Of course, the massive process of grading exams offers no protection against manipulation, and questionable practices are always possible. But does that mean we should go so far as to speak—as certain unions have done—of “the crime of cheating”? In any case, the speed and intensity of these suspicions highlight the persistence of a number of common misconceptions surrounding assessment—from the objectivity of grades to the link between pass rates and the value of an exam—that warrant further examination.
Any retroactive change to a grade seems unacceptable to anyone who believes that the grade assigned by a grader is an objective measure of a student’s work. But all research in the field of docimology has shown that this is not the case. Grades fluctuate, among other factors, depending on the grader, the student’s position in a batch of papers, and the timing of the grading.
Comparing this to the temperature reading on a thermometer is fundamentally misleading, from two perspectives: the nature of the object being measured and the nature of the instrument used. Temperature is a physical phenomenon measured by an instrument based on the observation of physical variations.
A student’s “level” is not an objective internal measure (such as blood pressure, for example) but rather an assumption about the development of a set of “abilities” (knowledge, skills, interpersonal skills—it’s difficult to define them precisely) that can only be assessed through behaviors that are supposed to express them more or less directly. The grader assesses the presence (or absence) of these abilities, which can never be proven with certainty.
A grade is merely a (convenient—hence its popularity) way of expressing an overall judgment on “abilities to” that are always hypothetical and, by their very nature, elusive. So there’s little point in getting worked up over a single point more or less. The key is to do everything possible to prevent the most harmful biases and the most troubling discrepancies.
The often scathing criticism of the “dumping” of high school diplomas is based on the observation that graduation rates have risen sharply and almost continuously. They rose from 49.8% in 1967 to 79.5% in 2000, 95.7% in 2020, but 93.8% in 2021. At the same time, the percentage of high school graduates in a given generation has skyrocketed, from 5.1% in 1950 to 86.6% in 2020 (and then 83.1% in 2021). If value goes hand in hand with scarcity, what is the worth of a diploma that anyone can obtain without difficulty?
But two questions arise. First of all, when does the “downgrading” begin? Where is the line between a normal increase (generational progress) and a demagogic increase (the desire to boost a policy’s image by misrepresenting the actual level)? Who can claim to be able to indisputably set the success rate to be considered optimal—because it is “fair”—and to acceptably reflect the quality of the school system?
Can we, then, assume that the lower the pass rate, the greater the reliability and value of the degree earned through an exam? Shouldn’t we, on the contrary, welcome a high pass rate, which would signal the system’s educational excellence and the success of the teachers’ work?
Shouldn’t secondary education aim for a 100% success rate? Aiming for a lower rate would amount to sanctioning the exclusion of a significant portion of France’s youth. In any case, no research shows that the more rigorous an exam is, the more reliable it is.
The third misconception is, at first glance, more difficult to refute. It can be described as the belief that there is an unhealthy tendency within the national education administration—and under pressure from policymakers—to manipulate high school graduation exam scores. It should be noted that this suspicion is all the more common among union leaders because the executive branch is dominated by parties they do not support.
One can imagine human hands (those of the ministry) surreptitiously manipulating the levers of the grading system to skew the results in their favor. This effort to skew the results would go hand in hand with a desire to strip the panels of their power to judge. This would ultimately reveal a disregard for the graders who had scrupulously carried out their work beforehand.
But should we assume that the administration is prone to “internal backroom deals”? Should we cast suspicion on it for having an irrepressible tendency to sell off assets—out of political calculation and, ultimately, demagoguery?
Such a suspicion is highly disparaging toward the ministry’s staff—and even toward policymakers. The opposite assumption—that there is a sincere desire to assess as accurately as possible the “level” of both the system and individual students—is at least as valid. This avoids falling into a fiercely populist critique that “everyone is corrupt, everyone cheats.”
Changing grades—if there are serious reasons to do so—is therefore neither a sin nor a crime. There is no shortage of serious reasons: correcting possible imbalances in the severity-leniency ratio; avoiding excessive discrepancies between grades, which could result from differences in judgment among graders or from variations in the difficulty of the questions on the same exam.
Since grading is what it is—an inherently uncertain evaluation practice rather than a measurement—the moderation and harmonization of assessments (grades) are necessary to achieve both less subjectivity and greater fairness. Of course, the moderation process itself must be clear and verifiable. But assessment requires relying on the goodwill of all other stakeholders involved in the process.
