http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/802457134

Grade Inflation: Academic Standards in Higher Education

This book provides a provocative look at the issues and controversies surrounding grade inflation, and, more generally, grading practices in American higher education. The contributors confront the issues from a number of different disciplines and varying points of view. Topics explored include empirical evidence for and against the claim that there is a general upward trend in grading, whether grade inflation (if it exists) is a problem, which ethical considerations are relevant to grading, and whether heavy reliance on anonymous student evaluations of teaching excellence has a distorting effect on grading practices. Finally, the contributors offer contrasting perspectives on the prospects for reform. This book begins with a foreword by John D. Wiley. Chapters include: (1) The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation (Alfie Kohn); (2) Undergraduate Grades: a More Complex Story Than "Inflation" (Clifford Adelman); (3) Understanding Grade Inflation (Richard Kamber); (4) Grade Inflation and Grade Variation: What's All the Fuss About? (Harry Brighouse); (5) From Here to Equality: Grading Policies for Egalitarians (Francis K. Schrag); (6) Grade "Inflation" and the Professionalism of the Professoriate (Mary Biggs); (7) Fissures in the Foundation: Why Grade Conflation Could Happen (Mary Biggs); (8) Grading Teachers: Academic Standards and Student Evaluations (Lester H. Hunt); (9) Combating Grade Inflation: Obstacles and Opportunities (Richard Kamber); and (10) Grade Distortion, Bureaucracy, and Obfuscation at the University of Alabama (David T. Beito and Charles W. Nuckolls). "Focusing on the Big Picture," an afterword by Lester H. Hunt, is included.

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