National Jurist - October 2008 - (Page 8) NEWS Stanford drops letter grades New grading system is expected to help law students worry less about grades and concentrate more on subject matter s students return for law classes at Stanford University this fall, the law department has a new look to it. Stanford recently voted to approve a grade reform proposal to eliminate letters and replace them with four levels of achievement. The decision comes after an extended period of talk among By Dave Thomas s t u d e n t s and faculty looking at issues such as collegiality, anxiety and fairness. Stanford’s new system — which will award grades of honors, pass, restricted credit and no credit — is similar to that at Yale Law School and University of California Berkeley. The new system goes into effect for the new incoming class; it will not go into effect for the rising third-year class. School officials have not decided how to handle the rising second-year class. The faculty’s vote included a provision to reexamine how it is working in three years. Dean Larry Kramer said it was the sense of the faculty that its current grading system drew too many distinctions that suggested differences among students that were not in fact accurate or representative. “Discussion about our grading system has been constant for many years, but an active conversation about taking action began the summer before and continued all through the year,” Kramer said. “Consideration involved everyone in our community — faculty, students, alumni and those parts of our staff who were affected.” Weighing the positives to the change, Kramer said that officials believe this will help students worry less about grades and concentrate more on the subject matter of their classes. “Second, we believe it will reduce the extent to which students choose courses based on the instructor’s grading practices and more on whether the class is one they want or need given their career plans and interests,” he said. “Finally, the school feels this will free faculty to experiment with were several problems with the old system, which differentiated students based on fractions of a point. “Like all curve and mean-based systems necessarily do, the system pitted students against each other, as it was impossible for everyone to do well, even if in reality, everyone performed well,” Marshall said. Oftentimes, she said, students’ grades we were more reflective of t their professors’ gradi ing styles than anything e else—some professors w were known as ‘clumpe ers,’ meaning they tende ed to distribute grades ri right around the mean, so that it was difficult to do really well or really poorly, as everyone re received grades within a limited range. Other pr professors, known as ‘sp ‘spreaders’ tended to distri tribute their grades widely, so that some students wo would do very well and ot others would do quite po poorly (with others falling between) in order for the professors to meet the ma mandatory 3.4 mean. “Because professors adopted such different grading styles, a 3.6 might put someone close to the top of one class but in the middle of another,” Marshall said. “Grades therefore did not tell students very much about what they had learned or how to improve.” Marshall, who hopes after law school to clerk and then be a public interest lawyer, said the thing that bothered her most about the old system was that students had little incentive to take courses in which they had reason to believe they would struggle. “I think the biggest impact the new system will have is that it will encourage students to take courses outside of their comfort zones,” she said. different kinds of pedagogical approaches, including approaches that are difficult to scale under the school’s former grading system and more qualitative.” Rachel Marshall, co-president of Stanford Law Association for the 200809 school year, said she was thrilled when she learned that Stanford had changed its grading system. “I was one of many students who had spent months advocating for grade reform, and the faculty’s vote to change our current system felt like a victory,” Marshall said. Under the old system, students were graded on a point system, with a 3.4 mean in on-mean classes (which are generally exam-based classes) and no mean in offmean classes. According to Marshall, there 8 THE NATIONAL JURIST October 2008 http://www.law.stanford.edu
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