Curving our way to mediocrity

The Uruguayan graduate student was talking to a fellow graduate student about the mathematical understanding of her students. Her view was that these Ivy League students were no stronger than Uruguayan math students of her past. In Uruguay, they do not use the grading curve. That Uruguayan student took one class where every student in the class failed. If you don’t get it, they don’t give you the grade. If you don’t get it, then you don’t get credit for it. In America, we will curve your grades so that if you are at the top of the pile of people who don’t understand the material, you may well get an A.

But maybe all those curved grades result in our current math/science crisis. When you don’t understand the latest year’s material, you CAN’T and SHOULDN’T move on until you do understand those math facts. College math proves difficult for some people because they missed fundamental concepts. American math education exposes deep flaws in our educational approach, as we push forward to meet standards — READY OR NOT. Maybe in history, those curved grades do not matter. In history, if you didn’t learn much about the Civil War, you can move along. Next year you can catch up. Or maybe the Civil War will just go away.

But that approach doesn’t work in math. If you didn’t learn the order of operations even though your teacher gave you a “B,” you won’t be able to get correct answers the following year except by luck. By college, holes in background knowledge end up sinking some would-be engineers — who might have been better served by a system that did not curve grades or award effort that resulted in wrong answers.