Teachers adjusting marks

Kimmy · Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 6:38 pm Post subject: Teachers adjusting marks

Do teachers adjust the students' marks at your school? Some of my teachers evidently do.

Yesterday, my English teacher handed her students their progress report, as of right now. On the progress report, assignments, projects and exams were listed that shows a mark for each one, and then the student's overall average for that class, as well as the overall class average. When I received mine, I was fairly surprised to see that my teacher would make a recent exam out of 50 when it was actually out of 107! She gave me a 50/50 when I actually deserved a 104/107. I believe she gave other students a higher mark than they deserved.

I know that my math teacher also controls his student's marks. Earlier in the semester, there was one math exam when the majority of the class failed. Although my teacher said that there were three students, myself included, who got 100% on that exam, he began to give exams that I found to be extremely easy after that one exam. You should know that this is an advanced math class I am talking about here! My teacher would begin to give out reviews to his students on the day before the exam and we would go through it and take up the answers as a class for the whole one-hour period. The next day, the exam would be exactly the same as the review, only with very minor changes on a few of the problems.

I feel that mark adjusting is unfair for the people who actually work hard. Their marks would turn out not to be much different from those who don't work hard and deserve a poor mark. What do you think?

I feel that teachers adjust marks because they want to maintain their good reputation and they don't want to get into trouble with the school principal, just because the majority of their students are either lazy or failing.. but it seems like mark adjusting is the only option for them because they don't have much control over the students' work habits. Teachers just want to pass their students so that they won't have to teach the students next term. They are basically putting that problem in the hands of the other teachers the students would have after.

No wonder some university math professors criticize high school teachers for not knowing how to teach their students....

DeadDisco · Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:03 pm Post subject:

I've noticed that a little in highschool.
There have been classes where a mark on a test is generally bad on everyone and then all of a sudden they are either easy markers or make the assignments/tests easier.
I know this makes a lot of people happy since they don't have to try and can get easy marks, but it really doesn't prepare you for university.
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Kimmy · Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:14 pm Post subject:

I agree..

Oh yeah, and I would like to add.. once each semester, my math teacher would give his students an assignment that is unrelated to math and is guaranteed a 100% as a long the student hands in the work, just to push the class average up.

electricpearls · Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 12:10 pm Post subject:

Personally, I don't see that here.

Teachers try to keep the class averages as low as possible. In Alberta, they try to curve the provincial averages from 60-65%, particularly in grade 12. Teachers can actually get in trouble if their class average is too high.

In the first unit of Pure Math 20, the class average on the unit test was 80. Our teacher even told us that it will never be that high again... since then, the class average has dropped to 60.

My English 20-1 class average is around 55, my Chemistry 20 class average is 60ish.

When I took Biology 30, our class average was actually TOO low. I got a 77 in class but 13% higher on the provincial exam. This teacher actually has complaints of marking TOO hard... one of his grade 11 classes now actually has a class average that's under 50.

It's pretty crazy, and I don't even go to a "good" school.
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st3ph · Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 5:05 pm Post subject:

At our school I think marks generally stay true to how they should be. In some cases, in my Physics class, the teacher will take maybe 5 marks off a test so that you get a better grade, but other than that everything else is accurate. I think it's mainly important for classes that aren't open level, because my open level leadership class and fitness are based on mainly participation so it's possible to get a really high mark.

Anyway I remember last semester in Chemistry the teacher made us do quizzes everyday to keep the average at an 80. I'm pretty sure his point was to make it lower and not higher. I found it weird. I hated doing quizes everyday. But in the end everything evened out and the class average was fairly normal for university chemistry. on the other hand, the teacher said it was one of the highest averages he's had for a class (I think it was mid 80s). that's because for some strange reason at my school the grade 11s are really strong academically. we have had the most people on honor roll throughout our time in the school. and not because there's more of us, there are way more 9s and 10s. strange.

so i don't really think it's right for teachers to be changing marks. I think if their work is geared for the level of the class, is balanced with hard and easy work, and the class is learning, the teacher should not have to worry. marks should truly reflect students' abilities, not be a false representation. that's not good for university.
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seasunsky · Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 6:50 pm Post subject:

I don't remember teachers curving much in high school.... The only thing I remember was that my bioAP grade 11 teacher would make 40 question tests out of 38. These were HARD tests, though. As for university, the only class that gets curved is math, and even then, it's only the quizzes, and that's just to even out the grades because there are so many different TAs marking the quizzes, and if you take your quiz later in the week then its much harder.
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emcee · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 11:53 am Post subject:

I didn't get any curving/grade adjusting in high school...some teachers were really nice and if you were at like 85.5 they'd bump you up to an 86 but that isn't really a huge difference.

In university however, it's way different, because the class sizes are so much bigger. Since there's an expected number of students that will fail, if there are more than expected, they'll curve the class due to the difficulty of the materials...as such, science and math classes are curved because they are so hard, but arts classes don't tend to be.

Mind you, curving works both ways...as it takes the mark that the majority of the class has as the middle mark (a C) and everything under that average mark falls and everything over gets boosted up. So if the average of the class was like a 78 everyone under that would be pretty much screwed. BUT that is a pretty rare scenario seeing that science/math classes tend to be really difficult and average marks are usually below 50 percent.

dbee · Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 6:54 pm Post subject:

Meg-san · Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:04 am Post subject:

Yeah everything is curved in university-the average for classes is supposed to be around 72-75% for arts classes. They didn't curve when I was in high school, but teachers would come under scrutiny if their class averages were questionably high or low.
And arts classes are hard! Sure the worst class I've taken so far has been stats, but I did better in that than my ethnic relations class.
But get used to curving, my marks in uni always end up being different than what I originally thought I would get (and by different I mean "lower" lol). Although I've heard of classes where everyone fails but the people who fail the least get the As. It's a bit ridiculous at times.

seasunsky · Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:09 pm Post subject:

^that's calculus. You should have seen my exam.... I would that I'm a little above average when its come to calc, but on my exam I doubt I got 40/100. I have no doubt that some people actually got less than 10 marks on that exam, and that very select people got more than 50. I don't know why the prof chose to test us like that, because obviously our marks are going to be what they actually were. It's not if you fail, it's how you fail relative to everyone else. Confused

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emcee · Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 9:07 pm Post subject:

dbee · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:24 am Post subject:

^i see what you mean. im an arts student also and i hate it when people act really condescending.
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