No US child ever scores less than 40% on a test!

[Randwolf]

St. Petersburg Times Newspaper, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA (http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/article1014081.ece) - viewed at 2:54 pm EST 06/29/09

Hernando County is considering taking zero out of its grading policy

By Tony Marrero, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Monday, June 29, 2009

BROOKSVILLE — Call it the softer side of failure.

Under a new policy up for a vote by the Hernando County School Board next month, the new grade for a missed assignment or test at the elementary level would be 40 percent.

Translation: no more zeros.

The goal, district officials say, is to give kids a statistical fighting chance to turn around their overall grade — something tough to do even with a couple of zeros or a few very low marks on the books.

...


St. Petersburg Times Newspaper, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA (http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/article1014081.ece) - viewed at 2:54 pm EST 06/29/09


This seems to be a continuation of the trend (at least in the US) of softer and softer grading standards in primary and secondary schools, perhaps related to the "No Child Left Behind" phenomenon.

The proponents claim that giving kids a 40% grade on tests they don't even show up for allows them "a statistical fighting chance to turn around their overall grade". Maybe so, but what about teaching responsibility and an understanding that there are consequences for actions? Are these children considered too young to be responsible? What about the parents?

I feel that these types of policies undermine a child's ability to compete (or even exist, to an extent) in the "real" world, especially internationally - your thoughts?

[iceaura]

I remember most teachers that gave a lot of tests used to drop one test from the calculation - that makes sense, because of the disproportionate effect of very low scores when calculating arithmetic means.

But assigning 40% to a missed exam is goofy - very misleading.

[Randwolf]

I remember most teachers that gave a lot of tests used to drop one test from the calculation - that makes sense, because of the disproportionate effect of very low scores when calculating arithmetic means.

But assigning 40% to a missed exam is goofy - very misleading.

Yeah, that practice is referred to as "grading on the curve" and is actually mentioned later in the article as an example of already existing adjustments to the "objective" grades.

Point is, it just keeps getting worse, or more pervasive I guess, if you happen to think it's a "good" thing. Where does it end? Why not just hand everyone a diploma and say "you are now qualified to go forth and contribute"? Isn't that the logical end to this trend?

[visceral_instinct]

What in the name of shit??

That's moronic.

Maybe they should give out A grades even if the person failed, while they're at it.

[iceaura]

Point is, it just keeps getting worse, or more pervasive I guess, if you happen to think it's a "good" thing. The idea of the "drop one" practice was to give a more accurate grade, and take some of the stage fright effect out of any given exam.

I don't think this 40% rule has the same kind of motive. It's not the same thing, then.

[RubiksMaster]

I think that's pretty dumb. It reminds me of how some school districts stopped using red pens for correcting work.

[Randwolf]

The idea of the "drop one" practice was to give a more accurate grade, and take some of the stage fright effect out of any given exam.
"More accurate"? How so? If we are trying to establish an objective standard, then shouldn't the grade point average stand on its own? Isn't that the definition of "accurate" in this case?

Any arbitrary change distorts the accuracy of the final average and ends up penalizing those students that did their homework, attended class and got straight A's. An outsider reviewing two students' academic scores would deem both equally competent, when in fact one student might have failed 10% of the exams. (This example is based on a hypothetical course administering 10 tests in a given grading period, the lowest of which was "dropped".)

Furthermore, is not one of the objectives of educational systems to prepare children for a career in the private or public sectors, or perhaps the military? If so, then automatic forgiveness of one substandard project or mission per six or nine week period is not a very widespread practice, AFAIK. Similarly, that "stage fright effect" is a part of life, might as well get used to it...



I don't think this 40% rule has the same kind of motive. It's not the same thing, then. Depends on your definition of "same". My argument is that they are both arbitrary distortions of an otherwise objective measurement system. In that sense, they are the same.

I will grant you that this latest "40% idea" is more egregious in that it only applies to some students, i.e. those that "miss" a test or exam. At least the "drop one" policy drops the lowest test grade for all students, not just those with poor attendance.

What motives do you believe are behind the 40% rule and do you agree with its implementation?

[jmpet]

I graduated high school with a total average of 62.5- a failing average. Yet there I was being handed a diploma and a pat on the back and a kick out the door. I don't post much here but I hope y'all realize I am no schmuck. But it still amazes me how politics trumps actual grading. Who would have thought that an A in woodshop would offset an F in math- God Bless America!

[StrangerInAStrangeLa]

-=-

If morons supervise & direct morons who teach morons in order to prepare them for life as a moron, what is the result?

[ripleofdeath]

baby boomers trying to not be accountable for their own bad parenting and bad voting and bad economic choices.

like john McCain and Sarah Palin... they will drop the entire world into another cold war to avoid having to be accountable if that is what it takes.

[ripleofdeath]

-=-

If morons supervise & direct morons who teach morons in order to prepare them for life as a moron, what is the result?

oooooh
me ! me ! me !
uummm.... let me see

m(s)+(d)m * (m)T (+/-*=m2*m3) = /\/\ times exponent to the power of ten cubed ?


= /\/\ *(E +/- ~3) * m

hows that ?

[Betrayer0fHope]

oooooh
me ! me ! me !
uummm.... let me see

m(s)+(d)m * (m)T (+/-*=m2*m3) = /\/\ times exponent to the power of ten cubed ?


= /\/\ *(E +/- ~3) * m

hows that ?

This isn't even right.

[swarm]

I feel that these types of policies undermine a child's ability to compete (or even exist, to an extent) in the "real" world, especially internationally - your thoughts?

Assigning grades is reduculous to begin with. Who cares if it is a 0 or a 40?

The goal of a school should be to impart the most learning which a child is capable of absorbing. Tests should be nothing more than a measure of performance so you know what you have mastered and what you need to work on.

[Stryder]

In the UK the results for the end of year is usually made up of a mixture of the exam result and the coursework (What they did during their classed). It's possible that the 40% mentioned covers the coursework of what they have done during the year without taking into consideration the exam result. (This would mean the exam itself would only be worth 60%)

[Randwolf]

In the UK the results for the end of year is usually made up of a mixture of the exam result and the coursework (What they did during their classed). It's possible that the 40% mentioned covers the coursework of what they have done during the year without taking into consideration the exam result. (This would mean the exam itself would only be worth 60%)

Maybe, Stryder, but it seemed to me that the proposed policy is pretty straight forward. Everything that you said is true, now just add this bit in.

When figuring your total grade, take all the test scores, factor in the coursework, add any attendance or other special bonuses and ... substitute 40% any place that there was a test that you didn't show up for. So, if I go to class on a day an exam is administered and only get 1 out of three questions right, I get a 33% result used to compute my grade. Makes sense right?

If, on the other hand, I don't attend class that day, I get a 40% result incorporated in my grade, so I do better by not showing up at all. I get rewarded for "skipping" an exam! Make sense? Ummm, no, at least not to me...

[ripleofdeath]

Assigning grades is reduculous to begin with. Who cares if it is a 0 or a 40?

The goal of a school should be to impart the most learning which a child is capable of absorbing. Tests should be nothing more than a measure of performance so you know what you have mastered and what you need to work on.

schools were not designed to educate children.
they were designed to control the population.

[Randwolf]

Assigning grades is reduculous to begin with. Who cares if it is a 0 or a 40?

The goal of a school should be to impart the most learning which a child is capable of absorbing. Tests should be nothing more than a measure of performance so you know what you have mastered and what you need to work on.

True, I mean who cares what the actual grade is, as long as the child learned all that he or she could. Let's take that to the extreme, you personally wouldn't mind being operated on by a surgeon who never correctly answered a single question on any exam, as long as the "school impart[s] the most learning which a child is capable of absorbing", right? :rolleyes:

Seems reduculous to me, but as long as you learned all you could about spelling, you deserve an A in my book.

[ripleofdeath]

True, I mean who cares what the actual grade is, as long as the child learned all that he or she could. Let's take that to the extreme, you personally wouldn't mind being operated on by a surgeon who never correctly answered a single question on any exam, as long as the "school impart[s] the most learning which a child is capable of absorbing", right? :rolleyes:

Seems reduculous to me, but as long as you learned all you could about spelling, you deserve an A in my book.

philosophically i agree with what he is saying as far as a self awareness concept is concerned... i.e.
just doing enough to pass is never enough.
but... that does not retract from my opinion that we need to have standards.
i think we need to truly push students so they are all being strained equally to their ability.
Just because that means some will never be brain sturgeons then i don't care.
it is not about caring if they achieve or fail or excel.
it is about making sure they are tested to the best of their ability.
this is a very old philosophical construct of teaching that tends to date back in eastern philosophy in the cross over of Buddhism and martial arts training.

[Stryder]

Maybe, Stryder, but it seemed to me that the proposed policy is pretty straight forward. Everything that you said is true, now just add this bit in.

When figuring your total grade, take all the test scores, factor in the coursework, add any attendance or other special bonuses and ... substitute 40% any place that there was a test that you didn't show up for. So, if I go to class on a day an exam is administered and only get 1 out of three questions right, I get a 33% result used to compute my grade. Makes sense right?

If, on the other hand, I don't attend class that day, I get a 40% result incorporated in my grade, so I do better by not showing up at all. I get rewarded for "skipping" an exam! Make sense? Ummm, no, at least not to me...

It probably wouldn't factor like that. If 60% is define by exams, then not attending will only give you 40%, attending an writing one answer might give you 41% even though the answer is not correct as the marks themselves might play a role as a percentage even if they aren't correct. (Of course the total of all answers wrong will not be as high as getting them all correct)

[Mickmeister]

i think that's pretty dumb. It reminds me of how some school districts stopped using red pens for correcting work.

huh????

[Mickmeister]

I actually found the article here (http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,24752007-13360,00.html). I busted out laughing when I read this. LOL...the way we are going, we are going to end up like the ones were in the movie Demolition Man.

[Nasor]

"More accurate"? How so? If we are trying to establish an objective standard, then shouldn't the grade point average stand on its own? Isn't that the definition of "accurate" in this case?

Any arbitrary change distorts the accuracy of the final average and ends up penalizing those students that did their homework, attended class and got straight A's. An outsider reviewing two students' academic scores would deem both equally competent, when in fact one student might have failed 10% of the exams. (This example is based on a hypothetical course administering 10 tests in a given grading period, the lowest of which was "dropped".)
It makes a certain amount of sense with respect to eliminating statistical outliers. If you have two students who both take 10 tests and one student gets a score of 95% on all 10 while the other gets 95% on 9 of them and a 30% on 1 of them, then statistically there is a high probability that they are in fact of equal ability, even though looking at a simple average of their 10 scores won't reflect that.

Of course it would be better to actually do a real outlier analysis on a student's set of scores, but we can't expect teachers to actually understand statistics well enough to do that, so simply dropping the lowest score is an approximation. Of course, it would be an even better approximation if you dropped both the lowest score and the highest score...

[iceaura]

Any statistical method of arriving at a ranked evaluation of the "learning" of a group of students, based on their numerical scores on a few paper and pencil exams, is going to have problems.

A lot of statistically naive people seem to assume a straight arithmetical mean of the numerical test scores with no adjustments is some kind of more rigorous approach. It isn't - it's just the simplest and bureaucratically easiest technique, the one involving the least work for the evaluators and allowing the least employment of judgment by those on the scene.

If the exam scores are bounded above and below (0 to 100, say) and the mean scores on the exams overall are well above the median possible (most students score in the 70s on a hundred point exam, say) dropping the low score of a set of exams likely improves the accuracy of a ranking by mean score. Dropping the high score would be less likely to have that effect. That is because an outlying low score has more room to lie out in, and taking the arithmetic mean exaggerates that difference.

In a five test set with an overall class means of 75 and standard deviations of 10, for example, four scores of 73 and one score of 100 produces a higher rank than four scores of 95 and one of 0. I think most of us would guess that consistently scoring two standard deviations above the mean shows a better relative or comparative grasp of the material than consistently scoring below the mean, eh?

[Nasor]

If the exam scores are bounded above and below (0 to 100, say) and the mean scores on the exams overall are well above the median possible (most students score in the 70s on a hundred point exam, say) dropping the low score of a set of exams likely improves the accuracy of a ranking by mean score. Dropping the high score would be less likely to have that effect. That is because an outlying low score has more room to lie out in, and taking the arithmetic mean exaggerates that difference.
Ah, good point, I wasn't considering the fact that these things usually aren't targeted at mean scores of 50%. Given that, it does indeed make more sense to drop only the lowest score.

Of course, the problem with dropping the lowest score etc. is that it can provide many opportunities for students to "game the system." If there are only a few tests and the lowest one is dropped, then a student who has scored well on the first three tests might reasonably conclude that he has no incentive to learn anything related to the last test. If you are actually doing a rigorous analysis to eliminate outliers then it can get even weirder, since you might have situations where it's better to get an extremely low score than a moderately low score.

[Randwolf]

It makes a certain amount of sense with respect to eliminating statistical outliers.

Well, of course, statistical outliers must be brought into line with statistical norms. What else would we do with the exceptionally bright? (or the exceptionally stupid, but that's a much more unstable political powder keg).

Statistical outliers point to the extraordinary. Should these people be "normalized"? Or do you have the more benign intention of eliminating "flukes", thereby protecting the "normal" populace? If you would have been in charge of my curriculum, all of my scores would have been classified as statistical anomalies. What then? Eliminate my entire educational record as an "outlier"?

The truth is, test scores are what they are. Curve them, drop one, divide by the square root of negative one, whatever, the reality is that students were asked x questions (e.g. 3,000) and they answered y right (e.g. 2,500) - therefore they have an 83.3% average.

Why is this method wrong? How is it skewed? Where is it unfair?

[Oli]

I haven't read most of this thread (so you're allowed to shoot me if my point has already been made) but:
dropping the lowest scoring mark ensures an "off day" does not affect a student's overall rating.
That's the reason given when I was on certain courses.

[DRZion]

There is some merit in this, I suppose.. if you go to school and sit there, bored out of your mind all day, you are still better prepared for getting a real job than if you sit at home and stare at the television. So, getting 40% for just going to school isn't horrendous.

You have to factor in the fact that simply showing up to school shapes important life habits such as
-getting up in the morning 5 days a week
-being more sociable
-being a tool to the government
-learning about life, and your peers
-learning your place in society
-etc. etc. etc.

And I think a person who goes through the hell that school can be deserves some kind of 'reward' because shit, they ain't there for free.

[Baron Max]

Why don't we just give the little bastards whatever grade they want and be done with it? Why bother grading if the grades don't mean jack-shit to anyone? So, ...at the end of the school year, just let the little fuckers pick whatever grade they want for each subject. Fuck it, who cares? If we don't care and the little bastards don't care, why should anyone else care?

Besides, the nation is becoming socialistic anyway, so the little bastards don't even need to work ....the gov will hand out money, gvie them housing and food. Fuck, why do anything?

Baron Max

[pjdude1219]

Why don't we just give the little bastards whatever grade they want and be done with it? Why bother grading if the grades don't mean jack-shit to anyone? So, ...at the end of the school year, just let the little fuckers pick whatever grade they want for each subject. Fuck it, who cares? If we don't care and the little bastards don't care, why should anyone else care?

Besides, the nation is becoming socialistic anyway, so the little bastards don't even need to work ....the gov will hand out money, gvie them housing and food. Fuck, why do anything?

Baron Max

So how would you explain those socialist states doing better than the US academically?

[ripleofdeath]

So how would you explain those socialist states doing better than the US academically?

as long as you dont shit yourself then roll around on the floor in it and call that school then it is easy to do better than any american school.
check out their adult illiteracy rates.
it should be a crime for the state to fail soo miserably in something they are tasked to do by an act of law and mutual contractual agreement.

http://www.proliteracy.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=335&srcid=393

Basic Facts about Literacy

* Literacy is the ability to read, write, compute, and use technology at a level that enables an individual to reach his or her full potential as a parent, employee, and community member.
* There are 774 million adults around the world who are illiterate in their native languages.
* Two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women.
* In the U.S., 30 million people over age 16 — 14 percent of the country’s adult population — don’t read well enough to understand a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level or fill out a job application.
* The United States ranks fifth on adult literacy skills when compared to other industrialized nations.
* Adult low literacy can be connected to almost every socio-economic issue in the United States:
o More than 60 percent of all state and federal corrections inmates can barely read and write.
o Low health literacy costs between $106 billion and $238 billion each year in the U.S. — 7 to 17 percent of all annual personal health care spending.
o Low literacy’s effects cost the U.S. $225 billion or more each year in non-productivity in the workforce, crime, and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment.
* Globally, illiteracy can be linked to:
o Gender abuse, including female infanticide and female circumcision
o Extreme poverty (earning less than $1/day)
o High infant mortality and the spread of HIV/Aids, malaria, and other preventable infectious diseases

o More than 60 percent of all state and federal corrections inmates can barely read and write.
the state failed them as a child then fail them again in a second chance in rehabilitation.

unles your diagnosed as a psychiatric patient you should be required to read and write before you leave prison.
if you cant then you are sent to a low security school in the middle of no where, where you are schooled in basic life skills reading writing and how to apply for jobs, take care of a house and manage its bills and basic child care if you have children.consumer rights, basic small management practices and basic cooking with government funded options to carry on and do things like apprenticeships.

i bet the reoffending would be slashed by 50%.

and not released until you pass.

[Meursalt]

but we can't expect teachers to actually understand statistics well enough to do that, ...
Ever occur to you to wonder why we can't?

[iceaura]

Of course, the problem with dropping the lowest score etc. is that it can provide many opportunities for students to "game the system." I'm just as happy giving a high grade to a student capable of gaming such a system, if reasonably set up, as I am giving a high grade to a student who has rote regurgitated in calculated patterns without comprehension.

[Baron Max]

So how would you explain those socialist states doing better than the US academically?

Because in those socialist nations, the grading system is kept secret so they can spread the applicable propaganda claim their kids are better than our kids.

Pick something, most anything, any form of business or inventions, etc that you'd like ...check out how well Americans do in that. Americans lead the pack in almost every field or business there is. Perhaps Americans do better than the grades would suggest, huh?

Fuck all them thar furriners!

Baron Max

[Saven]

40% is still a failing grade so what difference does it make, except to make it so missing one assigment doesn't utterly destroy your overall grade forever.

[Baron Max]

40% is still a failing grade so what difference does it make, ....

Don't worry ....that's next!! In a few weeks, the US school systems will enact a new rule that no kid should ever get a failing grade in any subject and shall never be held back to learn anything.

Baron Max

[pjdude1219]

Because in those socialist nations, the grading system is kept secret so they can spread the applicable propaganda claim their kids are better than our kids.

Pick something, most anything, any form of business or inventions, etc that you'd like ...check out how well Americans do in that. Americans lead the pack in almost every field or business there is. Perhaps Americans do better than the grades would suggest, huh?

Fuck all them thar furriners!

Baron Max

Now your just being paranoid and a conspiracy theorist.

[ripleofdeath]

I'm just as happy giving a high grade to a student capable of gaming such a system, if reasonably set up, as I am giving a high grade to a student who has rote regurgitated in calculated patterns without comprehension.

that's why i could never work in the school system.
i just cant stand the apathy toward learning and people that requires you to just stand by and watch people fall through the cracks.

all the false statements, lies and crutches that would be needed to try and feel self worth for knowing you were failing children over and over year in year out.

while i may be somewhat guilty of giving too much value to some human life, i am just as guilty of giving no value to other human life.

i have rarely(not entirely sure i have ever) ever met a child that was worthy of a life sentence.

i suspect what i have written above is one of the biggest reasons women like early childhood education soo much, because they cant perceive any real damage that has been done by bad teaching and bad interaction by the school/teacher.

and women rule the living in denial thing hands down.
although they are starting to draw near even with men now.
P.S as women pull even with men in being real and not playing happy families(etc...) then men may well have a surge in domestic violence possibly other violent crime suicide included.
but it will just be a bubble as long as it is stamped on by police and society.

[Randwolf]

There is some merit in this, I suppose.. if you go to school and sit there, bored out of your mind all day, you are still better prepared for getting a real job than if you sit at home and stare at the television. So, getting 40% for just going to school isn't horrendous.

You have to factor in the fact that simply showing up to school shapes important life habits such as
-getting up in the morning 5 days a week
-being more sociable
-being a tool to the government
-learning about life, and your peers
-learning your place in society
-etc. etc. etc.

And I think a person who goes through the hell that school can be deserves some kind of 'reward' because shit, they ain't there for free.

I think maybe you are misinterpreting the OP. The idea being batted about is whether or not a child who does not go to school on exam day deserves a 40% grade. The intent was not explicitly nor implicitly designed to be a method for rewarding children for attending school, rather more nearly the opposite effect.

I believe someone already pointed out a hypothetical case in which a student is cruising along with, for example, a 90% average and an exam is scheduled for tomorrow. Said student knows or (highly suspects) that they will score less than 40% on this exam, because they haven't studied the material or were unable to grasp the content for whatever reason. They now have an incentive to skip school that day, knowing that they will "earn" a 40% grade on the exam for not showing up. This is good?

As to the statistical guru's out there, doesn't the appropriate grading / analysis system depend on what we are intending to measure? In other words, if you are trying to plot the distribution of the results of various tests based on equality, then a more complicated system involving standard deviations, outliers, ranges and modes might be appropriate.

On the other hand, if we just want to know that little Johnny and Mary were both administered 2,000 questions throughout a course's duration and Mary got 1,940 of the answers correct, while Johnny got 1,760 correct, then it would seem that a straight up right/wrong percentage would be the more accurate method, i.e Mary's grade is 97% and Johnny's grade is 88%.

As to the "bad day" effect, I agree that it was probably the original intent of dropping the lowest score to offset this phenomenon. As I stated earlier, I didn't really intend to focus on the "drop one" practice, it seemed merely to be the beginning of a "slippery slope". I also pointed out that it at least applies to all students, not a certain subset.

This is my main problem with the proposed "40% system". It is not applied equally, student "A" with perfect attendance that scores 38% on a particular test will end up with a worse overall score than student "B". This is based on student B "playing the game" properly and skipping school on the day that he / she would have scored 10%. If student A and student B had an otherwise identical record, then we have a situation in which we reward student B for not taking a test at all.

If we are comfortable rewarding kids who excel at working the system, finding innovative ways to cheat (like the cell phone texting scandal a few years back), etc., well alright then. Let's at least just call it what it is - skewed results, no matter how good the intentions or motives are.

I know the educational system fawns over "new math", but no way in hell does 40 = 0. Go ahead, take a day off from work, you will still get 40% of your normal pay... :shrug:

[Nasor]

Well, of course, statistical outliers must be brought into line with statistical norms. What else would we do with the exceptionally bright? (or the exceptionally stupid, but that's a much more unstable political powder keg).

Statistical outliers point to the extraordinary. Should these people be "normalized"?
For god's sake, I was talking about statistical outliers with respect to that individual student's set of scores, not with respect to all student's scores. What you seem to be imagining (considering an entire student to be an outlier) would only be useful if you wanted to do something like rank different teachers against each other by comparing the scores of their students.
If you would have been in charge of my curriculum, all of my scores would have been classified as statistical anomalies. What then? Eliminate my entire educational record as an "outlier"?
Really? Every single score you got was a statistical outlier with respect to all your other scores? I would be very interested to hear what your scores were, because that would be mathematically impossible.

The truth is, test scores are what they are. Curve them, drop one, divide by the square root of negative one, whatever, the reality is that students were asked x questions (e.g. 3,000) and they answered y right (e.g. 2,500) - therefore they have an 83.3% average.

Why is this method wrong? How is it skewed? Where is it unfair?
Because, as was already explained, it doesn't account for statistical outliers. I don't really feel like writing a long intro to statistics lesson on what an outlier is or how outliers can skew data when you have a limited sampling (like, say, a student who takes a limited number of tests). But if your task is to rank a bunch of students with a limited number of tests, your rankings will generally be more accurate if you eliminate statistical outliers. Always dropping the lowest score isn't the same as actually doing a statistical analysis of the grades to identify outliers, but it has much the same effect.

As to the statistical guru's out there, doesn't the appropriate grading / analysis system depend on what we are intending to measure? In other words, if you are trying to plot the distribution of the results of various tests based on equality, then a more complicated system involving standard deviations, outliers, ranges and modes might be appropriate.
Well shit, now you're just making me annoyed. The concepts of standard deviation and outliers don't have anything to do with "equality," they have to do with analyzing statistical data so as to derive the most accurate conclusions. Go take an intro to statistics class at your local community college or something.

On the other hand, if we just want to know that little Johnny and Mary were both administered 2,000 questions throughout a course's duration and Mary got 1,940 of the answers correct, while Johnny got 1,760 correct, then it would seem that a straight up right/wrong percentage would be the more accurate method, i.e Mary's grade is 97% and Johnny's grade is 88%.
Oh, so we're only concerned with who got what scores? In that case no statistics are needed; it's a matter of simple arithmetic. But if you're interested in trying to rank students according to their ability, then employing statistics to analyze those scores can indeed make your rankings more accurate than if your just take the raw data at face value.

[Nasor]

I'm just as happy giving a high grade to a student capable of gaming such a system, if reasonably set up, as I am giving a high grade to a student who has rote regurgitated in calculated patterns without comprehension.
Perhaps if the class is on game theory, or math, or economics. But it seems stupid to reward someone for gaming the system in, say, history class.

[iceaura]

Perhaps if the class is on game theory, or math, or economics. But it seems stupid to reward someone for gaming the system in, say, history class. But consider what the system of rankiing by pencil exam score is, and how a "drop the low test" (or even "score absences at 40%", which I deeply object to as a falsification of the record) protocol would be gamed in a history class, in practice.

The student would need demonstrated competence (at their own desired level) in the large majority of the class, and the capability of accurate self-evaluation and follow-through on priorities, to deliberately game that situation to any significant advantage for themselves.

[zaindapain]

i bet its caz the no good rotten kids get such easy tests

[zaindapain]

It is not because they are smart, its just the education board or w.e rigging the tests to make sure they almost "pass"
have you seen the movie, supersize me?
you can see the lack of education in there when a child claims a picture of jesus to be george bush. lol