School grades and students' achievement: how to identify grading standards and measure their effects
Stefano Iacus, Department of Economics, Business and Statistics, University of Milan, IT
Giuseppe Porro, Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Trieste
Download the Paper (PDF format) - August 15, 2007
Tell a colleague about it.
Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing.
ABSTRACT:
A new procedure to identify grading practice is
proposed. In our approach, grading practice are given in terms of a
categorical variable whilst usually in the literature, coefficients
of the regression line which models school grades
as a function of students' achievement, are taken as indicators of grading
standards. The new procedure, which is essentially nonparametric,
allows to identity clearly a variety of grading practices and their
effect on students' performance. It also shows that ordering
grading standards is not possible:
hence the usual approach based on regression coefficients is
unlikely to be satisfactory.
The new methodology is easy to implement and widely applicable.
As an example, we consider data from a survey on
Italian lower secondary school students. The evidence, which essentially confirms
the generic result given in the literature, suggests that higher grading
standards improve students' achievement but in our case, grading standards are easily interpretable.
SUBJECT AREA:
I20, I21
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Stefano Iacus and Giuseppe Porro,
"School grades and students' achievement: how to identify grading standards and measure their effects"
(August 2007).
UNIMI - Research Papers in Economics, Business, and Statistics.
Economics.
Working Paper 21.
http://services.bepress.com/unimi/economics/art21
Paper presented by M. Galeotti.
| 
