American laws mandate a certain number of days of instruction in a ‘complete’ year to receive federal funding. If enough days are cancelled for weather/safety concerns they will be made up at the end of the year so that the funding is not compromised. It’s a simple, measurable method of keeping things consistent between locales. Effective… well, that’s not something our laws are particularly known for.
But then people decided to start suing the school when their kid broke their arm at recess and the school didn’t cover the medical bills. Then the risks became too great and it all went away. — This is why we can’t have fun things. Someone always messes it up for the rest of us.
Grading on a curve accounts for the ‘optimism’ of the teacher/professor when they were creating the test itself. It is true that you either know it or not, but it is not exactly clear if it was reasonable to ask you to know it in the first place. Hence a curve. I always considered it a correction for the teaching/test writing.
American laws mandate a certain number of days of instruction in a ‘complete’ year to receive federal funding. If enough days are cancelled for weather/safety concerns they will be made up at the end of the year so that the funding is not compromised. It’s a simple, measurable method of keeping things consistent between locales. Effective… well, that’s not something our laws are particularly known for.