Clip 013.2 -- Beth Konkoski -- GPA, Big Fish/Little Pond, & Beyond

 In this highlight clip from Episode 013 of the ClassCast Podcast, teacher and writer Beth Konkoski talks with host Ryan Tibbens about grading, how GPA-mania hurts education, college admissions, how competition for admission to elite universities might be counterproductive, and the relationship between high school grades and future success.

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Corrections/References 

• The Yuval Noah Harari book referenced is actually Homo Deus.  Here's what Harari has to say about grading: "The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s 
  day left Oxford with one of only two possible results - with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88."
• Grading, as we think of it, wasn't even conceived of until the late 1700s, didn't begin to take on modern forms and labels until the late 1800s, and didn't come into widespread use until the first half of the 1900s. Check out a history of grading in US Education.
• High school valedictorians (whose unweighted GPAs usually hover at or near 4.0) actually have an average GPA of 3.4-3.6 in college, slightly higher than the 3.2 claimed in this episode. Here is a reference to one study on the subject. 
• Millionaires/CEOs of major businesses tend to be C+/B- students in college. Check it out. 
• Click this link to learn more about (or purchase) Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath.