Next came the “curving” practice, which dictated that I convert a raw score on a test by multiplying the square root of it by ten. Hence, a score of forty-nine, an F, would be “curved” to seventy, a C minus. When I refused to curve grades, the principal had my department chair make the changes covertly. When I found out, I objected once again, and the principal rebuked me for “denying these children the opportunities all of us had.”
The phrase "grading on a curve" was meant to refer to a normal distribution, your classic bell curve, where the top x % got one grade, the next top y % got another, and so on, so each class had the same "curve" of grades, if plotted on a chart where the x axis was the grade and the y axis was % of students with that grade. The sort of "curve" this teacher describes is a log transform of the original grades, which flattens, but retains shape. Everybody can still get an A in this method.
