My husband grades his university classes on a 'curve', BUT it's not a "true" curve where 10% must fail, and 10% get A's and most students get "C"s. It's more look at the grade distributions, have a lower bound that isn't passing and assign grades based on what usually end up as obvious clusters with a goal of fairly evenly distributing the grades between A-C, giving out only minimal and usually deserving D's & F's.
I like that. Actually, quite a bit - I like how grading on a curve reduces grade inflation/high amounts of A's and B's, but it always did bother me how 10 percent had to fail. I don't think teachers should fail students "because it fits the curve", only if they truly don't deserve to pass. It seems to me like that many kids wouldn't be failing in every single class, and some especially tough ones could potentially have more.
