re: Why are educational curves a thing?

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Why are educational curves a thing?

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In high school they’re dumb, IMO, because you have such drastic differences in a single class.. the ratio of rocket scientists to fry cooks is all over the map, making curves a little silly to begin with.

College is an entirely different scenario. There are admission standards, larger classes, and the intelligence / work ethic / etc. of a single class should (mostly) follow some sort of bell curve. In fact, you could argue that the instructors and individual tests are much larger factors for error when evaluating raw test scores than the makeup of the student population.

Two examples:

1. Large general sciences class with multiple sections led by two different instructors. One instructor is engaging, communicates clearly, and teaches the source material well. The other barely speaks English and feels like it’s a waste of time. Which class do you think has better overall test scores? It makes sense to curve because students shouldn’t be punished in this scenario.

2. Engineering class with test questions that change each semester. You might have a 1-hour test with 3 questions. All test questions are clearly not created equally. One “bad” test question on a given final can lead to the entire class making C’s or worse. It doesn’t make sense to tank an entire group’s GPA over one question, hence the curve.

I remember making like a 65 on a PHYS 2102 test and finding out it was a B.