preLaw Magazine - Fall 2008 - (Page 7) news LAW SCHOOL Stanford drops letter grades New grading system is expected to help law students worry less about grades and concentrate more on subject matter BY DAVE THOMAS A 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 students 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 re-examine how it is working in three years. Dean Larry Kramer said it was the h sense of the faculty that its current grading system drew too many distinctions 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 different kinds of pedagogical approaches, including approaches that are difficult to scale under the school’s former grading system and are more qualitative.” Rachel Marshall, co-president of Stanford Law Association for the 2008-09 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 off- mean classes. According to Marshall, there 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 were more reflecd tive of their professors’ gradt ing styles than anything else— i some professors were known as so ‘clumpers,’ meaning they tended ‘c to distribute grades right around the mean, so that it was difficult th to do really well or really poorly, as everyone received grades within a limited range. Other professors, known as ‘spreaders’ tended so to distribute their grades widely, so that some students would do very well and others would do ve quite poorly (with others falling qu between) in order for the profesbe sors to meet the mandatory 3.4 sor mean. me “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. 7 Fall 2008
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