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Comment by h5n1 | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion, it would be very difficult for a national educational system to accurately grade creative projects like these, and even more difficult for these to be standardized across school systems so that the grades could be meaningful to colleges, employers, etc.

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Why would the grades need to be meaningful to colleges or employers? You now have a portfolio of the project(s)... and then possibly some subjective paragraph or two of the teachers thoughts on the issue... and then the employer or college can judge the project themselves.

This reminds me of the college in Yellow Springs, Ohio (Antioch College) where there are no letter grades.. just pass / fail with a teachers write up of your performance to go into your 'portfolio'.. Though I think they closed shop recently because of a lack of funding.

The grades need to havebsome basic normalization because college admittance personell probably do not have the time to review several thousand projects during college application season to determine whether or not they actually demonstrate competence in the skills involved or if they were actually demonstrating the skills of the student and not the "projects that will get you into harvard" crib sheet the student was using. Grades and test scores have various drawbacks, but they are a relatively inexpensive normalization and filting mechanism compared to something like this; at the upper end of the spectrum you are doing projects in addition to grades/tests but the latter filters the project work that has to be considered to a manageable amount.

So maybe they should make the time, I don't see how an education system that pushes students in undesirable directions to make things easier on administration is a good one.

That's exactly why shouldn't have a "national education system" or standardization of schooling. We need education that fits the student not one size fits all factory schooling. As for meaningful ways for colleges and employers to measure candidates... how about meaningful innovative projects. The last developer I hired completed a innovative project (on contract) for us before we hired him. I would never hire off a resume and interview alone. I'd ask the candidate to show me what he/she has created.

I don't know anything about the education system in USA but looking at the numbers the university I am currently attending has to deal with every year and the amount you have to deal with when hiring I can bet the difference in size is quite big.

If we look at the university I attend, it currently has above 16000 students, with I would assume an average time as student of 3 years. The program I attend had more than 3000 applicants out of which 200 were selected. Not all programs have that ratio but I would not find it strange if the average was a ratio of 10:1. Using these numbers we thus have (16000/3)*10=~53000 students applying each year. (I did a quick search and my numbers are surprisingly correct.) The university has 3 weeks to make its selections.

Please tell me how to do that with your system.

Standardization per se is not the problem. Standardization creates a base pool of knowledge and skills which are necessary to formulate, innovate, collaborate, and build projects.

Instead, standardization should be limited to a well defined subset of academics and education.

The tail is wagging the dog here!

If you have to choose between a creative workforce that knows how to get things done and a standard workforce that fits inside of boxes and stereotypes, then damn the boxes and take the minds. Even if it costs some glorified HR person some trouble down the road.

Wouldn't having a chronological portfolio of your personal works be valuable information for colleges, and employers?

It'd show development, areas of interest, 'how' you think, and much more. Certainly it's not going to be as simple as looking at a grade, or for a degree, but I think this would be as valuable (if not more) than current assessment.

Of course ranking these projects based on a grade is definitely difficult. Creative works have a certain flavor to them, and not everyone can appreciate it.

That's the problem with standardized education. Critical thinking and creative thinking are stifled, because it's much, much easier to assign grades when every test and project is based on a simple set of criteria. The students either fulfill the criteria, or they don't. Standardized education is good at teaching students how to memorize information and follow instructions, but that's almost all it's good at. That was fine when schools were preparing students to work in factories, but for our current economic system, it's a complete disaster.

If the education system was based on creative projects, employers and colleges would have recognize that the grades are subjective, and not the best signal to judge a candidate by. In fact, grades already a pretty weak signal, since they indicate skills (memorization, ability to follow specific instructions) that aren't nearly as important as they used to be. The most important thing wouldn't be the student's GPA, it would be their portfolio. That's already the case for creative fields, but it's easy to imagine how it could apply to other fields. A portfolio of critical papers for academics, a portfolio of business plans (or, better yet, real businesses) for business students, an investment portfolio (real or virtual) for finance students, etc.

so that the grades could be meaningful to colleges, employers, etc.

Do you think that grades are that way now?

http://www.amazon.com/Wad-Ja-Get-Grading-Game-American-Educa...

Grades from some schools are completely disregarded (that is, not taking seriously as indications of learning). Lower grades can often be more highly regarded, if accompanied by other evidence of actual learning and achievement. There is substantial controversy about how much consideration of grades adds to standardized test scores as an estimate of which students are best prepared for university studies,

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/rn10_...

but it is worth noticing that all of the most selective and sought-after universities in the United States continue to use criteria other than grades to select students, even after they look at where the grades come from before deciding what the grades mean.

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