The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted education at all levels. One consequence was that alternative arrangements had to be made for the 2021 summer public examinations. Exam boards asked staff at schools and colleges to generate, for each subject, teacher-assessed grades for their students. The submitted grades had to reflect 'a fair,…

What do students learn in school? In the 21 century, this question has become a political dilemma for countries around the globe. It is a deceptively simple question, but there has never been an easy answer. The problem of measuring student learning appears to express an educational problem: What and how much do students learn? Most student…

Academic institutions worldwide, from primary schools to universities, use grades or marks as a fundamental sorting and signaling mechanism for students. The grades awarded to students should be indicative of learning outcomes. However, do the grades awarded today accurately reflect student achievement in the classroom? Grade inflation has become…

Work based assessment (WBA) is a common but contentious practice increasingly used to grade university students on professional degrees. A key issue in WBA is the potentially low assessment literacy of the assessors, which can lead to a host of unintended results, including grade inflation. We identified grade inflation in the WBA of the clinical…

For more than seventy-five years, standardized tests have been considered a vital tool for gauging students' readiness for college. However, few people--including students, parents, teachers, and policy makers--understand how tests like the SAT or ACT are used in admissions decisions. Once touted as the best way to compare students from diverse…

This guide, updated in 2019, outlines some of the key questions trustees should ask regarding the academic and financial operations of their institutions. Institutions vary significantly in terms of size, audience, and purpose. But by asking questions and following up, trustees can play a pivotal role in ensuring that the next generation receives…

The tension between criterion-referenced and norm-referenced assessment is examined in the context of curriculum planning and assessment in outcomes-based approaches to higher education. This paper argues the importance of a criterion-referenced assessment approach once an outcomes-based approach has been adopted. It further discusses the…

Faculty members are often evaluated primarily on the results of student end-of-course surveys (SEOCSs) for promotion, teaching contract renewals, and offers of teaching assignments. Consequently, SEOCSs have become a primary focus in faculty evaluations. Rigor in a course and the assignment of grades associated with assessments can be a source of…

This article provides a historical interpretation of one of the defining features of modern schooling: grades. As a central element of schools, grades--their origins, uses and evolution--provide a window into the tensions at the heart of building a national public school system in the United States. We argue that grades began as an intimate…

This study investigates if the probability of being graded up in the school leaving certificates increases if the teacher is of the same gender as the student or if the teacher and the student both have a foreign background. The analysis is based on data on grade 9 students in Mathematics from Sweden. I find that female students and non-native…

How does selective assessment, wherein one counts only the best "k" out of "n" quizzes set, impact grade inflation? Based on our analysis, a specific quantitative answer can be given to a student who plans to skip a quiz, depending, of course, on the student's quiz writing consistency or inconsistency.

This paper examines an assessment process within the context of quality, accountability and institutional effectiveness in academia. Considered as one of the most important elements in higher education, the assessment process plays a significant role in contributing to holistic quality as well as the performance of an academic institution. As a…

Grade inflation has been a consistently ignored problem in the public schools and universities for over fifty years. Grades keep getting higher and higher for a multitude of reasons. Students expect high grades. Parents demand high grades of their children and teachers. Some administrators implicitly or explicitly require that their teachers give…

Grade inflation impacts university credibility, student courses of study, choices of institution, and other areas. There has been an upward shift in grades without a corresponding upward shift in knowledge gained. Some of the most frequently mentioned causes of grade inflation are: (1) student evaluations of professors; (2) student teacher…

This field note presents the results of a pilot study that explored the use of a new non-numerically rated field performance tool, a vignette matching measure for MSW students. Evaluation of performance in the field has proved to be a difficult task because few if any measures, including competency-based measures, have known levels of reliability…