662 



eiCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 852 



status of grading in the University of Mis- 

 souri, compared with that of three years ago. 

 At that time the university had the tradi- 

 tional marking system based on percentages 

 of an ideal maximum accomplishment, called 

 " 100." There would be no objection to this 

 system if all the grading in the institution 

 were done by a single instructor. Experience 

 teaches that difPerent instructors even in the 

 same subject have very different conceptions 

 of what this ideal maximum accomplishment 

 " 100 " really is. 



Among teachers of different subjects this 

 difference of conceiving the maximum accom- 

 plishment becomes enormous. There can be 

 then no uniformity of grading, and all the 

 evils resulting from this condition find an 

 open door. Three years ago the diversity of 

 grading had reached such a degree that the 

 faculty took a radical step, abolished the anti- 

 quated system and introduced the grading by 

 rank. This does not mean that the teacher is 

 in any way interfered with if he uses, for his 

 private purposes, the marking by percentages 

 of his ideal maximum accomplishment. But 

 the institution no longer accepts such percent- 

 ages for its official records. Instead the insti- 

 tution requires each teacher to report for each 

 student his estimated rank among a hundred 

 students. This method is a little complex on 

 account of the hundred different grades. To 

 simplify it the grades are united into groups 

 by division lines, which, however, are not at 

 all drawn by each teacher according to his 

 own opinion, but fixed by authority of the 

 faculty of the university. The teacher now 

 divides his list of a hundred students (whom, 

 according to rank, he has graded himself, of 

 course, since no one else can do this) into four 

 groups of twenty-five students each, or, if the 

 teacher prefers, an executive officer of the in- 

 stitution can divide them into these groups. 

 The students of the first group are marked 

 E or S. Either of these "grades," therefore, 

 does not stand for any degree of accomplish- 

 ment as defined by anybody, but stands for 

 the numbers from 1 to 25. The faculty has 

 not yet drawn the division line between those 

 of the twenty-five to be marked E and those to 



be marked S. But the actual practise of two 

 sessions has been to mark the first four E and 

 the following twenty-one S. The following 

 two quarters of the list are marked M. This 

 is prescribed by the rule of the faculty and 

 leaves the teacher no choice. The last twenty- 

 five are again divided into two groups called 

 I and F. 



The faculty has again left it, at present, to 

 the discretion of the teacher to draw this divi- 

 sion line. But actual practise has shown 

 itself in favor of separating the last seven of 

 these twenty-five as failures, and marking the 

 eighteen students remaining above these seven 

 as I. 



Of course, a teacher does not, as a rule, 

 have classes of just a hundred students. But 

 he can distribute the five grades in the same 

 way whatever the actual nuitjber of his stu- 

 dents. Only in small classes there is this 

 difficulty left that in any semester the mem- 

 bership may be unusually good or unusually 

 bad. The teacher, therefore, is not expected 

 at all to comply with the rule until, possibly 

 after several semesters or even years, he has 

 reported to the official recorder of grades sev- 

 eral hundred grades. Then, sooner or later in 

 the case of different individuals, the faculty 

 calls him to account for what he has done. 

 In Missouri the faculty has a special commit- 

 tee charged with this general supervision of 

 the grading. 



The system has now been in use for over 

 two years. Considering all the grades re- 

 ported during these four semesters and three 

 summer sessions, we find that the highest four 

 per cent, are excellent (E), the following 

 twenty-one are superior (S), the following 

 fifty-two are medium (M), the next sixteen 

 are inferior (I) and the last seven have failed 

 (F), not taking into account decimals. The 

 only deviation from the rule, then, consists in 

 this that two of the eighteen students of the 

 I class have been marked one step too high, 

 as M. Such an amount of regularity in gen- 

 eral was perhaps to be expected. More inter- 

 esting is the variation of marking found 

 among the individual teachers. 



In order to compare the individual teachers. 



