| Disparity between high school grades and ACT scores is the primary foundation of grade-inflation debates. Of the many factors that determine how grades are assigned, this study looked at how homework grading policies affected the correlations between grades and ACT scores. At the same high school were two teachers that used the same text, grading weights, and grading scales, but graded homework very differently. A history of the different grading policies and procedures is given. When correlations between the scores of the students of one teacher were compared with the scores of the students of the other, there was a sizable difference in correlations observed: r about .7 compared to r about .5. There was no significant difference observed between mean grades or mean ACT scores. There is also a discussion of the differences in correlation and the limitations of the study (includes four tables and 19 references). |
