Why Aviation Training Can’t Be Graded on a Curve

Claire Brooks

So imagine you are, uh, sitting in the right seat of a Cessna one seventy two, and your student, let us call him Jimmy, absolutely slams the airplane onto the tarmac. I mean, a violent bounce, drifting sideways, tires squealing, the whole, uh, the whole terrifying package.

Oliver Hart

Right, a proper drop landing. And I am guessing Jimmy does not immediately offer a humble apology for nearly wiping out the nose gear?

Claire Brooks

No, not at all! He looks over, completely unbothered, and goes, well, hey, that was way better than Timmy's touchdown yesterday! As if, uh, as if aviation is graded on some kind of high school curve.

Oliver Hart

Ah, the old peer comparison defense. But in a cockpit, that logic is not just flawed, it is downright dangerous. In flight instruction, that brings us straight to one of the most foundational concepts in the Fundamentals of Instruction, or FOI, which is the difference between norm referenced and criterion referenced evaluation.

Claire Brooks

Right, because if you are norm referenced, you are just ranking students against each other, right? Like, congratulations Jimmy, you were the least terrible pilot in the Tuesday morning class!

Oliver Hart

Exactly. Norm referenced testing ranks you relative to a group. If the group is struggling, a mediocre performance looks like an A. But aviation safety strictly demands criterion referenced testing. Criterion referenced testing evaluates each student's performance against a carefully written, measurable, standard or criterion.

Claire Brooks

Against a carefully written, measurable standard or criterion. That is the key, because the runway does not care about Timmy.

Oliver Hart

It really does not. A twenty knot crosswind does not magically soften its gusts just because everyone in your ground school cohort struggled with rudder control. The physical reality of flight is absolute. The airplane stalls at a specific speed, the runway is five thousand feet long, and the standard says you must land within two hundred feet of your designated touchdown point.

Claire Brooks

Mm, yeah. It is, uh, it is binary in that sense. You either hit that touchdown point within two hundred feet, or you did not. You do not get a pass because your buddy hit the grass three hundred feet back.

Oliver Hart

You know, I, I, I actually have a rather painful confession from my early days as a certified flight instructor. I had a student, let us call him Dave. Dave was, um, he was struggling with workload management, really dragging behind the airplane during instrument approaches. But he happened to be in a ground school cohort that was, frankly, all struggling pretty badly.

Claire Brooks

Wait, so because he was the, uh, the best of a struggling group, you let it slide?

Oliver Hart

I did. I signed him off on a stage check because, relative to the rest of the class, he seemed like he was doing fine. I fell right into the norm referenced trap. And then, two weeks later, during his actual FAA checkride with a senior examiner, he got so overwhelmed during a simulated emergency that he nearly tried to land with the gear still up. The examiner had to step in and grab the throttle.

Claire Brooks

Wow. That is a heavy lesson. Because if you grade on a curve, you are basically sending someone into a real world environment where the standards are not curving for anyone.

Oliver Hart

Precisely. It was a massive wake up call for me as a teacher. The standards exist to protect the student from the instructor's own subconscious grading bias.

Claire Brooks

Which brings up another ridiculous thing Jimmy tried to do after that terrible landing. He literally pulled out a notebook and tried to give himself extra points because he avoided a flock of birds on final approach!

Oliver Hart

Extra credit for bird avoidance! That is inventive, if completely invalid.

Claire Brooks

Right! Which leads directly into those two big FOI testing concepts, validity and reliability. How do those fit into keeping the standards strict?

Oliver Hart

Well, validity means the test actually measures what it claims to measure, actual piloting competency, rather than obscure trivia or random luck. Awarding extra points for dodging birds is not a valid measure of touchdown skill. Reliability, on the other hand, means the test yields consistent, repeatable results regardless of who is sitting in the examiner's seat.

Claire Brooks

So if Examiner Alice tests Jimmy today, and Examiner Bob tests him tomorrow under the same conditions, they should arrive at the exact same pass or fail result?

Oliver Hart

Exactly. And that is why the FAA built the Airman Certification Standards, or ACS. The ACS is the ultimate criterion referenced rulebook. It ties knowledge, risk management, and flight skill together into one clear objective standard.

Claire Brooks

So it completely strips away the instructor's mood or whether you were better than Timmy yesterday. It is just, did you maintain altitude within plus or minus one hundred feet, yes or no?

Oliver Hart

Precisely. Because when you are flying a real approach in bad weather, there is no such thing as a B minus landing. It is either satisfactory and safe, or unsatisfactory and dangerous. It is entirely binary.

Claire Brooks

Well, next time Jimmy boasts about beating the class average, I am telling him the crosswinds do not grade on a curve.

Oliver Hart

Fair enough. Good chat, Claire.