How Can You Get Better?
I gave my first test in Intermediate Accounting II last week. As probably most of you know, this is a really difficult course. Every topic, every day, is complex. For this first test, I gave nine problems. I referred to these problems as puzzles because they were quite verbal. I find that the more numbers a problem has, the more likely it is to be a purely mechanical exercise. The students had 75 minutes to see how many of these accounting �puzzles� they could solve. It was a challenging test but, heck, it is a challenging course. And, maybe more importantly, it is hard to convince students that they can leap tall buildings in a single bound if you don�t make every test both challenging and fair. Here�s the good news: 19 percent of the students made an A. For my classes, that�s a pretty good rate. I had 19 percent of the students who did what I judged to be �excellent� work. I was pleased with that. Here�s the bad news: 48 percent of the students made a C and 12...