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1. GRADING SYSTEMS  

2. Assessment of student performance is essentially knowing how the student is progressing in a course (and, incidentally, how a teacher is also performing with respect to the teaching process). The first step in assessment is, of course, testing (either by some pencil-paper objective test or by some performance based testing procedure) followed by a decision to grade the performance of the student. Grading, therefore, is the next step after testing.

3. Over the course of several years, grading systems had been evolved in different schools systems all over the world. In the American system, for instance, grades are expressed in terms of letters, A, B, B+, B-, C, C, D or what is referred to as a seven- point system. In Philippine colleges and universities, the letters are replaced with numerical values: 1, 1,25,.1.50, 1.75, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 and 4.0 or an eight-point system. In basic education, grades are expressed as percentages (of accomplishment) such as 80% or 75%. With the implementation of the K to 12 Basic Education curriculum, however, performance is expressed in terms of level of proficiency. Whatever be the system of grading adopted, it is clear that there appears to be a need to convert raw score values into the corresponding standard grading system.

4. 8.1. Norm-Referenced Grading Norm-referenced grading refers to a grading system wherein a student's grade is placed in relation to the performance of a group. Thus, in this system, a grade of 80 means that the student performed better than or same as 80% of the class (or group). At first glance, there appears to be no problem with this type of grading system as it simply describes the performance of a student with reference to a particular group of learners.

5. In norm-referenced grading, the students, work individually, are actually in competition to achieve a standard of performance that will classify them into the desired grade range. It essentially promotes competition among students or pupils in the same class. A student or pupil who happens to enroll in a class of gifted students in Mathematics will find that the norm-referenced grading system is rather worrisome. For example, a teacher may establish a grading policy whereby the top 15 percent of students will receive a mark of excellent or outstanding, which in a class of 100 enrolled students will be 15 persons. Such a grading policy is illustrated below:

6. 1.0 (excellent) = Top 15% of class 1.50 (good) = Next 15 % of class 2.0 ( averag,fair ) =Next 45% of class 3.0 ( poor,pass ) = Next 15% of class 5.0 (failure) = Bottom 10% of class The underlying assumption in norm-referenced grading is that the students have abilities (as reflected in their raw scores) that obey the normal distribution. The objective is to find out the best performers in this group. Norm-referenced systems are most often used for screening selected student populations in conditions where it is known that not all students can advance due to limitations such as available

7. places, jobs, or other controlling factors. For example, in the Philippine setting, since not all high school students can actually advance to college or university level because of financial constraints, the norm- referenced grading system can be applied. Example: In a class of 100 students, the mean score in a test is 70 with a standard deviation of 5. Construct a norm- referenced grading table that would have seven-grade scales and such that students scoring between plus or minus one standard deviation from the mean receives an average grade.

8. Solution: The following intervals of raw scores to grade equivalents are computed: RAW SCORE GRADE EQUIVALENT PERCENTAGE Below 55 Fail 1% 55-60 Marginal pass 4% 61-65 pass 11% 66-75 Average 68% 76-80 Above average 11% 81-85 Very good 4% Above 85 Excellent 1% Only a few of the teachers who use norm-referenced grading apply it with complete consistency. When a teacher is faced with a particularly bright class, most of the time, he does not penalize good students for having the bad luck to enroll in a class with a cohort of other very capable students even if the grading system says he should fail a certain percentage of the class. On the other hand, it is also unlikely that a teacher would reduce the mean grade for a class when he observes a large proportion of poor performing students just to save them from failure.

9. A serious problem with norm-referenced grading is that, no matter what the class level of knowledge and ability, and no matter how much they learn, a predictable proportion of students will receive each grade. Since its essential purpose is to sort students into categories based on relative performance, norm- referenced grading and evaluation is often used to weed out students for limited places in selective educational programs.  

10. Norm-referenced grading indeed promotes competition to the extent that students would rather not help fellow students because by doing so, the mean of the class would be raised and consequently it would be more difficult to get higher grades. Similarly, students would do everything (legal) to pull down the scores of everyone else in order to lower the mean and thus assure him/her of higher grades on the curve.

11. 8.2. Criterion-Referenced Grading Criterion-referenced grading systems are based on a fixed criterion measure. There is a fixed target and the students must achieve that target in order to obtain a passing grade in a course regardless of how the other students in the class perform. The scale does not change regardless of the quality, or lack thereof, of the students. Criterion-referenced systems are often used in situations where the teachers are agreed on the meaning of a "standard of performance" in a subject but the quality of the students is unknown or uneven; where the work involves student collaboration or teamwork; and where there is no external driving factor such as needing to systematically reduce a pool of eligible students.

12. Criterion-referenced systems is an ideal system to use in collaborative group work. When students are evaluated based on predefined criteria, they are freed to collaborate with one another and with the instructor. With criterion-referenced grading, a rich learning environment is to everyone's advantage, so students are rewarded for finding ways to help each other, and for contributing to class and small group discussions.

13. 8.3. Four Questions in Grading Marinila D. Svinicki (2007) of the Center for Teaching Effectiveness of the University of Texas at Austin poses four intriguing questions relative to grading. We reflect these questions here in this section and the corresponding opinion of Ms. Svinicki for your own reflection: 1. Should grades reflect absolute achievement level or achievement relative to others in the same class?   2. Should grades reflect achievement only or nonacademic components such as attitude, speed and diligence?

14. 3. Should grades report status achieved or amount of  growth?   4. How can several grades on diverse skills combine to give a single mark? This is often referred to as the controversy between norm- referenced versus criterion-referenced grading. The system also assumes sufficient variability among student performances that the difference in learning between them justifies giving different grades. This may be true in large beginning classes, but is a shaky assumption where the student population is homogeneous such as in upper division classes.

15. 1. Should grades reflect absolute achievement level or achievement relative to others in the same class?   This is often referred to as the controversy between norm- referenced versus criterion-referenced grading. In norm-referenced grading systems the letter grade a student receives is based on his or her standing in a class. A certain percentage of those at the top receive A's, a specified percent of the next highest grades receive B's and so on. Thus an outside person, looking at the grades, can decide which student in that group performed best under those circumstances. Such a system also takes into account circumstances beyond the students' control which might adversely affect grades, such as poor teaching, bad tests or unexpected problems arising for the entire class. Presumably, these would affect all the students equally, so all performance would drop but the relative standing would stay the same.