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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"If you look at a typical scoring rubric that assigns 0-5 points"

This is a false premise.  A rubric that assigns 0-5 points is not even close to "typical".  In fact, I don't know a single teacher that grades any major assignments out of only 5 points. 
[/quote]
Again, you're distract by an unnecessary detail.[/quote]

It's not an unnecessary detail.  Your entire argument was to say that rubrics that assign 0-5 points lead to unfair grade outcomes, and you used this to try and argue for the 50% rule.  Given that 0-5 rubrics are not "typical", as you claimed, it renders your entire argument moot.

If a test is scored out of 100 points, then "C" level work means earning between 70 and 79 points.  You score each question and add up the points.  That's it.[/quote][/quote][/quote]

No, my argument doesn't hinge on a rubric being only 5 points, my argument has to do with how points are *distributed* on the individual tasks and how that impacts the test total.  This is regardless of how many points a given item is worth--I used a 5 point rubric to keep things simple, but make it 50, same issue.  Sure, a C is awarded for someone who receives 70-79 percent of the total points, but this means some attention needs to be paid to what it takes to earn 70-79 points. Does that correlate with C-level work?  (Yes, a student who demonstrates complete mastery on 7 of 10 equally weighted questions will receive 70 points.  But is this the only way developing understanding manifests?  Is this even a likely way for it to manifest?)

You seem worried about grade inflation, and, yes, sometimes it's too *easy* to score 70 points.  Sometimes it's too hard.  It's one thing to design a test that will give someone with mastery 100 points, or close to.  And, it's certainly trivial to create a test that gives someone with no knowledge 0 points.  But just because those two facts are true, does not mean C level work will receive 70-79 points, because so far all you've done is set the *range* of possible test scores.  It's just as possible to design a test that gives C level work 50% of the points, and in fact this is a common flaw in test design.

This has everything to do with how the rubric is designed.  If each question is graded such that C-level mastery is assigned half points, then the expectation would be that C-students would tend to get about 50% when the test is totaled, i.e. fail the test.  If the goal is that C level work receive 70-79 points, it might be necessary to grade question such that C-level work gets 3/4 of the points at the question level.

Anyway, for whatever reason math teachers seem to be more prone to this error than humanities teachers.  My theory is it's a Pierian Spring issue--math teachers are comfortable with numbers, and then somehow, are less skeptical when their numbers don't pass the smell test.  Also, being a math teacher says very little about knowledge of statistics, since at all levels there are deep divisions between the fields, and grading is statistics, not arithmetic.

And, back to the the thread, if there's a math teacher changing positions because of proliferation of under-fifties in the grade book, I think there's a lot more to the story.  Even without a fifty percent rule, grades under 50% should be rare, given 50-59% is in fact failure.  Anytime the student fails the test by the teacher's standard, that's cause for full attention. There's nothing more a score lower than fifty can say.  It's time for everyone to sit down and look at the actual test.[/quote]

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