By Professor Doom
At many schools,
faculty face tremendous pressure to pass students, even if those students never
demonstrate understanding of the material…even if they ever even show up. I’ve
certainly been at places where I felt I needed permission to fail students,
both from the student and from admin. Every single time there’s been a problem
with grading in my career, it’s been a complaint from a failing student.
Now, obviously I
can’t speak for all of higher education, but it’s well known that the standard
grade in higher ed is A- (it was 2.55 in the 50’s, but well past 3.2 nowadays).
I’m hardly the only faculty to have gotten the memo regarding grading.
I recently
covered a professor
who stated explicitly on the syllabus that students could just pick their own
grade, among other things. He wasn’t being serious, he’d just had
enough of admin telling him how to grade “with a wink and a nod,” and simply
wanted them to state in writing that they controlled grading. They fell for it,
of course.
Other professors
are following suit, although not as a ploy to make admin reveal themselves…but
simply because they’re so tired of it.
I really feel the
need to point out grades are a simple tool, represent essentially nothing in
the long run (and not much in the medium or short run, either). I’d love to
pass everyone, give everyone an “A,” but bottom line they do such a good job in
motivating kids to study harder, to learn more, to strive harder to achieve
their goals that, even though I know ultimately they’re a farce, I feel the
benefits for using grades far outweigh the moral questions of treating things I
know are useless as though they were of value, to manipulate people.
5 Lowest Grade Point
Averages
·
Chemistry
- 2.78 GPA
·
Math -
2.90 GPA
·
Economics
- 2.95 GPA
·
Psychology
- 2.98 GPA
·
Biology
- 3.02 GPA
5 Highest Grade Point
Averages
·
Education
- 3.36 GPA
·
Language
- 3.34 GPA
·
English
- 3.33 GPA
·
Music -
3.30 GPA
·
Religion
- 3.22 GPA
--Hi
Education Department. Again. At the risk of boasting, my undergraduate GPA was
3.54—unimpressive by today’s standards, but pretty good a couple score years
ago.
Anyway, some
professors are moving away from grades as motivational tools, and instead
simply using them as a means of getting permission from students. More
accurately, they’re using them as just another form to fill out:
Again, there’s
long been a push to take all subjectivity out of grading, and when I took a graduate
level Education course as research for my book, to a
considerable extent, my ‘A’ grade was simply because I’d checked off all the
boxes for my “research” paper (even though doing so made for a far less
readable work than anything on my blog).
Thing is,
non-subjective grade is a fiction. It doesn’t happen. Even in mathematics,
there’s considerable subjectivity in grading. Even a perfectly correct answer
can be marked wrong for “not enough work shown,” with “enough” being the key
subjective concept there. Obviously, I make effort to be fair, but I’m certain
my attempts at fairness with integrity will be more beneficial than any attempt
at fairness without integrity, which is what “contract grading” gives.
“Contract grading”
refers to the professor telling the student exactly what the student needs to
do to get a certain grade. Much like trying to distinguish “democratic
socialism” from “socialism,” ultimately there’s no difference between this and
grading. The only real difference is now, when a student gets a grade he didn’t
like, the professor can say “contract,” and hope for the best.
The article I’m
quoting from looks at a particular professor, who explains:
“At the end of the semester, if the student completed the
specific work they said they would, at the satisfactory level, they receive the
grade they planned to receive,”
Did the gentle
reader note the phrase “at the satisfactory level” in the above? That’s the
subjective part. I give A’s to students who pass my tests at the satisfactory
level, too, and I don’t make any claim of using contract grading.
In her email, Gonzalez urged her former
students to sign up for SPA 270, indicating that only two students have
enrolled thus far and the class is in danger of being canceled.
“I want to make sure you know about some
important innovations I am introducing in the course [contract grading] so that
you can decide today or as soon as possible whether you want to take SPA 270
“SPA 270” is a
Spanish Literature and Cultures course, and in this case it’s clear the
contract grading is being used simply to drive enrollments. I rather wish the
professor luck, even if she also teaches the more popular Gender and Sexuality
courses on campus as well.
Courses like SPA
270 used to be of more interest to students and had little need of grading
gimmicks, but the skyrocketing tuition means students have no time for courses
of little job relevance, especially as more ideological courses are becoming
ever more mandatory, squeezing out time for students to study courses giving
them a less politicized view of other things.
Naturally,
contract grading has a study showing it’s a great idea, and from such a study
we learn contract grading is
“used
frequently, but discussed rarely. A Google search reveals a surprisingly large
number of teachers who use some form of learning contract in various
disciplines for diverse goals.”
This is because to
a large extent all grading is contract grading. A comment from a mathematics
students explains ultimately why, even if contract grading really meant much
more than just “grading,” it still would be useless:
“It degrades trust in your achievement by
outside authorities, including employers, grad schools, scholarships etc.,” he
told The College Fix. “Imagine
if an employer saw that you got an A not because you were truly one of the best
in the class but because you fulfilled some requirement YOU personally set.
Would he really trust that A? I think not.”
The article I’m quoting from allows
comments, and there are over 600 of them, none in support of this new-fangled
idea. If people only knew that this type of grading is indeed increasingly
common, where ultimately the degree is a matter of filling out forms rather
than actual demonstration of learning, then would there be a mass outcry
against our hideous student loan scam paying for it all?
Probably not.
No comments:
Post a Comment