Dear college student who's not happy with your grade in my class:

[cab67]

Reasons I would be willing to alter your grade:

1. An error has been found. A score was entered incorrectly, something that you completed wasn’t entered at all, you found some mistakes in the way your final exam was graded – something like that. And the points returned to you are enough to make a difference in your course standing.

That’s pretty much it.

Reasons I’m not willing to alter your grade:

1. It doesn’t reflect your own subjective assessment of the effort you put into the class.

2. You’re applying for a highly competitive job or for some form of post-graduate education (grad school, med school, etc.), or you plan to join the military as an officer.

3. Your parent(s) and or guardian(s) will be so very disappointed if your grade isn’t improved.

4. You suffered from physical or mental issues throughout the semester, or had some actual scheduling problems that kept you from attending class regularly, but are only bringing it up now, long after I (or anyone else) can do anything about it.

5. You just realized you didn’t turn in a homework assignment. It's now mid-December, but it was due in October. (And no, I won’t give you an incomplete so you can "continue the dialogue" over whether your TA or I might be willing to change our minds. I’ve had someone ask that.)

6. You found an error in the grading of your first midterm, which you took two months ago.

7. You had an exceptionally busy semester.

8. You might lose your scholarship if your grade isn’t changed.

9. Can’t I be merciful in the spirit of the holidays?

10. You think I’m being unfair in assessing your grade based on what you actually turned in, and not on what you would have turned in if you’d done better.

11. You're "just not a science person." (Do you know what my advisor would have done to me if I’d done poorly in a medieval lit class and tried “I’m just not a humanities person” as an excuse?)

There are other excuses I can add to this list, but these are the ones I've encountered in the past couple of years.

And you know what? "How far am I from the cutoff for the next highest grade?" will always be answered with “not close enough to justify a grade change.” It doesn’t matter how far off they are are – students will invariably try to nickel and dime points from every exam and assignment in the hope of crossing that threshold. It wastes a lot of time and never results an improved grade.

Seriously – a grade is a goal to be achieved. It isn’t a commodity to be negotiated. And begging makes you look really pathetic.

sincerely,

your humble instructor.

[QED]

1. Same reply to HS students....

"But I tried so hard!" and of course "You just don't like me."

I only had one parent email about semester grades this year - parent asked about extra credit to raise the grade. Um...it's a bit late for that. And how about the regular credit?

Most of my kids are great but there are always a couple.

[AZLD4Candidate]

2. Dear High School Student that is unhappy with the grades in my class:

Here are the reasons I will alter your grade:

1: You just came into the district. I will only grade what you were there for in class.

2: Something serious happened, like YOU died and were resurrected on the due date. If so, I want something from a coroner or the funeral parlor showing that you died and they made a mistake.

Here are reasons I won't alter your grade:

1: Everything else.

Here's how you can improve your grade:

1: Turn in your work on time.

Sincerely,

Your humble teacher who has heard every excuse in four countries over the last 17 years.

[Tree Lady]

49. What would you do about high school that has 1,000's

Of too many students because its the final year before new school built and you were put into a chemistry class as a elective because all the ones you choose were full? And I didn't qualify because I hadn't taken the algebra required. From day one it was over my head, I asked for help, went to school counselor was told have to wait till end of semester. I begged them to move me anywhere not wanting a flunking grade on my record. To this day its my only one. The following semester I took a easy math class that was below me because they gave credits by how many tests you took so I did a full year in the semester making up the credits I lost.

To this day it still bugs me. I can tell by the start of thread this isn't the type of student you are talking about. You are talking about someone who hasn't tried.

The class made me feel stupid which I am not. I think if I had taken it years later I might have been ready.

[AZLD4Candidate]

53. I don't teach chemistry

[Aussie105]

3. There's always the race/religion/ethnicity card . . .

"You are picking on me because I'm (insert race/religion/ethnicity here)".

and the personal relationship card:

"It is obvious you don't like me. I'm going to report your victimization!"

[AZLD4Candidate]

4. Reponse to that: Report me. Say and spell my name right. Maybe I can

use the time off for a vacation.

[cab67]

6. I've never had a student try to race/religion/ethnicity on me.

[AZLD4Candidate]

9. I just pop back and say I'm Jewish and Native American, my wife is Chinese from China

Let's get into an argument has to who is oppressed and have been oppressed more in history.

That usually keeps students quiet and cows them into a weak "never mind."

[SWBTATTReg]

5. I am glad to hear of this instructor's strict adherence to awarding the grades earned. It seems

like (at least in my former company before I retired) that we had a lot of grade 'inflation' where we still had to send hired students to company school to not just learn the company specific utilities, programs, etc. (an IT shop), we had to teach the pure basics of what should have been learned in a college background, and not the company classroom. To be fair, we did have a lot of great students of whom I had the honor of them working for me and / or others in the company, but the numbers that we had to put through company school was sometimes unbelievable.

[cab67]

15. We can get in real trouble if we don't accept some level of inflation.

I'm not defending it in the least. However, a colleague at a different university was once called to the provost's office to explain why one third of his class received a grade of D or F. No amount of "But they didn't pass the exams" worked. This was someone who'd taught the course for many years and who encountered an unusually low-achieving group that particular term. He thought (correctly, in my view) that it was disrespectful to students who'd done well in previous terms to assign decent grades to students who didn't earn them.

My institution has an expected grade distribution for large-enrollment undergraduate courses. Suprisingly enough, it has nearly always worked well for students in the C+ through A+ range - most students earning A's are in the 90's (with a few 89's), the B range doesn't fall too far below 80 percent, and most C plusses are in the high 70's. The inflation is all at the low end, which is why I've got students with a class average in the 50's getting D's.

I typically reserve D minuses for students who would otherwise get an F, but whom I know to have tried very hard and had something getting in their way. I can't justify a good grade, but would rather at least give a passing one.

Bear in mind, the inflation starts long before they show up for college. We now have a workshop for first-year students before fall classes start that essentially tells them how to be a student. I mean things like taking notes, actually reading the textbook, paying attention to what's on the syllabus - stuff that, when started college in the 1980's, was assumed to be within the toolbox of every incoming freshman.

I could go on and on about why this is happening. I think the current emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests is partly to blame. When I started in this field, I would have lots of students ask how to study for a test. I still do, but I'm increasingly having students ask me how to take the test. That's a very different question. "By knowing the material" doesn't ever seem to be one of the strategies they've considered.

I'm not an expert on the subject, so I'm sure it's a complex and multifaceted problem. But the problem is real enough.

[PTWB]

7. Most of these seem appropraite.

That said, if you screwed up when you graded their exam, that's on you, no matter when YOUR error was discovered. It comes across as incredibly egotistical to refuse to fix a student's grade because they failed to discover YOUR mistake in a timely fashion. I'd raise hell until you fixed YOUR mistake and raise even more hell if you tried to blame YOUR mistake on me.

[cab67]

16. I have an explicit statute of limitations on my syllabus.

I want any grading problems brought to my attention within two weeks of getting something back. They're told this on the first day of class.

I repeat that when graded assignments or exams are returned to the students.

That being said, if the error is serious, I'll fix it regardless of the statute. But bear a couple of things in mind:

- the vast majority of such errors amount to somewhere between half a point to two points. Out of a course total of 400 or 500. It won't make a difference. And like I said, if it's a lot more than that, I'll fix it.

- in most cases, a student hasn't found an actual error that late into the semester. Those nearly always get found straight away. They're usually trying to justify their incorrect answers, hoping I'll split the difference with them.

That's the reason for the statute of limitations. I'd otherwise be awash in requests to regrade things at this point.

[PTWB]

21. I don't think that a statute of limitations in the syllabus really solves the problem.

It feels like the standards you've put in place are reasonable and are designed to teach your students that they're responsible for their mistakes, their time, and their preparedness. It appears that you're trying to teach them to accept responsibility and that's a good thing.

But it appears to undermine that lesson if you're passing the buck to the students to catch your mistake in a limited time window, otherwise it becomes their mistake.

If I were you I'd always fix grading errors regardless of when they were brought to attention (legitimate ones, not errors imagined in a fit of desperation). If the grading error were severe enough to change their ultimate grade in the class, I'd change that too. If it wasn't, I wouldn't.

Students should receive the grade they earn, no more, but also no less.

[cab67]

25. Based on my 25 years in this profession...

I can assure you that it really does solve the problem. Exceptions are made as needed.

I can also assure you that, in those >25 years, not a single student has missed out on a higher grade because a scoring error was brought to my attention late.

[PTWB]

26. Maybe it solves the problem in the sense that it reduces the inconvenience for you.

But it comes at the cost of undermining the lesson you're trying to teach, IMHO.

[Sympthsical]

8. I had an absolutely hard core professor this semester

He was not putting up with anyone's shit. You were there in person, on time, and your phone was silent and put away. He didn't care if you got up in the middle of lecture for a few mins to use the washroom. We're adults.

However, towards the beginning of the semester, there was a handful who would just wander outside, chat, and chill for 15 minute stretches. He was constantly warning them. "I'm just going to start marking you absent. Enough of that, and you fail and are dropped."

Well, one student was going through a bad break up or something. She was part of the outdoor chat group, but one class she was constantly in and out. Finally, without a word, the professor stops writing in mid-sentence on the board, walks out of the lecture hall, and we could all hear what he was saying. He was laying into them about attendance.

Walks back in, picks up the chalk, and goes on writing the sentence he'd started.

Then we could hear the crying outside. Then louder. Then her friend comes in, "Professor, she's having a panic attack." Without turning around, he replies, "What do you want me to do? I'm not an EMT. Call 911."

So the ambulance comes. There's all this drama. Her friends in class swore he'd lose his job.

Next session he walks up, flips on the overhead, shows us the school administration website. "This is how you report a professor."

He lasted. The outdoor chat group did not.

[rsdsharp]

13. I had a law school contracts professor who had a thing for the statute of frauds.

Basically, it’s a rule that says certain types of contracts have to be in writing to be enforceable. He told us the first day of class that there would be a statute of frauds question on the essay portion of the final, and you had to recognize the issue in order to pass. You didn’t necessarily have to get the answer right, but you had to articulate that there was an SoF issue raised.

He gave his test in two parts — essay and multiple guess. He used to give the essay portion first, collect the blue books, and check them for the SoF question. Then he’d come back to class during the multiple choice section, write the test numbers of those who failed to recognize it on the board, and tell the class if your number was on the board to stop the test; you had already failed.

A new dean stopped that practice, but he still had the rule. He just gave the essay portion second. When I took his class he had five essay questions on the test, but you only had to answers four of them; your choice. I immediately recognized that there would be more than one SoF question. In fact, there were three. He was a gigantic prick!

[DenaliDemocrat]

32. Like I said below- as long as the exams are fair

When I was in school the bell curve was sacred to those knuckleheads and you would often see material on an exam that had not been covered in class. One professor laughed and said “Oh, if you haven’t had Diff EQ - you’ll never get it. Um, we are sophomores sir. Most of us hadn’t had it yet. My high school didn’t offer anything beyond pre-calculus. He was a jackass.

I worked with a geologist who taught as well. For his final practical an exam where students had to identify the rocks - but they were all green. That shit was evil. He thought it was funny.

Imagine practicing football all week then you get out there and find out the other team gets to play with 14 players. No one would stand for that!

[rsdsharp]

47. The other half of this guy's exam was, as I said, multiple choice.

There would be five possible answers to each question; anywhere from one to all five could be correct. He didn’t change the exam from year-to-year. He just changed which answers he would deem correct.

BTW, my point in my first post wasn’t the essay questions, themselves. It was the gratuitous cruelty of embarrassing students, before their classmates, during the first of four law school exams in their very first semester.

This guy was not popular. His ambition was to be a bankruptcy judge. Former students were able to exert enough influence, whenever an opening occurred on the bankruptcy bench of either of the state’s judicial districts, that he was never able to achieve that ambition.

[yardwork]

34. How are these entitled students going to function in jobs?

[druidity33]

10. With this caveat...

sometimes people (also known as students btw) have a serious issue that bombards their life. Everything else gets put in standby for a bit. Let's say, oh, their best friend ODd, or their mom suffered a heart attack, or their brother is missing, you know, the generic "My life just got fucked" scenario. Let them take an incomplete? Make up the work? Do extra work? Case by case basis? Or still sticking with just reason #1?

[cab67]

18. Please see the commentary I posted before this one.

https://democraticunderground.com/100216144241

[druidity33]

27. Yeah, i hadn't seen that thread...

and that all sounds reasonable. My daughter is one of those students you take extra time with in class. Truly i thank you for helping those budding adults get through their struggles. They're a handful these kids nowadays. Have a nice holiday season...

[greenjar_01]

11. "mental health" crew gonna drag you to hell and back

It forgives all manner of sins, and has virtually infinite extension.

[cab67]

19. not necessarily

There are specific procedures in place to handle emotional crises. None of them would include changing a grade after the term has ended.

In a few cases, I've had a student's grade wiped from his or her record. This happens at the Dean's office and involves some serious (though compassionate) investigation. I've never contested the decision.

[FreeState]

12. Number four is the only one I take issue with

Often when people are having mental health issues part of it can be not expressing what’s going on. Basically to that individual this is saying if your illness causes you to act in an irrational manner that’s not an excuse. Mental health issues cause people to act irrational.

[cab67]

22. Again...

Please read what I posted previously (https://democraticunderground.com/100216144241).

Having been on medication for mental health issues since before this group of first-years was born, I'm well aware of the kind of paralysis that can come from a severe depressive episode.

Universities have procedures in place for dealing with such situations. I might excuse a student from an exam if that student is having a crisis, for example. Or I might find another way to accommodate such a student. To me, there is no difference (as far as being able to attend class is concerned) between being bedridden with a fever and being frozen in place with severe depression - they're both health issues and should be treated with compassion.

But there's nothing I can do if I'm unaware of the situation. Agreed, mental health issues can be paralyzing, and they come with a stigma that can make a student reluctant to divulge such information. Indeed, a student may not even be aware that he or she is experiencing a treatable illness and not just the usual doldrums. Such students may stop showing up for class. I'm required to report non-attendance at regular intervals, and hopefully those in higher pay grades will do something about it - but if don't get some information, there's no way for me to know whether a student has stopped attending because they're suicidal or because they're hanging back in their room with an X-box, a dime bag of euphoriants, and no parental supervision for the first time in their lives. One should be accommodated, and the other should not.

As I stated earlier, administrators sometimes clear a student's grades for one or two semesters if psychiatric problems are later brought to their attention.

[Ms. Toad]

24. There's a difference between changing a grade -

and making appropriate accommodations.

I had one student who took 3 semesters to get through my class. The first two times he was granted a grade which means he has to retake he class to earn credit. The third time through he was up against mandatory time limits for graduation. I extended his time until the latest that permitted me to review his work before I had to submit grades. Basically held his hand through finishing just enough to earn credit. I believe I even have given him credit for work done during the first two times through the class.

BUT - I did not change his grade. He earned a C-, with accommodations, but he earned it.

[lostnfound]

14. So glad not to have to depend on a teacher to teach me

That comes in point in life when you can teach yourself whatever you want to learn. It’s much more fun that way. And you don’t have this constant stupid judging with numbers of what your score is on some test. Also it can go down on your perrr-manent record. You can just focus on learning for the sake of learning.

I love learning. ‘Khan academy” is a very cool alternative.

[halfulglas]

17. Hate to telegraph my age but arguing for a bump up was never an option for me when I was in college.

Sometimes it was suspected a kid with a rich father had a chance to nudge it up, but not for us.

[Generic Brad]

20. My daughter has heard variations of the following from her peers

1) "Apparently you don't know who my father is."
2) "Do you have any idea how much money my family has donated to this to this school?"
3) "How much will it cost to change my grade?"

When the plutocracy butts heads with the academic meritocracy they lose every time.

[cab67]

23. I'm at a public university

I don't hear these very often.

[Generic Brad]

33. She's at an Ivy League

Seeing as we raised her in an inner city, she is not swayed by those arguments.

[helpisontheway]

28. My son had a Statistics professor last semester

that would not work with him at all. It was a difficult class but he maintained a C the entire time. Exam came along and he failed because he was unable to complete some problems due to time. Anyway, he was less than one point from the C that he needed for guaranteed transfer to University. He completed every assignment on time. He made an effort but she did not care. The university ended up admitting him anyway because he completed his associates with a 3.7 GPA. However, that professor was just rude about the situation. Thank goodness that was the only negative experience that he had in community college. And he had a very good transition to university.

[cab67]

29. out of curiosity -

what do you mean by "would not work with him?"

[helpisontheway]

30. I mean that she knew that he worked

extremely hard the entire semester. He never missed a single assignment or participation.He was taking the class online during a global pandemic. He ended up with a 69.2 and a 69.5 would have rounded up to the C that he needed. He asked her if there was any extra credit that he could do. She refused and was very rude about it. I tend to take rate my professor reviews with a grain of salt but if you see a pattern then that tells you something. The only other option for that class had worse ratings. At any rate she is a community college professor and she should have handled the situation in a different manner (not as snippy). Regardless, it did not stop my son. He has continued on at his dream university and will be a science teacher in about a year. I hope the incident with her will cause him to show a little more grace when dealing with his future students.

[cab67]

35. Except for the "rude" part...

...I would have done the same thing. So would the vast majority of instructors.

It's not personal. In fact, it can't be. We have to treat everyone equally. If there are legitimate reasons to change a grade, we'll change it - but it has to be based on the same criteria we'd apply to anyone.

Depending on the size of the class, there could have been several students with similar numbers. In fact, there could have been students with 69.4 or 69.3. Why should an instructor help one student and not the others? What makes that student an exception?

This is something I faced yesterday when assigning grades. I look for natural breaks in the scores to place grade boundaries. In many cases, the broadest breaks were less than half a point. I could put the A-/B+ boundary between 88.8 and 88.7, or between 88.7 and 88.1. I'm going for the latter.

Also, bear in mind that "worked extremely hard" is not so easy for us to assess. You say your son worked extremely hard. How can you expect the instructor to qualitatively assess the level of effort he directed to the course against that of other students with similar numbers? Believe me, and I'm not saying this to be flippant; it's based on many years of direct experience with the situation - if we don't include such subjective assessments when assigning grades, it's because we don't have enough information to do so. Unless, of course, you want us to line up all of the students and drill them on the number of hours spent studying or completing homework assignments.

If you think the instructor made a genuine error when assigning grades - that she or he was overly critical when grading a term paper, or didn't add the points up correctly - and the instructor refuses to discuss the matter with you, there are procedures you can follow. You can approach the head of this person's department, for example. If that fails, you can to to whichever dean would be relevant.

Just remember that we're bound by FERPA regulations to work with the student, and the student alone, unless we have some sort of written consent by the student to divulge information to someone else. That includes parents and guardians. I've had to deal with "but I pay her tuition!" often enough. The law is clear on the matter, and we can actually lose our jobs for violating it.

I am not, in any way, defending the attitude this instructor may have displayed. Rudeness without cause should never be tolerated. But please put yourself in our shoes before thinking we're being unfair for sticking with the grades we've assigned.

[DenaliDemocrat]

31. As long as your tests are an assessment of material

You actually covered in class and the tests are fair I agree. I remember professors using the tests to “challenge” us and a 45 was sometimes the average.

[cab67]

36. I've had averages below 75 percent.

Usually, it's for large-enrollment classes with lots of first-years, and the low average reflects a lack of preparedness on the part of the students. And by that, I don't mean they didn't study - I mean they came in expecting to barf back the results of rote memorization and were faced, sometimes for the first times in their lives, questions that ask them to apply what they've learned to draw inferences. The averages rise as the semester progresses and students figure out what I'm looking for.

I used to hate the kinds of weed-out classes intended to drive people out of a field. I was a geology major in college, and wanted to minor in biology, but never got the minor because I couldn't stand the classes intended to cut back on the number of pre-meds. (I also had a problem with a lot of the pre-meds themselves, but that's another matter.) I changed my mind when, through a couple of social circles, I met some actual medical students. The contrast was stark. Most of the pre-meds were there because they thought the medical field brought high salary and prestige, because Mom and/or Dad wanted them to be a doctor, or because they couldn't think of anything better to do. A handful seemed genuinely interested in practicing medicine. All of the med students were there to practice medicine. The weed-out system that I found so offensive suddenly didn't look quite so bad to me.

[DenaliDemocrat]

38. Then you aren't making fair tests...sorry

Or you aren’t preparing them properly for your tests. The larger the N - the more the average should be closer to 75 if the test were fair. In fact, if you are teaching science to the STEM kids, your average should be above 75. You have the kids with the high IQ.

And how did you test your hypothesis that the low grade was on them, not you?


“Challenge Them” = you aren’t fair.

Oh, and I’m a scientist too. I’m a top researcher for PFAS.

[cab67]

41. I respectfully disagree.

My large-enrollment classes are general-education courses for non-science majors, by the way.

[DenaliDemocrat]

43. You're teaching stats, and ignore the data?

In addition, the whole “I’m teaching them critical thinking” nonsense gets old.

You know what kids coming out if college CAN’T do today? They can’t follow a simple directive.

You know how many times I have told them:

No - I don’t want your opinion. You have a thimble full of experience. I want you to just fill out the drill log.

No - I don’t want you to reformat my report. It is the format the EPA prefers.

No - I don’t want you speaking up meetings. If someone has a question for you, I want you to answer it and spend the rest of the meeting taking notes and listening.

[cab67]

44. I don't teach stats.

I teach vertebrate paleontology.

[DenaliDemocrat]

45. I guess p-values don't exist in paleontology ?

This is a general education course?

[cab67]

46. They do.

So does condescension. Evidently, this exists in your field, too.

[DenaliDemocrat]

50. The whole premise of your post

Was condensation towards students who looked to beg their way into a better grade. I agreed with you, unless you know - your tests aren’t fair. You stated your average (in a class with a large N by your admission) does not hit 75. I stated that mathematically, if your tests were fair it should be. You attributed it to the students - not your tests or the way you present material. I’m sorry, statistically speaking, the problem is likely not the students. For that to be the case, we have to assume we have a population of slackers. Considering they are at University with minimum standards - the slackers should be an outlier.

[cab67]

51. Have you actually seen my tests?

I never said my averages never hit 75. In fact, the average for the final exam they took on Tuesday was 75.0 on the nose. But in some cases, the average on the first midterm is in the low 70’s. It’s been in the high sixties once or twice.

And yes, it’s on my students. I don’t know how much teaching you’ve done recently, but they often arrive knowing how to memorize and repeat, but not to apply information. It’s not a matter of ‘challenging’ them; it’s about getting them beyond basic rote memorization.

I warn them of this ahead of time. Repeatedly. I even gave them examples of the kinds of things I’ll ask. It often takes them until mid-semester to figure that out.

But most of them do, indeed, figure it out.

I’m sorry if my pedagogical philosophy doesn’t follow your arbitrary insistence on setting the mean at 75 percent, but I’d prefer to take criticism from those who’ve observed my class and/or seen the exams.

[DenaliDemocrat]

52. My "arbitrary" insistence

Is based upon - you know, a normal distribution. That of course, is assuming an independent and random population- which we don’t have here because you are teaching to a smarter overall population. A log normal curve would be expected

[cab67]

54. "a smarter general population."

You might think that, but it's not always true. Believe me.

[DenaliDemocrat]

58. Well, like I said - as a biochemist in the field

On the edge, my gripe is these kids come out of college thinking too much. They think they need to put their spin/opinion on everything. I don’t WANT their opinion. I want them to shut up and do as they are told. You say route memorization is bad, I WISH they memorized how to run an HPLC or take a soil sample. I wish they could run a simple t-test. I want them to take a data package and quickly tabularize it and give a brief and concise narrative. They can’t do it. They want to try and tell how THEY interpret the data.

[cab67]

57. Your premise can also be rejected...

...on the underlying assumption that we can and should expect a normal distribution centered on 75 percent, which itself assumes ac certain level of similarity in student ability.

I'm at a public university. We have to accept anyone from our state who graduates within a given percentage of their class. (I forget whether it's the top third or something else.) That includes kids from well-funded private schools, but it also includes kids from rural counties with poorly-funded schools and very conservative residents who don't always want certain topics taught or certain books read. In many cases, there are fewer than 20 or 25 students in a graduating class. We also get students - not many, but their numbers are increasing - from inner city districts who face their own challenges.

My students come from all kinds of socioeconomic situations. They come from urban, suburban, and rural areas. They come from highly supportive intact families, and they come from fractured famiies or the foster care system where they all but raised themselves. And their levels of preparedness reflect all of that.

We're not as selective as a private institution. The best of our students are just as good as the best students at the Ivies. But the worst of our students are far, far less qualified than the worst students in elite private colleges. Expecting a normal distribution from this kind of population is absurd.

This is true for all but the most elite public universities. I've spent my entire academic career at such institutions. I collaborate with a great many people at others. We all deal with the same phenomenon.

In other words, I don't - and can't - expect a normal distribution on my exams. Variation in student ability and preparedess won't allow it. That's not a matter of me being a terrible teacher (one who's won teaching awards, by the way) - it's a matter of a public institution having comparatively non-competitive admissions standards.

I mentioned that the averages on my exams are often at 75 percent, but are sometimes slightly lower. (They're never below 65 percent.). But do you know what I also get? Very large standard deviations and skewed distributions. I also sometimes (though not always) encounter bimodal distributions. A lot of the students really get it, and a lot of them really don't, at least at first.

My institution doesn't expect a normal distribution, either. It's expected grade distribution for intro-level courses assumes a long tail below the mean. It designed these expectations based on what college instructors of introductory classes actually encounter.

There is no way to avoid such assumptions unless I want to dumb the subject down past the level of academic utility. Our university is legally required to admit students who just aren't ready and/or able to do college level work. The tail is going to be there no matter how finely crafted our exams are.

That's just reality.

[DenaliDemocrat]

63. First of all

A Gaussian distribution would account for all of those variables if the N were large enough. That is what a “normal” distribution looks like.

Secondly, despite the differences I am assuming your state college has SOME requirements to be accepted? Your population IQ should be biased high.

Third, vertebrate paleontology sure does NOT sound like Chemistry 101 to me. I am going to make a guess you have higher level students in this course. I looked online, and it’s generally a 400 level course.

I’m just not buying it. The data doesn’t match your arguments

[cab67]

65. well.....no

The course I teach in the fall is a dinosaur course for non-majors. It's an introductory level course. It's below Chemistry 101 in terms of what we expect. Please ask before assuming.

I teach the kinds of upper-level courses you refer to in the spring. I do, indeed, get a higher caliber of students in those classes.

You'd be surprised at how lax admissions standards can be these days. Please do some research before responding.

But more to the point, please read what I wrote again - carefully this time. The issue isn’t whether these people are smarter than average. It’s whether they can be treated as having more or less equal levels of ability and preparedness. Can you at least acknowledge that they can’t?

[tblue37]

37. I always dreaded the moments after I submitted grades online because my email

account would be filled with whining and outrage by students who didn't get the grade they wanted.

I am glad not to be dealing with that now since I'm retired.

[Happy Hoosier]

39. I'd ask you to be compassionate on #4

My daughter is a survivor of sexual assault and suffers from PTSD. Transitioning to college has been tough for her. Her mental health issues also manifest as physical issues. And yes, she needs to act early, but one symptom of the anxiety of PTSD is not feeling worthy of help and avoidance.

My wife is a college professor, so I know you have limits and deadlines too.

But please try to be as understanding and accommodating as you can be. My daughter’s outlook really changed when one of her professors gave her a break and she felt like she actually mattered to him.

[cab67]

40. We are.

Please read what I posted previously: https://democraticunderground.com/100216144241

[brooklynite]

42. I don't know where you teach...

...when I taught at NYU (Grad School) I was pretty much told I couldn't give a B- or lower without being prepared to justify the grade to the student and parents.

[ecstatic]

64. What type of parents are involved at the grad school level?

Or hell, even undergrad level? That's so ridiculous! They need to grow up!

[brooklynite]

66. The parents who are paying the bills for their children's tuition.

[FakeNoose]

48. High schools are no longer preparing students for college level work

That's why we are where we are now. If high schools did their job, if students were actually prepared to do college level work, the world would be a much better place. Our country would be a much better place, forget the world.

Alternatively, parents need to realize when their little Johnny or little Susie aren't college material and should be sent to vocational training or the military. Things might improve later, but for now they aren't ready. Again, our country would be a much better place if parents took responsibility.

[struggle4progress]

55. I wouldn't assign grades if I didn't have to

but the school, and the system it's part of, expects me to -- and they lay out the expected meanings of grades: "A" is for exceptional work and so forth

So I do my best trying to honor that. I recognize I make mistakes -- and I recognize that my grading methods aren't incredibly precise. So I usually make a few errors in the student's favor when I calculate

Meanwhile, my students know exactly what my official calculation methods are; and I don't estimate grades for them. So "How far from the cut-off am I?" is answered by: Well, your scores are all posted, and the calculations and cut-offs are all given in the syllabus; do the calculations yourself and let me know what you get

In decades of teaching, I think I've only had a handful of students who ever bothered to check their grades

If students become argumentative without coherent reason, they get sent to the department chair. One "But I need this course to transfer" (last year or the year before) learned "That's not considered in department"

[cab67]

56. The cut-offs aren't always provided. Nor can they be.

For intro-level courses here (esp.the larger ones), the university has an expected distribution we're asked (albeit not required) to follow- the top 15 percent are A's, the next 34 percent are B's, and so on. We thus don't know the cutoffs until everything's been completed.

[struggle4progress]

60. The best scheme I ever saw for cut-offs, in large multisection

courses with a consistently graded final, was simply to list ALL the grades low to high and look for the gaps. They were always there and close to where you'd expect them to be

I know the cut-offs in advance, and put them in my syllabus, but I still look for gaps and sometimes adjust downwards without saying so, if justified by the gaps: this may mean 79 is a B, 68 is a C, and 58 is a D. Administration has never complained, and if a student complains about the grade, I merely point to the syllabus and ask them for their calculation

[Straw Man]

59. Yes. I turned in my grades yesteday.

I'm still waiting for the inevitable complaints.

I'm a sympathetic person. I'm not a hard grader. I give people every opportunity to succeed. I can honestly say that no one who has handed in all the work on time has ever failed one of my classes. I will even extend deadlines for people whose sob stories are remotely believable. But it's the ones who don't, the ones who come out of the woodwork and ask for "extra credit" (a reward for bad behavior) or a chance to make up missing assignments after grades have been posted that get the cold shoulder from me.

I have one student whose father contracted COVID and died during this past semester. She asked for an incomplete and an opportunity to catch up on missing work over the winter break. She wasn't begging; it was an honest request with a valid (and tragic) justification. That's where leniency is appropriate, and of course I granted her request. To the ones who say "I didn't know we were supposed to do a research paper" when we've been talking about nothing but that for the past month, I say "Tough shit," or politer words to that effect.

[XRubicon]

61. I got a few free A grades

One where the professor's first edition text book was riddled with errors, we were rewarded by helping to find and fix all the errors over the semester. One equation when solved resulted in 1=0....

Another time the professor passed away, everyone got an A.

[Meowmee]

62. You are lucky

If you have an administration that will support you in giving the appropriate grades.