Not really, grading on a curve means that you need to bring all grades below 60 up to at least 60, so there will be a proportion involved. The worse your grade, the more points you get back, meaning that a score of 10 will get +50 while a score of 90 will get +2. (I'm a calculus student in high school man, I've got this math stuff.:P) Obviously this won't look fair to the guy sitting on top, but it still gets the job done by essentially removing the fail range. So, your score, by proportion would probably get +10, bringing you into the C range, which is a lot better than the D range. If you grade linearly, then you are grading on a line. I have never seen a teacher grade on a line, it is always a quadratic or high function.