In law school, grading is blind. Perhaps that should be pushed down to lower levels of education.
There was a law review article some years ago in which a feminist argued that law school blind grading discriminated against women students because females did very slightly worse than their undergraduate grades would predict. She didn’t consider the possibility that undergraduate professors discriminated against guys.
That's very interesting. I completely agree that blind grading should be pushed down to lower levels of education. It automatically guards against all forms of bias, so seems desirable wherever it's possible.
Except that if there is any disparity between recognizable identity groups, the claim will be made that the blind graded test is discriminatory. The SAT is highly predictive of college grades, but it is an article of faith that it’s racist due to disparate outcomes.
Yep, some people definitely argue that. We'll need to argue back!
One important argument is that identifying areas where people have fallen behind is important if we want to channel help to those people. Obscuring the differences isn't doing them any favors, because it means papering over the problem rather than actually tackling it.
Chimes with my experience many years ago. We felt that girls were given an easy ride by teachers. When we sat what used to be called GCE O levels where papers were marked externally by someone who had never met you and who knew nothing about you, our position relative to the girls changed. For me, it was a revelation and I never looked back. Boys today wouldn't get that experience because course based assessments count for more.
In law school, grading is blind. Perhaps that should be pushed down to lower levels of education.
There was a law review article some years ago in which a feminist argued that law school blind grading discriminated against women students because females did very slightly worse than their undergraduate grades would predict. She didn’t consider the possibility that undergraduate professors discriminated against guys.
That's very interesting. I completely agree that blind grading should be pushed down to lower levels of education. It automatically guards against all forms of bias, so seems desirable wherever it's possible.
Except that if there is any disparity between recognizable identity groups, the claim will be made that the blind graded test is discriminatory. The SAT is highly predictive of college grades, but it is an article of faith that it’s racist due to disparate outcomes.
Yep, some people definitely argue that. We'll need to argue back!
One important argument is that identifying areas where people have fallen behind is important if we want to channel help to those people. Obscuring the differences isn't doing them any favors, because it means papering over the problem rather than actually tackling it.
Chimes with my experience many years ago. We felt that girls were given an easy ride by teachers. When we sat what used to be called GCE O levels where papers were marked externally by someone who had never met you and who knew nothing about you, our position relative to the girls changed. For me, it was a revelation and I never looked back. Boys today wouldn't get that experience because course based assessments count for more.
Yeah, it would be good if course-based assessments could be blind-marked as well. We often do that at my university, although not always.
One bit of good news: More experienced teachers seem to be less biased in their marking.