Making the Grades

It’s the week after Thanksgiving and the last days of class for the fall semester are at hand.  Sometime back, we looked at Davidson’s history of reviews.  With Reading Day just a week away, it seems a good time to explore grades and grading.

Did you know that for several decades student could earn an E in a class?  Then the E’s turned into Rs.  We’ll get to the Es and Rs but first here’s a look at an early grading ledger.

Students could be marked for 3 types of absences–daily prayer, chapel or recitations (class).  This ledger is for the Sophomore class and everyone attend the same classes which included Bible, Greek, Latin, French, Mathematics, Logic, Composition, and Declamation. Student were further graded on Punctuality and Deportment.  Only 3 members of this class made less than 100 on Punctuality and Deportment.  Grades were on a scale of 1-100.

This scale continued to be used through the 1920s and saw the addition of letter grades.  This ledger entry for a student taking Bible, Economics, French, Law and Physics during his junior year still shows the numbers as well as absences for chapel and church and a grade still assigned for Deportment and Punctuality.

The 1919-1920 catalog contained new graduation requirements.  The catalog stated that “to graduate, it is not enough that a student barely “pass” all his tickets. He must not only complete a minimum of 132 term hours, but he must have earned a minimum of 200 “points.”

Points were earned through grades with As being worth 4 points for each term hour credit, B’s 3 points, C’s 2 points, and D’s 1 point.  The listing also E’s and Fs. E’s were  failure but re-examination by secure a D grade (Inferior but passing).  F’s were failure and the class must be taken over to secure any credit.

E’s continued in the sequence until 1949, when they became Rs.  The catalog provided the chart with the conversion from the number scale to letters:

Rs stayed in the mix until 1968-69 when yet another numbering system – 4.5 to 0 came into use:

The concept of a perfect 4.0 came in the late 1980s when the scale dropped from 4.5 to 4.0.

Whatever the scale, Around the D wishes all students good luck with finals and all graduates the joys of not taking any reviews or waiting for grades at the end of the semester.