Then a student with a raw score of 80% would get a curved grade of %. By this I mean the raw score and is the curved score.įor example, suppose the curve is.
In most case I describe the curve as a function. Do you want to protect the class from “curve breakers”-outliers who score much higher than the rest of the class and thereby prevent a large curve?īelow I present ten techniques for curving an exam score.Is it OK for some students to have a grade over 100%.Do you want everyone to get a passing grade on the exam?.Do you want to give the lower-scoring students more of a curve or the same curve as the higher-scoring students? (Rarely do we want weaker students to get less of a curve than the stronger students.).Determining this will help you choose which curving technique to use. My advice is to use your judgement. You know the class, and you know the material.īefore you do any curving, you must determine what you want the curve to accomplish. Similarly, if I feel that the class is “weak”-that is, weaker than other classes who have taken the same course from me in the past-then I do not feel an obligation to bring their grade up to fit the template. On the other hand, if I feel that the exam was fair and the class should have done better, then I do not curve. I may want to make up for that with a curve. I may also consider a curve if there was one (usually high-point-value) problem on which everyone does poorly. If the scores do not fit the historical template, I will consider curving. For my upper-level (majors) class, on the other hand, I may expect higher grades with failures unlikely. In classes like that, failing grades are not unusual. For example, in an entry-level course I may want an average (mean) of 80-82% with several A’s. If the class does significantly lower than I think they should have, I will consider curving the exam.Īlso, courses have certain historical distributions. Individual students may surprise me and do better or worse than I expected, but as a whole, I know the strength of the class when exam-time rolls around. This comes from their homework, their questions in class, our conversations outside of class, and so forth.
I know, roughly, who the A students are, who the F student’s are, and who the average students are. When I give an exam to a class, I have an intuitive feeling for how the grade distribution should look. I am writing this as if the curve is for an exam, but most of the tips work for curving the grades at the end of the semester too. From that we would like to obtain a curved or scaled grade which is again a score between 0 and 100 (or occasionally a number over 100). To keep things simple, I assume that the raw score of the exam is a percentage-a number between 0 and 100.
I give ten sample curving techniques, including pros and cons of each, I explain how to convert grades into letter grades, and I end with three concrete examples. In this post I share my thoughts on when you should (or should not) curve an exam. We have all given exams where the grades end up lower than we hoped.