[professoretc]

I heard a few faculty suggest that at my school and my reply is always, if I fail everyone, isn't that also equitable? (I.e., if "equity" in final grades is your single goal, adding 100 points to everyone's grade, and subtracting 100 points from everyone's grade will have the same effect.) And of course people react with horror and talk about how unfair that would be, revealing that deep down, they really do believe that grades should be tied to student performance.

[simiones]

But that's just it: this is a misunderstanding of what "equity" means, and it is certainly a misunderstanding of what the author/interviewee meant by it.

The article is strongly about more performance-oriented, meritocratic grading, not less so.

It considers this to be a problem of equity since current grading practices (in the opinion/experience of the author, at least) disadvantage certain students who perform better than others but have other problems (less access to tutors, less time for homework, less preparation before class etc).