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PeakTrader:

It should be noted, many classes became harder or there’s more to learn.

The standard of “average” is higher today than in the past.

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If Babe Ruth played today, would he still be the great player compared to his peers?

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Citizen:

Babe Ruth has the highest Wins Above Replacement(WAR) statistic in all of baseball history, by far. WAR is thought to be the most important baseball stat and the highest number this past season was Mike Trout’s WAR.

Here are all of Babe Ruth’s stats. Note that baseball’s greatest non-pitcher was also a pitcher for ten of his twenty- two seasons.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ruthba01.shtml

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PeakTrader:

Both pitching and hitting improved over time, along with fielding, running, etc..

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Citizen:

Peak Trader, please know that the pitcher’s mound was lowered by a third in 1969 to help hitters. Also, performance chemicals have helped many modern era players with fielding, running and hitting.

Babe Ruth’s stats stand the test of time and are not inflated by artificial enhancements to the game. Babe’s grades were harder to get then Mike Trout’s (who should have been MVP in 2012).

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PeakTrader:

Citizen, please know Ruth didn’t play against black players, few, if any, latin players, and few white pro players.

It’s easier to be a high school champ, but harder to compete countywide, statewide, nationally, or internationally.

Also, how do you know Ruth wasn’t on “performance chemicals?” He died of cancer at 53.

Your “test of time” contradicts your statement, and lowering the pitcher’s mound is irrelevant.

Ruth played when the competition was much weaker.

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Citizen:

Peak Trader, Babe Ruth was known to play with a performance de-hancer. Booze via flask..

The percentage black players was only 8.5% in 2011.

The pitcher mound was deliberately lowered to give batters a better chance. There were 30 game pitching winners leading up to the change in 1969. The higher mound only highlights the high level of hitting for the Babe.

“It’s easier to be a high school champ, but harder to compete countywide, statewide, nationally, or internationally.”

Peak, Babe Ruth did play at the international level. Hell, he played on seven World Series winning teams. I wonder what my baseball signed by Baby Ruth is worth?

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PeakTrader:

Citizen, your statements only reflect the obvious: Ruth was a great player relative to other players in that era.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if a signed baseball by Ruth is more valuable than a signed copy of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes.

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Citizen:

My comment about a Baby Ruth signed baseball was a stretch reference to Leave It To Beaver, Episode #106 titled “Ward’s Baseball”. The Beaver lost his dad’s Babe Ruth autographed baseball and signed a new one Baby Ruth to replace it.

We disagree about the Babe’s all-timeness. C’est tout.

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Morganovich:

peak-

i do not think that is true at all.

classes have been dumbed down, not made harder. workload is lower, not higher.

students spend fewer hours studying and red fewer books. this was a consistent lament even when i was in school.

further, far more people go to college now AND grades are higher.

either the middle of the bell curve has shifted massively, or the schools have been dumbed down.

if the top 50 percentiles go to college instead of the top 20 and classes got harder, then you would expect a big drop in grade, not an increase.

your notion that classes are somehow “harder” is pure fiction.

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Walt Greenway:

Where’s the grade adjustment for being able to do a major research paper from home using the Internet in hours now instead of spending days in a library looking up sources with the Dewey Decimal cards like it used to be? I figure that alone raised my GPA a half to a full point holding everything else constant. Part of the reason college is easier now is because some things are more convenient from progress.

We measure success from letter grades instead of actual learning, and we always have. The evidence shows that unless some objective standard is used that is separate from the person giving the instruction, a letter grade is not a useful achievement measurement now or in the past. That same problem would still even exist if all instructors were full time. For example, passing the CPA test would be great outcome measurement. If your “A” students fail the test, you better re-examine your program.

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Ron,

Plagiarism is much, much easier to catch now than the old days. I have all research papers turned in to Blackboard and run it thru Turn-It-In.

For my first economics class in the 1970s, I used a slide rule and graph paper. For my next economics class in the 2000s, I used a computer and software. The 2000s class was much easier and I received a higher grade (of course, I am a lot more mature, too). If course content has been held constant since then, the class grade would be expected to naturally rise from technology improvements. Everything is becoming easier and quicker, so why would we expect education not to follow? Criterion-based grading can be expected to rise over time. Why would we expect student grades not to rise unless we are using normative grading? (grading on a class curve)

We will never have letter grades that can be used to determine what exiting students actually know in any era. Letter grades are just too subjective with no set standard and have no reliability or validity even in the best of cases. Third-party testing can determine what students know, but that is much more common in the training field than the education field.

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Ron,

Training and education is not the same thing at all, but they can be done at the same time. I can train someone how to change an igniter on a furnace and educate them why fuel needs a correct mixture to burn. Training is mostly how and education is mostly why. The assessment methodology is different, too. Pass or fail with scores above a threshold of 70% or 80% are usual for certifications in my training fields after receiving letter grades in a classroom.

Criterion-based grading needs to have explicitly stated learning outcomes and a grading rubric to have any comparative value across different institutions. We are not now or never have been to the point that an “A” even means the same thing in the same institution by different instructors. I have been teaching part time off and on since the mid 1980s, and I have never received formal instruction on exactly how to give letter grades to students from any educational institutions, and I doubt few others have. We do have “academic rigor” seminars quite often. How can we expect random events such as letter grades really to mean much of anything?

Would an “A” in 2005 instead of a “C” in 1973 between my economics classes mean I had a better instructor, I worked harder, or I had an easier grading instructor? Letter grades are not necessarily measuring student learning. How are you ever going to remove the extraneous variables using instructor-determined letter grades for students?

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PeakTrader:

Morganovich, you must have took easy classes or went to a school that gave easy grades.

Students learn more, instructors learned more, and the cycle, in general, continues.

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Ron:

Peak

“Morganovich, you must have took taken easy classes or went gone to a school that gave easy grades.”

Not to sound too picky, but did you benefit from grade inflation in English class?

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PeakTrader:

Ron, so:

“You took” is incorrect.
“You taken” is correct.

“You went” is incorrect.
“You gone” is correct.

Use some verbs.

You don’t want to be taken and gone.

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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/11/students-now-have-access-to-grade-distributions-for-college-professors-expect-more-grade-inflation-lower-quality-degrees/#comments

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