Nov. 8

Ask My Readers: Pluses and Minuses

By Dean Dad

Becky Hirta’s recent post about grades got me thinking. My college doesn’t give ‘plus’ or ‘minus’ semester grades — you can get a B, but not a B-plus or a B-minus. The topic comes up for discussion about once a year.

The argument for pluses and minuses is basically that they offer greater precision. There’s some distance between a B-plus and a B-minus, but in our system, that difference is erased. By the same token, if a student is on the border between two letters, there’s more at stake in the decision which way to go.

The argument against, as near as I can tell, is based on false precision. The greater the number of gradations, the harder it is to get it just right. There’s also the persistent ambiguity of the C-minus.

Since this argument is raring up for its annual go-round on campus, I’d like to get my readers’ perspectives. Does it make sense to go with pluses and minuses, or are we better off sticking with blunt, whole letters?

Comments

Get rid of the letters

If I had a recommendation, it would be to eliminate letter grades altogether and go with a standards-based (student learning outcome based) report card that is better at describing what students have learned and can do.

T-bone, at 5:15 am EST on November 9, 2007

Plus/Minus grades

My previous institution converted to plus/minus grades, and the only real impact was in those programs (including financial aid) that required a grade of C or a GPA of 2.0. If a C- is 1.7 (as we set it), then students who had previously done low-C work and had been OK, suddenly were cut off—which may not be a bad tradeoff.

John W, at 11:50 am EST on November 9, 2007