Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Distribution of grades at our colleges (♫ We're makin' the world taste good ♫)


Must be grade time at the ol' SOCCCD
     Boy, here at the SOCCCD, we give out As and Bs like freakin' candy.*
     At the State Chancellor’s Office website, I found these data about grade distributions in the SOCCCD (from Fall 2014):


     34% of SOCCCD grades are As. 54% are As & Bs. Wow. (If one deletes "withdrawn" students from the calculation, then 38% of our grades are As and 23.5% of our grades are Bs; that is, in that case, nearly 62% of our grades are As or Bs.)
 
     For the sake of comparison, here's the equivalent grade distribution data for the Coast Community College District (CCCD):


     Here's a handy dandy graph of these data, comparing SOCCCD grades with CCCD grades:


At SOCCCD, more than half (54%) of grades are As & Bs. At Coast, As & Bs account for half of all grades.
Grades in no way reflect reality

Above: the data circa 2006
* * *
     FIVE-YEAR-OLD DATA. The district has an almanac (See) that provides, among other things, “Student right to know” data, per college, available via links to the State Chancellor’s Office website (here).
     Unfortunately, the data available there are pretty old: the most recent info is from 2010. That is, evidently, students have a right to know what their college was doing five years ago, not what it's doing nowadays.
     Sheesh. That sorta takes the starch out of that ballyhooed right, don't it?
     For what it's worth, here are those data:
Irvine Valley:Fall 2010 Cohort:
Completion Rate: 37.65 %
Transfer Rate: 17.28 % 
Saddleback:Fall 2010 Cohort
Completion Rate: 34.80 %
Transfer Rate: 15.99 % 
COMPARED WITH OTHER LOCAL COMMUNITY COLLEGES:
Orange Coast:Fall 2010 Cohort
Completion Rate: 37.11 %
Transfer Rate: 16.05
Santiago Canyon:Fall 2010 Cohort
Completion Rate: 31.62 %
Transfer Rate: 12.61
Santa Ana:Fall 2010 Cohort
Completion Rate: 22.99 %
Transfer Rate: 8.37
Fullerton:Fall 2010 Cohort
Completion Rate: 21.02 %
Transfer Rate: 18.89 %
STUDENT SUCCESS SCORECARDS [more current data]:
The IVC Student success “scorecard” can be found here. The Saddleback College student success “scorecard” can be found here
Previously:
What we've got here is a failure to evaluate - August 2009
*See lyrics to the song The Candy Man 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Depressing.

Anonymous said...

If grading reflected reality at the SOCCCD, the C grade would dominate. Not the A grade. Most of our students are distinctly underprepared. Who would doubt this? Why then are As the most popular grades issued?

Anonymous said...

What are you saying?
1. The faculty is soft?
2. The students at IVC are more intelligent.
3. Our student sucess centers are a huge help.

I hope you are not saying the faculty have zero integrity.

Anonymous said...

It's hard to imagine a legitimate scenario with THAT many A's. Don't A's mean anything anymore?

Anonymous said...

Obviously, 11:45, the facts "say" that there is tremendous grade inflation. It is pretty clear that most students are getting higher grades than they should, since most are underprepared (a pint that is easily demonstrated). It ain't rocket science. Motivations for inflation at the level of individual instructors are a more complex matter, obviously.

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