The math department’s new grading policy is meant to make grading more equitable across different lectures of the same courses.
But some students say it closely resembles a quota system – which the department bans.
The department will now determine grade cutoffs for each course – or percentage values corresponding to each letter grade – at the end of each quarter. These cutoffs will apply to every lecture for a given course – a change from previous quarters, in which professors decided grade cutoffs for their individual classes.
This change aims to address grading inequities across lectures for the same course, said Marcus Roper, the undergraduate vice chair of the mathematics department.
“The grading distributions for those classes need to be made consistent in the sense that if you demonstrate the same level of mastery, the same level of comprehension of the material, your grade should not depend on which particular class you took,” said Roper, a professor of mathematics and computational medicine.
Official math department policy prohibits quota-based grading – a system in which the number of students who can receive each grade is fixed – said Raphaël Rouquier, a professor of mathematics and the graduate vice chair of the mathematics department.
“On that part, there is no ambiguity – it’s official,” Rouquier said. “It’s been communicated to everybody that the department does not do quota-based grading.”
Strict limits on the number of students who can receive each grade will not be implemented, Roper said, adding that the guidelines given to instructors at the end of the quarter will be informed by historical course grade distributions, how well instructors covered learning objectives and student performances.
The department will give professors an expected range of each letter grade to give out, Roper said. However, professors can choose to assign more or less of a grade within that range based on their evaluation of a class’s engagement and overall performance, he added.
“We have to make sure that we don’t have wild divergences between instructors in the same class,” he said. “If we’re all looking at the same window and judging things within the same window, that ensures there is some kind of coherence.”
Student concerns that the new system resembles quota-based grading have circulated online. A change.org petition with more than 200 signatures alleged that the change could disincentivize collaboration and cause grade deflation.
The math department used a version of quota-based grading in the past, Roper said. However, the department dropped the scheme in December 2015 in accordance with recommendations from a report that found that grades assigned based on normative class performance led to higher fail rates and disparities across socioeconomic and racial groups.
Catherine Wang, a first-year mathematics of computation student, said she believes standardizing grades will not address varying course difficulty between lectures.
“If you change the grading scheme so that all the professors’ grade distributions look the same, you’re just heading into classes blind,” Wang said.
Wang added that she was not aware of any changes to grading schemes until seeing Reddit posts about the subject.
Department-wide communication about new policies and changes would provide necessary clarity for students, said Kevin Li, a third-year mathematics/economics student.
“Obviously, there are bigger things in the country that are causing some of those issues,” he said. “But it would be nice for them to tell us what is going on and the status of these things and whether or not they are going to change anything.”
Comments are closed.