Robert Talbert is a math professor, so numbers are his thing. And the way the grading system in education works has long bothered him.
That became clear a few years ago, when a particularly bright student in a calculus class Talbert was teaching bombed the first exam. The student knew the material, but she just wasn’t a good test-taker. Her score on that exam was so low, in fact, that she realized she had no chance to get an A in the course, no matter how well she might do on future tests and assignments. The same thing happened on the second exam, and now the student had no way to do any better in the class than a C.
“Gradually these quizzes and tests and timed assessments and the way it all fits together with points and averaging, it just wore her down,” Talbert says. “Soon she was acting out in class and saying out loud, ‘I don’t see why any of this matters.’”
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