That present grading practices are inadequate to their intended tasks, grading purposes as well as practices require examinations, and the social and educational effects of grading have been too long neglected are the basic axioms of educational reporters and academic professionals. This paper focuses on the problem of grade inflation, its causes…

Mattatuck Community College implemented non-punitive grading practices into its grading system in the Fall 1973 semester. These practices centered about the elimination of plus and minus grades, elimination of the grade of F, and liberalizing the course withdrawal policy to allow for withdrawal without penalty throughout the semester. A comparison…

This article examines the relationship between grading systems and performance on national board examinations. The study demonstrates that board scores verify traditional grading as an indicator of student performance despite many variables; students who do well with traditional grades should do as well with national boards. (LBH)

This retrospective study was conducted to examine the relationship between selected variables and performance on the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). Data were collected from one hundred twenty graduates of a baccalaureate program; graduates completed either the traditional four-year track or an accelerated…

Contract grading has achieved some prominence in our field as a practice associated with critical pedagogy. In this context we describe a hybrid grading contract where students earn a course grade of B based not on our evaluation of their writing quality but solely on their completion of the specified activities. The contract lists activities…

This study examined performance of Master's-level students in an online course in Cognition, Learning and Assessment and compared it with the performance of students in a face-to-face classroom setting of the same course (N = 70). Data were collected from six sections of the course over a two-year period. The same professor taught all sections.…

With reference to his own experiences as an Educational Psychology professor at the University of Hawaii College of Education, Ian Reid discusses student and faculty feelings about traditional letter grades and about credit/no credit grading, and the impact of these two systems on the instructional process. (SJL)

Results of a study of the relationship between students' propensities to withdraw from a course and the faculty member's grading in that course show that students do use the option to withdraw from courses when grades tend to be low in order to protect their grade point averages. (JMD)

This article provides information on designing a college course grading plan. It reviews the history of grades; describes and discusses common approaches to grading; examines the purposes of grades, problems with current practices, and situational factors to consider in selecting an approach; and proposes eight principles to observe in developing…

Presents a few of the ideas which teachers are using to measure learning that takes place in unsupervised contexts. (Author/PF)

Use and misuse of the evaluation process at the university are discussed. (PG)

The purpose of the present study was to examine knowledge retention as a variable of students graded by the contract and traditional grading methods in order to provide for teachers further evidence for choosing a grading method. (Author)

Beatrice high school is faced with the need to provide class ranking for students at the same time that it has courses at three levels of difficulty for the normal student and at a fourth level for the educable mentally handicapped. In order to develop an equitable class-ranking system, an honor point system was adopted to relate grades in more…