Grading Dilemma (To F or not to F)

[Between Fields]

I'm a GT/RA at a liberal arts and sciences university; I'm the instructor of record for a first-year composition course, so I do all the grading, syllabus-making, etc.

 

I recently got back my second set of essays. The assignment was simple: write a profile on something you're not familiar with, be it person, place, or event. The only caveat was that it had to be something local, so that they could do primary research. They also had to include a secondary source to support their paper. I had four people include no bibliography and no in-text citations. They all declined to have an individual consultation with me before it was due, and also failed to cite things in their first paper. 

 

My first thought is to hand out a few F's and move on with my life.

 

My second thought is to mark up the rubrics as F's (or incompletes) and give them 24 hours to fix it. (They wouldn't normally be able to revise this paper, only the ones later in the semester that are worth more.)

 

I'm torn, because I want to give people chances to succeed, but I also have said probably thousands of times that information that didn't come from their blessed brains must have a citation with it. I can't decide if the F itself is a teachable moment, or if I should let them revise (and in that way possibly undermining my own authority).

 

What would you do, if a student didn't follow the directions to the degree that the paper was basically ungradable? (The average for these four is approximately 54 out of 100, because of all the areas on the rubric where the citations were important.) Is it unfair to the rest of the class to give them an ultimatum like that? Keep in mind that they are first-semester freshmen.

[jmu]

Fail them and offer them the opportunity to make it up later with an additional, optional, paper. If they don't do it, it's on them.

[rlmcman]

I'm of the belief that an F with no other sort of discussion does nothing to help any student. If they're the type that aren't listening to you repeat over and over that uncited knowledge that didn't originate in your own head is plagiarism, they could be completely uninterested in finding out why they got the F and just complain about it. It might just be the shock they need to fix the problem, but they may be too apathetic or ashamed to initiate a conference with you.

 

I'd also say that you have a much better understanding of these students than we do and should do what you think will work best (helpful, I know ). We're not very far into the semester, and I know these types of classes tend to be big, but still. If you're still undecided as to what sort of discussion should follow their F's, ask the professor for his or her opinion! They'll know what's worked in the past and what university norms or regulations are.

[pears]

i agree with jmu, as long as you review & mark the papers in such a way that clearly states what they did wrong. perhaps attach a copy of the assignment (i.e., the document stating the instructions) when you hand it back with the instructions they chose to ignore highlighted. you may also want to incentivize visiting you for help somehow, i.e., adding 5% to their grade on the next paper or the optional paper if they see you for guidance. go the extra mile (within reason, just this one time) to attempt to get some one-on-one face time with them.

 

if they ignore any way you choose to reach out or help, well... you can lead a slacker to water, but you can't make them think.

Edited September 23, 2013 by pears

[Between Fields]

We're having an in-class drafting day for the next assignment tomorrow, so I had considered talking to them individually, then. I use a rubric that is based directly from the learning objectives on my assignment sheet, and I've got it marked to explain exactly why they lost points in specific categories. Luckily for them, the paper's only worth 10 percent of their grade. I think I'm leaning more towards a very carefully-justified F and personal meeting, without an opportunity to redo it. I think, ethically, I'd have to give the whole class the opportunity to revise, if I did for these folks. 

[MsDarjeeling]

I would give out F's and mark their papers with clear notes on what they did wrong.  If your syllabus and rubrics are clear, you went over the information multiple times in class, and you offered in person meetings before the due date you've done your job.  Many professors don't do close to half of that and wouldn't bat an eye about handing out F's.  I would not give them an opportunity to redo the paper either.  If the paper is only 10% of their grade then I don't think failing it warrants the creation of an extra credit assignment either.  It also wouldn't be equitable unless you offered that to the whole class.  They can still earn a decent grade if they put forth the effort. 

 

Maybe these students don't care about this class, didn't care about the assignment, have personal life distractions, farted around and did it last minute, etc.  None of that is your problem and I'm sure every other student in class has a laundry list of issues.  They need to accept the consequences for not following instructions because in the workplace there often aren't second chances just pink slips.  Continue to make yourself available to them so that if they want to get in gear and do better next time they can. 

[St Andrews Lynx]

I also don't think that you going easy on them is going to help those students be good, successful scholars in a long term - when it comes to harder courses the standards will be more exacting and there won't be any second chances. It is better that they learn how to do things right the first time when they're still starting out. 

[Usmivka]

We're having an in-class drafting day for the next assignment tomorrow, so I had considered talking to them individually, then. I use a rubric that is based directly from the learning objectives on my assignment sheet, and I've got it marked to explain exactly why they lost points in specific categories. Luckily for them, the paper's only worth 10 percent of their grade. I think I'm leaning more towards a very carefully-justified F and personal meeting, without an opportunity to redo it. I think, ethically, I'd have to give the whole class the opportunity to revise, if I did for these folks. 

This has the added benefit of not making you spend additional time grading new papers. But I don't see that by giving them a chance to fix this issue you'd be giving them an unfair advantage--you could offer to ugrade them to a 'D,' or no higher than the lowest passing grade for making the fix (which sounds to me like just putting in a couple citations, so it wouldn't cost you much time on a regrade), and warn that it is a one time thing. A 'D' has the benefit that if they reengage, it is not quite so difficult to come back from, and it is less humiliating--depending on your students' backgrounds, an 'F' could give them the mental excuse to say 'I'm a loser and am going to fail anyway, so why try at all.' Are you going to drive them to drop the course if you give them an 'F' on their first ever college assignment? You probably have a better guess as to the answer than any of us. How'd it go today?

[jmu]

I would give out F's and mark their papers with clear notes on what they did wrong.  If your syllabus and rubrics are clear, you went over the information multiple times in class, and you offered in person meetings before the due date you've done your job.  Many professors don't do close to half of that and wouldn't bat an eye about handing out F's.  I would not give them an opportunity to redo the paper either.  If the paper is only 10% of their grade then I don't think failing it warrants the creation of an extra credit assignment either.  It also wouldn't be equitable unless you offered that to the whole class.  They can still earn a decent grade if they put forth the effort. 

 

Maybe these students don't care about this class, didn't care about the assignment, have personal life distractions, farted around and did it last minute, etc.  None of that is your problem and I'm sure every other student in class has a laundry list of issues.  They need to accept the consequences for not following instructions because in the workplace there often aren't second chances just pink slips.  Continue to make yourself available to them so that if they want to get in gear and do better next time they can.

 My suggestion of the optional paper was to make it available to everyone who wanted to improve their grade, not just these students.

 

In any case, I don't think taking a hands off, "tough crap" approach is the best idea. It can be seriously discouraging to students. Being firm about the grade but talking to them about it and giving them another chance puts the ball in their court, doesn't undermine your authority, and allows them to learn from their mistakes and move on. I have met a number of people who have dropped out of programs because they felt as though their professors weren't supportive and just left them to fail.

[dr. t]

 My suggestion of the optional paper was to make it available to everyone who wanted to improve their grade, not just these students.

 

In any case, I don't think taking a hands off, "tough crap" approach is the best idea. It can be seriously discouraging to students. Being firm about the grade but talking to them about it and giving them another chance puts the ball in their court, doesn't undermine your authority, and allows them to learn from their mistakes and move on. I have met a number of people who have dropped out of programs because they felt as though their professors weren't supportive and just left them to fail.

 

If I did the work and got an A the first time, allowing retakes still dumps all over the work I just did.

 

I like the option of allowing a rewrite for a D or C-. Going forward, for a freshman course I would ramp up the grade % assignments are worth towards the end of the semester so that you can fail the first one and not be totally done in the course.

[rising_star]

We're having an in-class drafting day for the next assignment tomorrow, so I had considered talking to them individually, then. I use a rubric that is based directly from the learning objectives on my assignment sheet, and I've got it marked to explain exactly why they lost points in specific categories. Luckily for them, the paper's only worth 10 percent of their grade. I think I'm leaning more towards a very carefully-justified F and personal meeting, without an opportunity to redo it. I think, ethically, I'd have to give the whole class the opportunity to revise, if I did for these folks. 

Whatever you do, do not single them out in class. It will not help things. What I would do were I in your shoes, is schedule individual meetings with each students and talk with them about their paper to understand why there are no citations. Is it because they didn't understand how to cite material? Because they didn't know they had to? Because EndNote screwed them over? (I realize that last one is unlikely but it happened to me during my master's.) You can use the reason why they didn't have citations as the basis for deciding whether they should be allowed to rewrite. Because honestly, if you just fail them, even if it's on 10% of the grade, you're showing them that one mistake (which may have been an oversight in their eyes or may have been intentional, impossible to know without asking) means they earn the same grade as someone that lifts their paper from Wikipedia or an essay site. And that's incredibly discouraging for students.

 

 My suggestion of the optional paper was to make it available to everyone who wanted to improve their grade, not just these students.

 

In any case, I don't think taking a hands off, "tough crap" approach is the best idea. It can be seriously discouraging to students. Being firm about the grade but talking to them about it and giving them another chance puts the ball in their court, doesn't undermine your authority, and allows them to learn from their mistakes and move on. I have met a number of people who have dropped out of programs because they felt as though their professors weren't supportive and just left them to fail.

I'm with jmu on all of this. I only take a "tough crap" approach when dealing with juniors and seniors because they've all had freshman comp, they all know they need to cite, etc. I cut them way less slack than I cut freshman. And yes, giving them another opportunity gives them a chance to learn from their mistake. If they learn from it, they're less likely to repeat it.

 

If I did the work and got an A the first time, allowing retakes still dumps all over the work I just did.

Unfortunately, a lot of students think like this. But, we don't all learn at the same rate. Not everyone can grasp the material in the same amount of time so allowing people to redo their work for a higher grade gives them the chance to learn from their mistakes and take another shot to grasping the material. Pedagogically, it has excellent value, even if the A+ students out there can't stand it. (And, I write this as someone that hated it as a student but now understands it as an educator.)

[jmu]

If I did the work and got an A the first time, allowing retakes still dumps all over the work I just did.

The university, especially at the lower division level, is not a level playing field where everyone comes in with the same knowledges. It's not fair to any of the students to assumeit is.

[dr. t]

The university, especially at the lower division level, is not a level playing field where everyone comes in with the same knowledges. It's not fair to any of the students to assumeit is.

I can see that argument, but not when the required skill is "following directions."

[jmu]

I can see that argument, but not when the required skill is "following directions."

There is more to it than "skill," though.

[MsDarjeeling]

If I did the work and got an A the first time, allowing retakes still dumps all over the work I just did.

 

 

 

Exactly!  While I agree that a redo shouldn't just be offered to a select few it is completely unfair to the students who followed the instructions, put in time and effort, and possibly used the option of meeting with the professor for assistance.  Plus it gives the impression that one doesn't need to work hard in the first place because there will just be a redo opportunity later.  Life seriously doesn't work that way. 

 

Sure some students learn at different speeds, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed a redo every time they didn't grasp something right away.  You can learn just as much from your failures as your successes and I say that after having the experience of failing a class more than once because I just wasn't getting it quick enough despite my efforts.  I had maintained all of the skills needed from the prereqs so going backwards wouldn't have helped.  I seriously had to suck it up, ask for help, and work harder to grasp the new material.  Eventually I did get it and aced the class.  And let me tell ya, that is my favorite passing grade to date =)   

[danieleWrites]

Perhaps a little late to the discussion, but you have two issues at play in assessment that involves plagiarism.

 

First: plagiarism/academic integrity. This is a two-fold issue. The primary issue (in my pedagogical view) is how to make sure students leave the course understanding academic integrity, and how to make sure they papers they turn in conform to academic integrity conventions (aka, MLA, APA, CSE, etcl). If you can, find a way to take the class temperature on plagiarism and documentation styles (MLA, APA, etc.) How do they feel about it? Why do they think you're so picky about it? What does the university think about it? Do they know what plagiarism is? Many high school students, even ones with AP credits, believe that they don't have to cite anything from the internet, ever, or that if they paraphrase something enough, so their sentences don't look much like the original sentence, they don't have to cite and that's not plagiarism---they might have been taught that in high school. After pedagogical concerns (aka "teaching moments"), there's developing an objective standard/process for dealing with papers that have plagiarism issues. You should have a policy, one you've thought out and written down for yourself, that you can articulate to everyone in class as needed, that can be used for any assignment, and is in compliance with departmental and university policies on plagiarism. This is simply pre-planning for your own peace of mind, and something you can devise to support pedagogical aims. Like you, I believe that composition teachers bear a larger burden of responsibility for teaching students how not to plagiarize simply because we're teaching them how to write papers for college.

 

The second issue is one of assessment. This is the downfall of many a composition teacher. We like our students. We want them to all get As and go on to have fabulously successful lives. But we especially want them to write fabulous papers and it's painful when something that seems so nitpicky (MLA, for example) is their downfall. My university requires that all suspected plagiarism be turned into the academic integrity people, and they will decide if it's plagiarism or not. That includes missing citations, even if it's just one. Anyway, back to assessment. When students turn papers in, we don't see just the paper, but the student, too. How much effort went into it? If someone toils on a paper with office hour visits and writing center visits, but the paper quality is C, we want to give them Bs because of effort. If we get a paper without citations, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, they didn't intend to plagiarize, they obviously wrote the paper, they just didn't do the MLA. Ethical, objective assessment can only grade the product. You can't grade effort or intent (you can't really judge intent, anyway). A grade is more than feedback for the quality of work, it's a certification. A C-level paper with a B on it certifies that this paper is B-quality, and that this student does this level of work. My long, rambly point: when you get a paper with missing citations, the dilemma isn't in the assessment, but in the teacher. We don't want to fail a well written paper for plagiarism because that means we're calling the student a cheater. But, we must assess ethically. This is were a clear, logical, and articulated policy works. We can apply objective criteria to an inherently subjective assessment.

 

My policy, and this works for me and the department, is to simply reject the first paper a student turns in with citation-level plagiarism along with a specific due date to resubmit the work and requirement for an out of class conference within a time frame. I use that conference to teach citation and why it's important. And it's not because I'm picky. The very few times I've had to do this, I haven't had further problems. I follow department and university policy for turning in someone else's paper with their name on it. It's my job to make sure they know how to not make citation-level errors, so I should expect that mistakes are made.

 

You can find this on JSTOR:Power, Lori G. "University Students' Perceptions of Plagiarism." The Journal of Higher Education , Vol. 80, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2009), pp. 643-662. It's a decent study of student attitudes toward plagiarism, and what they think it is. There's not much on how to handle specific cases (that's a policy matter), but there's a lot of pedagogy theory on the hows, whys, and wherefores of plagiarism, particularly with assessment. The research going on about plagiarism seems to come from the idea that if we can understand student thinking on plagiarism (from lack of motivation to use MLA correctly all the way to buying an essay from a paper mill), we can apply that to classroom teaching to reduce plagiarism (both intentional and unintentional).

 

This is the move-beyond-assessment thing. How do composition teachers discuss plagiarism and academic integrity in the classroom? How do students understand it? That kind of thing. For my purposes, I think about how to incorporate discussion on academic and research integrity in the course itself so that students can understand why academia cites the way it does, and looks at intellectual property the way it does, and then make good decisions from that base of knowledge. I have no clue if I'm successful.

[jmu]

Exactly!  While I agree that a redo shouldn't just be offered to a select few it is completely unfair to the students who followed the instructions, put in time and effort, and possibly used the option of meeting with the professor for assistance.  Plus it gives the impression that one doesn't need to work hard in the first place because there will just be a redo opportunity later.  Life seriously doesn't work that way. 

 

Sure some students learn at different speeds, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed a redo every time they didn't grasp something right away.  You can learn just as much from your failures as your successes and I say that after having the experience of failing a class more than once because I just wasn't getting it quick enough despite my efforts.  I had maintained all of the skills needed from the prereqs so going backwards wouldn't have helped.  I seriously had to suck it up, ask for help, and work harder to grasp the new material.  Eventually I did get it and aced the class.  And let me tell ya, that is my favorite passing grade to date =)   

 

Your situation and reaction does not translate to everyone. As a former college dropout, believe me.

[St Andrews Lynx]

I'm going to make a controversial statement.

Sometimes it is a good thing to drop out of a program. 

 

The numbers of people going to college are rising, the prices are rising...and at the same time the 'value' of an undergrad degree is falling. Where once it was perfectly acceptable for young people to take up a trade, nowadays college is viewed as the be all and end all. Society judges you a success or a failure by whether you attend a university and get a degree.

 

To be blunt, college-level learning isn't for everyone. Kids end up taking the wrong degrees (engineering instead of liberal arts, or vice versa) either because they don't know what they really want to do...or their parents "strongly recommended" they study it...or they don't realise there's a mismatch in their interests or abilities...or they just aren't suited to academia full stop. 

 

I don't think the possibility of some freshman dropping out because of an F-grade on their paper is something that a TA should be afraid of. Nor does it mean that you're failing in your duty of "helping people succeed". You've just not got to confine personal success to an academic setting. 

[dr. t]

I'm going to make a controversial statement.

Sometimes it is a good thing to drop out of a program. 

 

The numbers of people going to college are rising, the prices are rising...and at the same time the 'value' of an undergrad degree is falling. Where once it was perfectly acceptable for young people to take up a trade, nowadays college is viewed as the be all and end all. Society judges you a success or a failure by whether you attend a university and get a degree.

 

To be blunt, college-level learning isn't for everyone. Kids end up taking the wrong degrees (engineering instead of liberal arts, or vice versa) either because they don't know what they really want to do...or their parents "strongly recommended" they study it...or they don't realise there's a mismatch in their interests or abilities...or they just aren't suited to academia full stop. 

 

I don't think the possibility of some freshman dropping out because of an F-grade on their paper is something that a TA should be afraid of. Nor does it mean that you're failing in your duty of "helping people succeed". You've just not got to confine personal success to an academic setting. 

As a former college dropout now in the process of earning his second Harvard degree (oh yeah drop that H-Bomb), I agree.

[Usmivka]

St Andrews Lynx, I don't think the view you expressed is really consistent with the current state of the US educational system and job market. This study from Harvard's Graduate School of Education indicates that more than half of American college students do drop out, with the vast majority not returning to finish their degrees. Meanwhile, more than half of all jobs in the US require some college, and as of 2007 more than 40% required a completed degree--nearly identical to the proportion of jobs that required only a high school degree in the 1970s. It is not exagerating to say that a BA is now the  baseline requirement for employment at most above-minimum wage jobs that a high school degree used to be. So an undergrad degree may not be quite the relative achievement it used to be, but if anything the value is increasing for large portions of the US population. Most sources that I've read indicate that this proportion will only continue to rise. While it is possible to have a successful career that pays a living wage without a college degree, those jobs are becoming increasingly rare and competetive. Given the relatively meager social welfare available in the US as opposed to most countries with similar living expenses, lack of academic attainment in theis sence can be a crippling setback, while a completed degree serves as a check against poverty. And an introductory writing class is something required of every US college student, so switching to some other academic track isn't terribly useful. Telknaru, while you have no doubt been successful, I suspect that a student that gets into Harvard, dropout or not, is a lot more likely to return to academia or otherwise build a successful career than the average student dropping out of US colleges as a whole (even excluding the Gates and Zuckerberg types that are dropping out to start a business).

Edited September 29, 2013 by Usmivka

[dr. t]

Telknaru, while you have no doubt been successful, I suspect that a student that gets into Harvard, dropout or not, is a lot more likely to return to academia or otherwise build a successful career than the average student dropping out of US colleges as a whole (even excluding the Gates and Zuckerberg types that are dropping out to start a business).

I did not drop out of Harvard. They do, however, offer an amazing second chance.

Edited September 30, 2013 by telkanuru

[danieleWrites]

St Andrews Lynx, I don't think the view you expressed is really consistent with the current state of the US educational system and job market. This study from Harvard's Graduate School of Education indicates that more than half of American college students do drop out, with the vast majority not returning to finish their degrees. Meanwhile, more than half of all jobs in the US require some college, and as of 2007 more than 40% required a completed degree--nearly identical to the proportion of jobs that required only a high school degree in the 1970s. It is not exagerating to say that a BA is now the  baseline requirement for employment at most above-minimum wage jobs that a high school degree used to be. So an undergrad degree may not be quite the relative achievement it used to be, but if anything the value is increasing for large portions of the US population. Most sources that I've read indicate that this proportion will only continue to rise. While it is possible to have a successful career that pays a living wage without a college degree, those jobs are becoming increasingly rare and competetive. Given the relatively meager social welfare available in the US as opposed to most countries with similar living expenses, lack of academic attainment in theis sence can be a crippling setback, while a completed degree serves as a check against poverty. And an introductory writing class is something required of every US college student, so switching to some other academic track isn't terribly useful. Telknaru, while you have no doubt been successful, I suspect that a student that gets into Harvard, dropout or not, is a lot more likely to return to academia or otherwise build a successful career than the average student dropping out of US colleges as a whole (even excluding the Gates and Zuckerberg types that are dropping out to start a business).

 

I have a few problems with this overly bourgeois reading that doesn't quite match up to reality. Globalization put the college = good pay, secure career to bed. The dichotomy is now offshorable/can only be done locally. You can't offshore a plumber, but you can offshore a radiologist. Current recession trends do not reflect long term status. We aren't building a lot of new construction or doing a lot of new remodeling, so the trades are out of work. It's not because they need a college degree, it's because we haven't bounced back.

 

Secondly, there's this sense of implied entitlement (though I think is the wrong word) in here. There's the idea that people need a college degree to get any kind of income that will support their families, and if they're having trouble in a course required for every degree, then it's incumbent on the teacher/school to make sure they pass the course so they can get the degree. Simply fact: not everyone can do college level work. Not everyone should. The standards should not be altered to give more people a chance to make it. It is incumbent on the student to meet the standard, not on the teacher to make sure the student passes.

 

While I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole idea that too many people are going to college and dropouts are a good thing, I agree with the Lynx. (Golfer?) I do my best to make sure my students do as well as possible in class by being as fair and objective as I can be in grading and assignments, as well as transparent. This also means that some students earn Fs. I do not give grades; I assess and apply the grade I think the student earned. I welcome students that would like to sit with me and advocate for a better a grade on an assignment; I will teach them how to do so effectively. I am human and I make errors in both subjectivity and misreading, so I think this is fair.

 

However, I do not assign or assess in any way that privileges a student's future over the academics in the course. I sympathize with the students I've had who have failed, and who have dropped out of school because the class was difficult for them, but to do alter my grading to help them is wrong. I will help them with office hours and emails, and with referrals to the various sources of help on campus (writing center, student learning accommodations, tutoring, remedial classes, counseling, and so on). But the standard exists. If they can't meet it, for whatever reason, it is up to them to work for the grade, and to get the help available. It is not up to me to make sure they do not get discouraged and drop out by altering grades.

 

I am completely certain not intend to imply that this is what should be done. However, your post in the context of this thread does imply that teachers need to have some sympathy and encourage students not to drop out because it's a stark life out there. This is true. But there is a line. We can inflate grades or alter grading practices to encourage students to stay in school. Lynx was clear about the line in a different way, even if he came across a bit callous. He's right. Some people shouldn't be in college. He's also right that there are too many people going to college (which is why the problem you're discussing is a problem--why pay to put nursing through apprenticeship and OJT, pay to train them to be nurses, as it used to be done, when you can hire one that paid for their own training and has the degree pay for it?). The solution isn't to make sure everyone has a degree; the solution is to make sure there are jobs. That's a globalization issue, though, and so very Wallerstein.

[nugget]

Just thought I'd throw out another option to consider (although the original post is over a week old and the issue may have already been dealt with).

 

I once had a Spanish prof who would correct our papers, indicate our mistakes and give us either 24 or 48 hours to earn half of the points back if we rewrote the paper with the correct grammatical revisions. ex: a paper graded at 60% could increase to a maximum of 80% if all of the errors were corrected.

 

This may be an option to consider if you aren't comfortable with F's. ex: a paper given a 0/10 could be upgraded to a maximum of 5/10 if it is rewritten and the content and formatting has improved. Yes, they will still fail that component of the grading but their overall grade shouldn't drop by too much, mostly somewhere between 3-5% overall. 3-5% seems to be just enough to earn a lesson about following instructions but not so much that they may risk failing the course or getting an extremely low grade overall.

Edited September 30, 2013 by jenste

[Usmivka]

I have a few problems with this overly bourgeois reading that doesn't quite match up to reality. Globalization put the college = good pay, secure career to bed. The dichotomy is now offshorable/can only be done locally. You can't offshore a plumber, but you can offshore a radiologist. Current recession trends do not reflect long term status. We aren't building a lot of new construction or doing a lot of new remodeling, so the trades are out of work. It's not because they need a college degree, it's because we haven't bounced back.

 

Secondly, there's this sense of implied entitlement (though I think is the wrong word) in here. There's the idea that people need a college degree to get any kind of income that will support their families, and if they're having trouble in a course required for every degree, then it's incumbent on the teacher/school to make sure they pass the course so they can get the degree. Simply fact: not everyone can do college level work. Not everyone should. The standards should not be altered to give more people a chance to make it. It is incumbent on the student to meet the standard, not on the teacher to make sure the student passes.

 

While I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole idea that too many people are going to college and dropouts are a good thing, I agree with the Lynx. (Golfer?) I do my best to make sure my students do as well as possible in class by being as fair and objective as I can be in grading and assignments, as well as transparent. This also means that some students earn Fs. I do not give grades; I assess and apply the grade I think the student earned. I welcome students that would like to sit with me and advocate for a better a grade on an assignment; I will teach them how to do so effectively. I am human and I make errors in both subjectivity and misreading, so I think this is fair.

 

However, I do not assign or assess in any way that privileges a student's future over the academics in the course. I sympathize with the students I've had who have failed, and who have dropped out of school because the class was difficult for them, but to do alter my grading to help them is wrong. I will help them with office hours and emails, and with referrals to the various sources of help on campus (writing center, student learning accommodations, tutoring, remedial classes, counseling, and so on). But the standard exists. If they can't meet it, for whatever reason, it is up to them to work for the grade, and to get the help available. It is not up to me to make sure they do not get discouraged and drop out by altering grades.

 

I am completely certain not intend to imply that this is what should be done. However, your post in the context of this thread does imply that teachers need to have some sympathy and encourage students not to drop out because it's a stark life out there. This is true. But there is a line. We can inflate grades or alter grading practices to encourage students to stay in school. Lynx was clear about the line in a different way, even if he came across a bit callous. He's right. Some people shouldn't be in college. He's also right that there are too many people going to college (which is why the problem you're discussing is a problem--why pay to put nursing through apprenticeship and OJT, pay to train them to be nurses, as it used to be done, when you can hire one that paid for their own training and has the degree pay for it?). The solution isn't to make sure everyone has a degree; the solution is to make sure there are jobs. That's a globalization issue, though, and so very Wallerstein.

Hi danieleWrites, I'm sorry that's what you took away from my post. I did not make the argument that a degree gauranteed a good job, but that it is becoming a baseline requirement--those statistics include the two year technical degrees increasingly required for jobs like HVAC repair, plumbing, seaman, home living assistant. I relayed one of the conclusions of the paper, so I think criticizing my reading of that point is off base--I suspect you'd find much in there you agree with in the remaining text. The importance of a college degree for job qualification reality for many, regardless of whether you think it ought to be. Some of the most significant factors going into whether a student can or can't do college level work in the US stem from socioeconomic background, so I'd argue that stating someone is inherently unqualified for education and its benefits is a more "bourgeois" attitude than anything I wrote above. An aside for any readers who haven't read Marx in a while, "education as the key to success" is not an idea closely linked with the Bourgeoisie, but rather has been a tenant of socialism and stands in opposition to the idea of the middle-class as a selfish entity which hoards the benefits of modernization and globalization (the Bourgeoisie as used in sociology and political theory).

 

I did not imply that students are entitled to pass a particular class and wrote nothing to that effect. The point I tried to make are that college degrees are important for much of the work force, the lack of a degree can be a major setback, and therefore the stakes are high for students. Required courses for all majors serve as a bottleneck, and someone who is gifted academically in other fields can drop out of the pipeline at these points, so switching academic directions is not a useful suggestion in this context. For this reason it is imortant to consciously think about what standards are in such a class, how they have or could be communicated, and what level of flexibility is necessary to give students a fair shot. Hard and fast rules without room for empathy are not necessarily an effective teaching tool--is the goal to conform to a framework (eg a grading distribution or rubric) or to help students learn at any pace even if holds up the rest of the class? Niether extreme is good, but I personally believe that adhering to rules for the sake of personal consistancy is not a more moral or ethical stance. I have much more sympathy for a student who gets annoyed at what they perceive as an unfair advantage given to others than I do for the teacher that lays the bulk of the responsibility on a failing student. I was a TA for a student that dropped out with a failing grade, and I think that outcome is at least as much my responsibility as hers, since I took on that responsibility when I agreed to teach. Hopefully you follow where I'm coming from. Beyond the central point reiterated from the linked report, the rest of my posts are personal opinion--I don't agree with everything that's been posted, but I don't think they are invalid opinions either.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Usmivka

[Between Fields]

After also speaking to the professor mentoring the TA's, I did end up giving these students each a D- (and one got a D). I adjusted the rubric to emphasize certain other categories over citation, but made my displeasure evident. I can't remember if I mentioned that the assignment prior to this one was an exercise in summarizing and citing an article, in which some of these students had similar issues. This assignment was an exercise to see if they could cite multiple sources and provide the appropriate citation and attribution. On meeting with one of them, I upgraded his grade to a C-, after he showed me how and why he made the mistakes, and pointed out that he'd attributed things in other ways. The others didn't come to talk to me, so I didn't work with them on their grade. 

 

I do agree that it's not possible to expect the same work from a freshman as an upperclassman, but this institution emphasizes rigor at all levels, and at least in theory we've got "highly selective" admissions standards. I think I'd done a pretty good job of emphasizing my point that citation is mandatory. Surely, for this next assignment they've understood the message. 

 

I think next semester, I'll build in more revision. Currently, they can only revise the two medium-weighted papers in the middle, not this one I had issues with or the final research paper.