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Comment by skhunted | Hacker News Reader

I think grading is obsolete. Grade inflation increased a lot the past 30 years. Ironically, it has increased the least at the least prestigious colleges. Pass/fail is the way to go. Don’t know if this would mess up things like applying for graduate school or jobs but let’s end the farce that grading has become.

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Getting rid of grading sounds crazy, but it's actually happening. Los Angeles Unified, the second largest school district in America, is moving to "equitable grading", which amounts (imo) to pass/fail with extra pageantry. Teachers are being retrained _right now_ to equitable grading.

I know an equitable grading champion at an LAUSD school, I'll see if I can get material to share. EDIT: I just received [0][1][2][3].

[0] (5 page pdf) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YO7SQEwisAbHHi6mfgj7XU9FcSB...

[1] (4m30s video) https://drive.google.com/file/d/10eWor4uhSxR8ZITA1w3kzqhTOX0...

[2] (audio interview) https://www.bamradionetwork.com/track/fair-grades-dropping-g...

[3] (article) https://ascd.org/el/articles/taking-the-stress-out-of-gradin...

In a pass/fail system, what does a student need to do for a teacher to be willing to fail them? What is the minimum bar to pass?

Since this was at LA Unified, I suspect the bar for passing is extremely low. Not commenting on that district specifically, but not graduating from High School on time takes some doing. The system is very good at moving kids through, and it's why a high school diploma means so little.

One of my teachers implemented a system like this. What they ended up doing was making it so that you had to score a (effectively) 9/10 on major assignments to pass the class (minor assignments were graded on completion), but had an infinite number of revisions with which to get this grade with feedback being provided each time you tried. Pretty much everyone passed, with more work required from some than from others. The only issue it ran into was with the final paper, where you (realistically) only had time to receive and make one to two revisions before the end of the semester and the deadline to submit grades.

According to the equitable grading materials I just received (and posted above), that determination is... entirely up to the individual teacher's discretion? I might be misunderstanding.

At most universities you can talk most classes pass/fail by choice which means A-D is pass and F is fail.

The nice thing about an all pass/fail system is you can formalize the 'new' way grades are actually done in which A means meets expectations and anything less means did not. Making pass mean A/B takes a lot stress off students and C/D is already failing for practical purposes as often you can't continue with less than a B.

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