I think a good compromise would be to give everyone a histogram with anonymous results of their classmates, and an arrow “you are here”. So you know whether you are good or bad, but if you are bad your classmates don’t know it’s you. (Perhaps as an exception, the best one or the best three names could be made public.)
Every time my employer does some form of numeric feedback, I ask for essentially this. (I usually phrase it as “so, is that in the top 10%, the bottom 10%, or what?”) Every time, my employer refuses to answer that question in a reliable way. At this point, I just ask the question rhetorically.
I think a good compromise would be to give everyone a histogram with anonymous results of their classmates, and an arrow “you are here”. So you know whether you are good or bad, but if you are bad your classmates don’t know it’s you. (Perhaps as an exception, the best one or the best three names could be made public.)
Every time my employer does some form of numeric feedback, I ask for essentially this. (I usually phrase it as “so, is that in the top 10%, the bottom 10%, or what?”)
Every time, my employer refuses to answer that question in a reliable way.
At this point, I just ask the question rhetorically.