This supplementary text to a lecture course "Methods of Grading" is a self-help text. Some relative grading methods covered are: Centile Rank; Rank Order; Mean, Median and Mode; Range; Deviation; Standard Deviation; Standard Score; and T-Score. Section I of the book written as a "scrambled text," and Section II is a workbook. (DB)

The author claims that schools are overcrowded with students who don't want to learn. He suggests a youth corps, where young people's boredom and frustration could give way to pride and purpose in service to the community. (Editor)

Grade inflation and its causes are studied. (DE)

Common grading practices are parodied. (JH)

Eight recent General Certificate of Education (GCE) examinations, containing mainly free-response questions, were investigated in terms of their marking reliability. The tests of 200 randomly selected candidates from each subject were re-marked by a senior GCE examiner, and these marks were compared with the marks awarded previously as a result of…

If the explanations offered are correct, inflation should be leveling off and a small amount of deflation might be expected. The major initial impact of declining enrollments, changing student quality, and financial pressures has already been felt, and the pressure within academe to contain grade inflation is mounting. (Author/IRT)

The author presents a formula for scoring true-false and multiple-choice questions which produces a score directly related to the number of incorrect alternatives the student is able to eliminate on each question.

Four alternatives to the traditional testing and grading procedures are described. (JT)

This article discusses the factors required to be a part of each school's student progress policy. The author also examines numerous options and potential pitfalls of various decisions made in developing this policy. The two major components of satisfactory progress regulations--quality and quantity--are explored in detail. (CT)

Describes two techniques, behavior checklists and response tickets, for grading group activities designed to stimulate critical thinking. (SRT)

Describes ways of using spreadsheets to maintain gradebooks, including use of weighted scores to calculate a student's running average and potential for use in preparing report cards. Several spreadsheet programs currently available are reviewed, and their advantages and disadvantages for educators are indicated. (MBR)

Explains how a microcomputer and a word processor can be utilized to keep teachers' records and presents a brief BASIC word processing program called SCRIPSIT to show how grades can be calculated from those records. Possible program modifications and how to construct the SCRIPSIT file are discussed. (MBR)

Discusses Magazine Index's practice of assigning letter grades (sometimes inaccurate) to book, restaurant, and movie reviews, thus allowing patrons to get the point of the review from the index rather than the article itself, and argues that this situation is indicative of the larger problem of reliability of abstracts. (MBR)

Discusses each of the questions, the correct answers, and how student responses were evaluated in the Vergil and Catullus-Horace essay sections of the Latin Advanced Placement exam. (EKN)

Reviews a Pennsylvania higher court decison in which a student sued the school board for reducing her grades as punishment for misconduct during a school outing. The court found in the student's favor. The punishment must fit the crime. (MD)