to ask "do teachers care whether or not students compare grading outcomes?" Also, the "why... if you've got nothing to hide?" is an all-too-well-known rhetorical device. – paul garrett May 17 '16 at 21:34
  • @paulgarrett I agree, made necessary changes. – Eddy May 17 '16 at 21:52
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    I don't understand the "how justified is...": once students have the grades, they can do whatever analysis or comparison they want on them, independently of any justification. – Massimo Ortolano May 17 '16 at 21:53
  • @MassimoOrtolano Justification for presenting the analysis of the grades to the teacher. – Eddy May 17 '16 at 21:56
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    In my experience, teachers have nothing against students comparing grades. The problem is the grade-lawyering that typically ensues. – Federico Poloni May 17 '16 at 22:02
  • @FedericoPoloni That's quite a funny sight! – Eddy May 17 '16 at 22:13
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    As a TA, I tell the student that their answer is wrong, and that they should bring me the other student's assignment so I can lower their grade. (They never do.) – bitter student May 18 '16 at 02:13
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    @bitterstudent That's awfully impudent of you to assume the answer is wrong, without considering the possibility of it being right. If it indeed is wrong, then you are right in saying so. However, attempting to threaten(even if they are idle), in order to scare students, is again unacceptable. You should make sure from the beginning that all assignments are graded fairly, and not doing so, is clearly your fault. – Eddy May 18 '16 at 07:22
  • The response to this question has showed several things: a) Many people are too focused on the grade b) Some people do not seem to accept that mistakes happen c) That bias can happen in very small ways that ultimately affect the final grade.

    Therefore, I'm going to edit the question to something that is more helpful to everyone here: How can teachers help avoid discrepancies and irregularities in grading? Thereby reducing the need of students to compare grades!

     – Eddy May 18 '16 at 07:24
  • @paulgarrett I have edited the question to something that is perhaps more useful to the people here. What are your thoughts? – Eddy May 18 '16 at 07:40
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    @Eddy That's awfully impudent of you to assume I was assuming. Of course I check to see if the answer is wrong first. But from experience, they have never been correct in these sorts of situations. – bitter student May 18 '16 at 07:52
  • @bitterstudent When the topic of discussion is clearly not about a wrong answer and you decide to make it about one without adding a conditional, I am definitely in line in assuming that you were assuming. And please note that I didn't assume and offered another option, so please read the whole sentence before once again assuming! – Eddy May 18 '16 at 08:01
  • @bitterstudent Please stop making this an argument. This is not the objective of this question – Eddy May 18 '16 at 08:04
  • Added from experience. I must urge the reader not to assume that just because they haven't met those type of teachers that they don't exist- I must urge you not to assume many teachers dislike it when students compare grades just because you met those type of teachers. And please stop making this an argument because this is a Q&A site. If you have personal experience, just say so and ask a question about it. But, please do not assume many teachers/students have the same problem. – Nobody May 18 '16 at 09:29
  • @scaaahu I never generalized my statement, you took it out of context. Many teachers I have met dislike it when students compare grades, which does not include teachers I haven't met-a very large set no doubt. Instead of nitpicking needlessly on details of no merit, I think it would be worthwhile if you add valuable input about the question rather than what you assume I assumed. I am disappointed that such a question in a mature Q&A website was met with such antagonism. – Eddy May 18 '16 at 11:15
  • Eddy, I recently posted a couple of comments relating to this in another question. – Dave L Renfro May 18 '16 at 17:10
  • @DaveLRenfro I think that's an excellent way to approach the problem, Thanks Dave! – Eddy May 18 '16 at 18:23
  • @DaveLRenfro You should contribute that as an answer to this question, since comments are disposable – MJeffryes May 25 '16 at 14:44
  • @MJeffryes: I thought this question was closed (or in the process of being closed), but apparently that's changed. OK, I'll post my comments as an answer. Indeed, while I've posted quite a few comments the past couple (three?) months since I signed up to this particular stackexchange, I've only encountered two questions thus far that I felt I had something relevant enough to post as an answer. – Dave L Renfro May 25 '16 at 15:47

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Something I used to do (I no longer teach) was to grade in such a way that there should not be an issue if any student compared his/her graded test with any other student in the class. And this certainly happened in my classes (indeed, I sometimes did this myself when I was a student), from the first classes I taught in 1983 to the last classes I taught in 2005. By the way, I taught math. I suspect the methods I describe are much easier to carry out in math than in some other fields, such as literary criticism or philosophy.

Something I started doing after a few years of teaching was to photocopy my solutions/rubric sheet and handing a copy of it back with each student's test. Before this, I often handed out solutions to save class time (and office hour time), and at some point I realized I could save even more of my personal time by simply handing back what I had already hand-written for grading purposes, without bothering to rewrite (or type) it again in a neater form. The solutions I used for grading purposes were often brief, but for rubric purposes I would always include steps that I expected some students to miss, so it actually worked fine with most students when they consulted it to see what they did wrong or how to correctly work the problem. And for those places where I was too brief for a particular student, they tended to consult with their neighbors sitting next to them and together they almost always managed to figure things out, so I tended to only get the less trivial types of questions. As for the rubric, what worked best for me was to treat the rubric as a "work in progress" in the sense that I made grading decisions whenever a certain type of error showed up, rather than trying to anticipate them in advance.

One policy I had and which I often reminded students about was that they should never be afraid of asking me about a question for fear that their grade could decrease. If they saw anything that seemed to be an inconsistency in grading (and this only happened on very rare occasions because I tended to document for myself almost every kind of mistake made as I graded tests), then I wanted them to let me know. If in fact I did make a mistake, then my mistake would never lower their grade, but it could increase other students' grades if my mistake was an inconsistency in how many points were counted off for a certain type of mistake on their part. Also, if I saw on a student's paper brought to me where I made an oversight by not counting off for something incorrect, then I would mark in ink a correction (so the student wouldn't at some later time think what was incorrect was actually correct) and include a comment that this was found after the tests were graded.

One issue I used to often see students and teachers arguing about was points taken off for correct answers that were obtained by not entirely complete work. I learned early on that this can cause trouble when trying to justify your grading to students. The most straightforward way I found to handle this was to simply design problems whose solution requires all the things you feel are important, and of course often reminding students when working problems in class prior to a test what type of work is acceptable and what type of work is not acceptable. For example, the standard elementary calculus method for determining the global maximum and global minimum of a continuous function on a closed and bounded interval involves finding the values of the function at the critical points (where the derivative is zero or undefined) in the interior of the interval and the values of the function at the endpoints of the interval. So if you give a problem where both extrema occur at the endpoints, or both extrema occur in the interior of the interval, then the student could get the correct answer using correct (but not entirely complete) mathematical reasoning by only considering the critical points or by only considering the endpoints. The way to fix this is to design the problem so that one of the extrema is in the interior and the other extrema is at an endpoint. Better still is to arrange it so that there are at least two critical points, with at least one critical point lying outside the interval and at which the function's value is greater than the global maximum on the interval or less than the global minimum on the interval.

Dave L Renfro
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