Attention Economy


Monday, July 21, 2014

Finally, A Plan to Curb Grade Inflation


UNC-Chapel Hill will introduce contextual grading. According to UNC professor Andrew J. Perrin:
“Beginning this fall, all undergraduate transcripts from UNC will include information about the context of grades alongside the grades themselves. They will contain the median grade for each class and the percentile range the student’s grade reflects. Readers of the transcript, including the students themselves, will be able to determine where the student’s performance falls among her peers. In addition, the transcript will feature the student’s "schedule-point average," or SPA, alongside the familiar grade-point average. The SPA—calculated by averaging the median grades in the student’s schedule—can be used by transcript readers as a benchmark to evaluate the meaning, in context, of the GPA.”