Common threats to the validity of course grades:

In contemporary higher education, it is fair to say that grades may be, in varying degrees, measures of any, or all, of the following:

Punctuality: when faculty members take points off for late work or give extra points for early work

Gain or growth: when faculty members base the grade on the degree of improvement over the course of the semester

Place in a distribution: when faculty assign grades on the curve, or some predetermined percentage formula, so that the grade indicates only the student’s percentile or rank in the class

Dishonesty: when faculty or the university lower the grade for cheating, plagiarism, etc. with the result that a low grade is uninterpretable because it may signify a low level of understanding or a low level of honesty

Extra or additional achievement: when faculty give extra points for more work that may not be qualitatively superior to the prior work, but is simply quantitatively more than other students have done

Attendance: when faculty members deduct points for unexcused absences

Writing skill: or some prior expertise separable from the subject matter as when neatness, rhetoric, or format count

Reduced spread: when faculty members inflate the grades or reduce the variance (as in the quip, “the best way to turn C students into B students is to put them in graduate school”)

Motivation and perseverance: when students receive the last grade of several unsuccessful attempts at the subject matter, or when effort is rewarded

Group membership: when faculty members introduce examples and analogies that speak to some groups of students more than others, or when there is cultural, racial, or gender bias in the teaching format

Political statement: when faculty are sensitive to the student’s military draft or immigration status, scholarship and grant conditions, graduate or undergraduate status, race, and gen-der, etc., and take these into favorable consideration in the assignment of course grades

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