Are Course Grades Comparable Across Classrooms? Instructor-by-Term Heterogeneity in Undergraduate Mathematics Assessment

Summary

A measurement study of classroom-level grade heterogeneity in undergraduate mathematics, asking whether a common numerical grade \(g\) can be treated as empirically exchangeable across instructor-by-term contexts.

Context

The paper separates recorded grades, classroom-relative position, and latent mathematical proficiency, and treats standardization as a change in estimand rather than a universal correction.

Main contributions

• Uses retained exploratory evidence spanning 26,140 student-classroom observations, 77 instructors, and 769 classrooms from 2019–2025.
• Frames grade comparability as a measurement problem rather than an instructor-ranking problem.
• Plans distributional-distance, temporal-stability, and raw-versus-standardized reclassification analyses within comparable course-period strata.