Abandoning assessment entirely is not an acceptable alternative to competitive grading, per the author's argument¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r2 · q1
Currency · newest study 1971 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 2 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q1 i? Some assessment of whether each student attained the objectives is necessary; teaching cannot be claimed to have occurred without it. → Gentile 1971

Evidence¶

Gentile 1971¶

Gentile, J. Ronald. (1971). Toward Excellence in Teaching: Grading Practices. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED061264

q1 · i? · theoretical · r2

Theoretical argument against the free-school extreme of no assessment: "sore assessment of whether each student has attained the objectives is necessary," though tests are not the only means. The author says learning may occur without objectives but a teacher must show what was taught was learned.

"Thus, sore assessment of whether each student has attained the objectives is necessary, although tests are not the only way of assessing this."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Criterion-referenced tests indicate whether a particular skill or objective has been achieved rather than comparing performance to other test takers — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Competitive (norm-referenced) grading pits students against one another and discourages cooperation, according to the author's argument — related
• Rank-ordering students is irrelevant to teaching because teaching is not claimed to have occurred unless each student learned, per the author's Dewey-inspired argument — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Grade cutoffs are arbitrary because adjacent scores receiving different grades are not significantly different, per the author's statistical argument — related
• Transcript grades are a blurred currency of performance information, partly due to grade inflation driven by student pressure — related