It wasn’t something that happened when I was in school and I’ve heard absolutely venomous descriptions of it, but no one seems to be able to tell me how it works exactly
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Depends on your exact situation. There’s an old fashion curve and a sort of new age one. The new age one may be that your teach simply takes the highest score of a test and then forces that to be 100%, thus raising everyone’s grades. There are various formulas teachers like to come up with but that’s the idea.
Alternatively there’s the old fashion version of grading on a curve. This forces a specific distribution of grades, something like 10% F, 15% D, 50% C, 15% B and 10% A. The amounts are arbitrary, but will generally be decided by the teach or administration. This grading system no longer cares how you score on tests, but cares how you score against your peers. If the whole class ends the semester with 90% or above, you won’t hand out all A’s rather you will force those with a 90% to have an F, those that did slightly better to have a D and so on until you hit your amounts. This is also works in reverse if everyone ends the class between 60% and 69%. This style of curve grading is the venomous version you’ve heard about because it’s entirely dependent on your current peers, not your own understanding of the material.
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