Wednesday, November 29, 2006   Still Not Just Me  I don't know
who this anonymous science teacher is. I don't know anything
about his school. Here's what Mr. Lawrence noticed with a glance
at the grade book: This, however, really caught my attention:
out of 23 students in the one science class, fifteen were given
"F"s. That means there were eight in the entire class that
actually were passing, and their grades ranged from "A" to "C."
As I said, all I know about this situation is what you see
quoted above. What I can say is that the experience is familiar,
and at least somewhat typical, at my own school. I don't know
about every teacher's grades, but occasionally, from time to
time, a coincidental peek can be arranged.  I've often wondered
what to call this sort of distribution. The traditional bell
curve doesn't seem to apply so much these days. I flirted with
"hockey stick," shades of global warming and all that, but
there's that dip that Mr. Lawrence noted. The no "D" dip. You
get a majority of F's, and a