I really love the philosophy put forth inside this handbook; it just seems intrinsic or inherent to me. If you know anything about Math and or Statistics, then a “Zero” when considering a student’s test scores is clearly an “Outlier,” and thus one should disregard it as it skews the data. (Unless your student is such a poor performer that all the scores are in the teens, and at that point let’s face it, we would have been seeking extra help for that student.) Therefore, the concept of using a “Mode” instead of a “Mean” to calculate students’ grades actually gives a better picture your students’ overall progress and makes more sense. Although, I have a good handle on Math and can reason the concept out, so I may have an unfair advantage :).
Ultimately, we want our students to learn about successes as well as succeed. Using a “Mode” to compute grades sends them the message that we care and realize that they’re not perfect. After all, neither are we. I imagine, there are classes we’ve all struggled in where we’ve had an “Outlier” and wished it wasn’t included in the data because it only brought our scores down. However, if we could measure our progress instead, we would show remarkable gains. This is what our students need as well. They need to be measured by progress and gains more than by mere test scores and averages.
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