Althouse: "Let’s say a student who received a C grade on a paper asks you to reread it and change their grade because they 'worked so hard on it.'"

April 30, 2015

"Let’s say a student who received a C grade on a paper asks you to reread it and change their grade because they 'worked so hard on it.'"

8 professors compose a response directed at the student, including one that begins "Dear C Student" and another that begins "Dear Student Who Must Be Out Of Their Mind" and is signed "Sincerely, Dr. 'I know you didn’t just come to me with this foolishness' Amin."

I don't believe this is really how professors respond to student requests. A polite refusal is all that's really needed. But these are letters written not to real students but for publication, and you might find them funny. Myself, I don't find them funny. It's too much the "punching down" kind of humor that really should be avoided by someone exercising power. A student may be thinking it doesn't hurt to try. Maybe it could work. And it's an institutional problem if students feel that way. Is somebody else raising grades in response to mere begging?

(At my school, teachers aren't allowed to change grades unless there's a computational error. You can't reassess the quality of the exams. There's also a required curve, so the grades all exist in comparison to the grades that other students received in that class. In a system like that, it doesn't make sense to redo your thinking for one exam. You should have to redo them all. And if anyone needed a higher grade, it should probably mean someone else should have to get a lower grade.)

99 comments:

TMink said...: Don't change the grade but give them a participation trophy.

Trey; 4/30/15, 10:37 AM
robother said...: Depends on the subject. For an Ethnic and Gender Studies Major, begging could be considered a core competency.; 4/30/15, 10:41 AM
Edgehopper said...: Two thoughts:

1. Where did this idea that punching down isn't funny come from? It's funny to watch people get mocked who we think deserve it. Quite often, those people don't have any power, but are annoying or entitled. Entitled college students deserve to be mocked.

2. Does anyone else find it funny how much of an inferiority complex comes across in some of the professors' letters? Paraphrasing, "I know this isn't some medicine or engineering course where your ability matters, but that doesn't mean I won't hold you to a standard!"; 4/30/15, 10:44 AM
Anne in Rockwall, TX said...: There is another blog I read by an American teaching English in Korea. He talks about the curve issue all the time.

I understand how it works, but does this curve offer some benefit? What purpose does it serve?

I can't quite wrap my mind around a system that says any single class can only have so many A's, so many B's and so on and it has been years and years since I was in school.; 4/30/15, 10:45 AM
Curious George said...: Waste of time to make the case of "working hard" to a professor...at least in the UW system. The concept is foreign to them.; 4/30/15, 10:53 AM
Michael K said...: Many years ago, during the idiotic 60s, a bunch of medical students announced they were not going to take the Surgery exam in year 2. It "wasn't relevant," they said. The professor, a friend of mine, gave them an "Incomplete" grade. In June they figured out that an Incomplete that was not corrected became a "D."

They then went to the professor asking to take the exam after all. Of course, it was six months since the class and they had to study all over.

One failed. He went to the professor to complain. He said, according to the professor who loved telling the story, that "They had asked the wrong questions on the exam." He said, "I know so much more about surgery than the exam asked."

The professor said, "OK I will give you a passing grade mentally. I'll just put the F on the paper."

The kid said "Mentally ! It's what's on the paper that counts !"

The professor loved telling that story.; 4/30/15, 10:54 AM
bwebster said...: In two years of teaching Computer Science at BYU, I only recall having one student coming in to protest the grade s/he got and to request a change. Said student came in with his mom(!), and when I explained his grade and the scores behind it, raised the issue with the Dean of the CS department. The dean left it in my hands, and the student kept the same grade.

This was 30 years ago. I can only imagine how many more such cases professors get today.; 4/30/15, 10:55 AM
Brando said...: "Where did this idea that punching down isn't funny come from?"

Exactly--it sounds more like not finding something funny because it's "too mean".

Humor at its root is based on the "unexpected". Often, this can mean taking someone down from their perch, but it can also be an ironic turn of events, or an absurd twist. But the idea that you can only find humor in going after those who are in power is absurd--in part because who decides who is in power? Is a salaried professor, who may have limited means, really in a positon of power compared to an entitled student who may come from a rich and powerful family? Would this be acceptable humor then?; 4/30/15, 10:59 AM
Brando said...: I once had a professor that gave me a B- on an exam when I felt (based on his comments) that I should have gotten a better grade. I wanted to discuss it with him, so at least he could explain his reasoning. He refused to--this was the same guy who said if you were a sophomore you shouldn't be in the class and can't expect a good grade in it (compared to juniors or seniors). He was a dick.

Another professor that same semester had me at the cusp of a better grade, and he gave me the option of sticking with that grade or doing an extra five page paper which could give me the extra credit to get over the cusp. I thought that was fair.; 4/30/15, 11:02 AM
Brando said...: There's nothing wrong with asking your professor to reconsider a grade, as the grades are often arbitrary to some extent--but if your argument is that you "worked hard" on it, that should have no bearing. If my mechanic screws up my car, I don't care how hard he worked on it--if it's screwed, it's screwed!; 4/30/15, 11:03 AM
Anonymous said...: Dear C Student: While I stand by my assessment of your paper and the grade will have to stand, I'm glad to learn how hard you worked on it: it encourages me, and should encourage you, to believe that your subsequent papers will be better.; 4/30/15, 11:05 AM
Unknown said...: May I point out that "student" implies one person, "their minds" implies more than one? Good job, whichever professor that is.; 4/30/15, 11:06 AM
James Pawlak said...: In two exams I got a higher grade by demonstrating that my response was also correct.; 4/30/15, 11:10 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: If a student told me they worked hard on their paper I'd tell them it's okay because I put very little effort into reading it so it all averages out.; 4/30/15, 11:12 AM
Michael K said...: "I once had a professor that gave me a B- on an exam when I felt (based on his comments) that I should have gotten a better grade."

When I was a freshman on scholarship, I had a Calculus professor who was almost unintelligible. Most of the problems I had were my fault but I went to talk to him and he said if I got an A on the final, I would get a B in the class. I got an A on the final and got a C in the class. That cost me my scholarship.

I went to talk to him but he didn't keep two appointments I made. One day, I was walking on the campus and saw him across the street. I called to him and started to cross the street.

He took off running the other way and I decided chasing him would not help my grade.; 4/30/15, 11:13 AM
DKWalser said...: My favorite story of grading on the curve is from my stats class. The professor spent weeks drilling into us the concept that you could reliably use a random sample to infer the attributes of the population but you could NOT use the attributes of the population to reliably infer the attributes of a sample. Stats work from sample to population, but it's a one-way street.

Then, in advance of our final, he informed us that our class would be graded on a curve. He then went on to say that grading our class on a curve was imposing the attributes of the population (all college students) onto the sample (our class) and that it was a misapplication of what we'd been studying all semester. We were free to take up the grading policy with the department. He'd already tried, and failed, to get the school of business to change its policy requiring grading on a curve, but that shouldn't prevent us from trying.

I got an A. Still didn't feel good about being graded on a curve. Never have.; 4/30/15, 11:13 AM
PackerBronco said...: My favorite professor in college had a saying: "Part of my job is to point out your ignorance to you."

Loved him. He was acerbic, witty, intelligent, demanding, and an excellent teacher.

I don't think he would ever hesitate to "punch down" if he thought it could motivate a student.; 4/30/15, 11:14 AM
MadisonMan said...: I notice none of the professors writing replies were in any science field. I'll guess they're too busy to bother with such nonsense.

If a student tells me they worked hard and deserve a higher grade, I tell them higher grades go to people who perform well. (Usually, but not always, good performance and hard work go together).; 4/30/15, 11:15 AM
MadisonMan said...: (Michael K, that story at 10:54 is great); 4/30/15, 11:16 AM
Paddy O said...: Funny, I got an email just yesterday with this exact situation.

Research paper. C grade on the paper. The student "feels like they have been doing A level work" in the class.

I have a very straightforward checklist, 30 elements I look for and if any are missing, there goes a point. So, I don't get a lot of complaints.

When I do, it's usually because of some mistaken idea of standards. Some students simply don't know what high quality would look like (even though I give example papers), especially in a gen ed class where this is a field they're not used to.

Since my goal is formative teaching in part, I usually try to explain to the student the reasoning.

Sometimes, students try to argue a cause for the possibility of a change, reminding me of Cher from Clueless.

I usually write a nice response, starting off by thinking the best of the student. Sometimes they're right, after all, and I made some kind of mistake. Usually, I just explain the issue more. If they keep arguing, I get more and more stern.

I once had a student complain I took points off because her paper was 2 pages short. I assigned a 10 page research paper, but she argued that page count wasn't in the rubric, so since she did everything right in 8 pages, that should get full points. Aack.

I had another student complain because I graded research papers more strictly than short reflection papers. He was getting good scores on the reflections and got incensed about his score on the research paper, as he felt it should all be graded at the same level. That then showed up on the student evaluations!; 4/30/15, 11:19 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Texas Annie said...

I can't quite wrap my mind around a system that says any single class can only have so many A's, so many B's and so on and it has been years and years since I was in school.

I have mixed feelings about curves. Should the grade reflect your ability compared to what the Professor expected when they planned the test/course, or should it reflect how well you know the subject compared to others who took the same course?

In terms of getting credit toward graduation, it seems like the measure should be your absolute ability, while for purposes of GPA and class ranking a relative standard makes more sense.

In the courses I've had that have been graded on a curve, the curve has only ever brought grades up. If I had a class where the curve took my grade down I don't think I'd be too happy about it.; 4/30/15, 11:20 AM
O2bnaz said...: What if the student considered the "C" grade a micro-aggression on the part of the professor due cultural pressures created by the falsely normative student-scholarly-society power structure, to submit to student academic norms?; 4/30/15, 11:21 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I just finished taking two grad school classes online. I was stunned by the students asking for assignment deadlines to be pushed back. And then, after getting one assignment pushed back, complaining that there was not enough time to do the next assignment.; 4/30/15, 11:23 AM
tim maguire said...: Given how much rides on grades these days, you can't blame the students for trying. I'm not going to read the responses either because I know I won't find them funny either.; 4/30/15, 11:25 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Paul Zrimsek said...

Dear C Student: While I stand by my assessment of your paper and the grade will have to stand, I'm glad to learn how hard you worked on it: it encourages me, and should encourage you, to believe that your subsequent papers will be better.

Dear C Student: If that's the best you can do on a paper that you worked really hard on then I suggest you find a new major, or perhaps consider manual labor.

I guess I'm more of a punching down kinda guy.; 4/30/15, 11:28 AM
Alex said...: Back 20 years ago when I was taking my LGBTQ 101 course, I got a C- for my paper.; 4/30/15, 11:28 AM
John henry said...: I've been adjuncting since 1982 and I generally don't believe that how hard a student worked should have an impact on the grade. they either knew the material or they didn't.

Since I do only essay exams, there is sometimes discussion about whether an answer is wrong or not. I will occasionally change a grade after that discussion. I may have taken 10 points off for an answer and a student can convince me they deserve partial credit.

Or the textbook says it is the correct answer even though it was not exactly what i was looking for.

Having said that, in some of my classes I would tell students the first session that all my exam questions would be take directly from the questions and problems at the end of each chapter. Thre might be 100-150 questions of which I would select 5-6 for the mid and final exams.

I would tell them that if they could answer every question, they were guaranteed and A on the exams.

I have had students study by finding and writing down the answer to ever question. When they come to discuss their grade on a question and pull out that notebook, I figure discussion is over and give them the points. I figure that they really do know the stuff even if they could not regurgitate a specific answer on a specific exam.

John Henry; 4/30/15, 11:30 AM
Gabriel said...: I did teach science courses and I got request to renegotiate grades all the time.

The answers to the questions were not subjective, so the students couldn't argue that. Instead they would argue about how much more partial credit they deserved, or that the questions were clearly so difficult as to be unfair.

Students have as much power as deans and department chairs let them have. They can complain anonymously (anonymous to you) and they can collude to make things up, which happened to a friend of mine who was fortunate to have a witness with him he overheard the students figuring out how to get him in trouble.; 4/30/15, 11:31 AM
Fen said...: I remember an English class where the college professor returned everyone's graded paper but mine.

I waited and asked her about it after class. She said I had obviously plagiarized it from an advertising agency (it was a creative writing assignment) and would be getting an F.

See, I was in a frat, and she made a bunch of assumptions about me because she hated frat boys. What she didn't know was that I hated them too, and probably for the same reasons.

Luckily, I had already taken three British Lit classes from her Department Head. Not only did he know my writing, he had even praised it.

I also hadn't cleaned up my apartment room from that all-night writing frenzy a few days back. So there were 1st 2nd and 3rd drafts littering the floor, all showing the progression of my paper and proving that the words and ideas were mine.

I offered both of these facts up in my defense:
1) we could go talk to the English Department Head. He would vouch for my work
2) we could go back to my apartment (her with an escort, if needed) so she could see for herself that I had written it myself and not stolen it from some magazine.

She chickened out on both counts, changed my grade from F to A- , and held a grudge against me for the rest of the semester.

Didn't matter. I was in heaven. A literature professor had confused my work with something professional.

Although it was bogus she didn't give me an A+. It was good enough to fool her but not good enough for an A+ ? Meh.; 4/30/15, 11:31 AM
lemondog said...: "A" for Attempt
"C" for Can of Worms; 4/30/15, 11:33 AM
John henry said...: I get the idea that grading on a curve is more prevalent in law schools and I think it is evil.

Either the student gets the right answer or they don't.

Penalizing some students because too many others got the right answers seems like professorial malpractice.

My exams tended to have a reasonably good A-C distribution and even the occasional Ds and Fs but I have have a few where I gave everyone an A.

That was my fault for making the exam too easy. Why penalize the students? Sure doesn't seem right.

I've also had cases where the majority of the students misanswered a question. I figure that is my fault too because the question was ambiguous or I didn't cover the material well. When that happens I either don't count or only partially count the question.

I never and would never and would refuse if asked to grade on a curve.

I would quit teaching before I would do that.

John Henry; 4/30/15, 11:37 AM
Gabriel said...: I got a surprising amount of trouble from the honors physics classes.

They would do any amount of work--that was the diffference between them and non-honors students, they always did the assigned work. They were not always of higher aptitude.

But most of them, all their lives, had had As. Then they get to honors physics and it's the first really hard class they've had, and a lot of them blamed me, saying I clearly expected too much.

I had to show the exam to the department chair, because the students' parents had called in to complain. Once he saw that 20% of the credit was for, essentially, drawing pictures, that was the end of that.

But they were getting almost exactly the same content as the giant lecture class that was the non-honors equivalent.; 4/30/15, 11:38 AM
MikeR said...: I don't feel safe in a class where I might get a low grade.; 4/30/15, 11:40 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: John said...

I never and would never and would refuse if asked to grade on a curve.

What if everyone did badly, and you realized that you made the test too hard?; 4/30/15, 11:41 AM
mccullough said...: This wouldn't be a problem if college weren't so expensive.

An honest response would be: Dear Student, I realize your education is way overpriced and is subsidized by the taxpayers. I also realize the job market will be errible for you adult life and that this class will not give you any marketable skills nor enhance your perspective to help better you as a person. But I have standards. And until this college lays me off when students wise up and realize they're getting ripped off, I will continue to hold students to my standards.

Signed

Your future retail co-worker, PhD; 4/30/15, 11:42 AM
MikeR said...: (Beautiful student): Oh Professor, I'd do _anything_ to get a good grade in this class!
Professor: Anything?
BS: _Anything_.
Professor: Would you - study?

I am not Laszlo.; 4/30/15, 11:43 AM
John henry said...: Alex said:

Back 20 years ago when I was taking my LGBTQ 101 course, I got a C- for my paper.

Alex,

You really shouldn't brag about stuff like this.

Seriously, I don't know you other than from comments here but I am going to take that as a strong point in your favor. It indicates that you didn't take the bullshit seriously enough to study hard.

Hopefully you used the missed study time for something productive like drinking beer and chasing women (or men, if that's the way you swing)

John Henry; 4/30/15, 11:44 AM
mccullough said...: Who exhibits a greater sense of entitlement, college students or college professors?; 4/30/15, 11:44 AM
John henry said...: Ignorance is bliss asked:

"What if everyone did badly, and you realized that you made the test too hard?"

I said that where everyone missed a question, I figured it was my fault and did not count the question for anyone.

Never had that happen to an entire exam but I would do something, maybe curve the grade, maybe discount or not count the exam.

That would be the exception and would be my fault. What Ann is talking about is grading on a curve as the norm.

John Henry; 4/30/15, 11:49 AM
Gabriel said...: @Ignorance is Bliss:What if everyone did badly, and you realized that you made the test too hard?

Everyone might do badly for reasons entirely unrelated to the difficulty of the exam.

In some of my classes virtually no students did any work outside of class. Seriously. I tracked it. The probability that one student would do one homework problem on one weekday was about 10%. At mid semester about 20% of students had done no work at all outside of class and only a couple, out of 120, had met or exceeded the homework expectation set in the syllabus.

Since they were not practicing the skills, of course they could not perform on the exam, which had a lot of short answer questions and drawing pictures as well as traditional physics problems.

This course, by the way, was described as "calculus based physics" and it was awarded transfer credit as such.

No, the exam was not "too hard". It was "too hard for the students that didn't study", and it was graded accordingly, and not curved.; 4/30/15, 11:51 AM
JPS said...: mccullough:

"Who exhibits a greater sense of entitlement, college students or college professors?"

Depends on the context. It's a tough thing to compare: What weight do I assign the B+ student who feels aggrieved it wasn't an A-, versus the colleague who constantly complains there isn't enough federal spending on his particular area?

Back to the students: At the beginning of my career I received a very peremptory e-mail from a B+ student. No salutation, no signature, just, "Can you explain why I got a B+ instead of an A-?"

I wrote, "Yes. You did a good job, so you got a B. Had you done an excellent job, you would have gotten an A."

About five minutes later I had an e-mail from the associate chair. Nowadays I'm much kinder, I explain that I've given them the benefit of any doubt both in assigning points and in assigning a letter to those points, so if they got a B, even a very high B, I am sure it was a B and not an A.; 4/30/15, 11:55 AM
Peter said...: The engineering students complained bitterly that the exam wasn't fair, because all semester they'd been working with quantities expressed in kilograms and meters, yet the exam used grams and centimeters, and answers that were off by a factor of 100 or more were given no credit.

The professor's answer was, "In the real world no one cares why your answer was wrong. What they care about is, where do we put all the ready-mix concrete you ordered?"; 4/30/15, 12:03 PM
Scott M said...: Where does prof Angela Jackson-Brown get off microagressing her students?

Get out of here with that, my friend. Your working hard should be a given. You’re in college, not kindergarten. Every single person on this campus’s default is to work hard.

I mean, the hyphenated last name should denote innate empathy, right?

Right?; 4/30/15, 12:15 PM
mccullough said...: JPS,

Federal spending greatly supports college professors. The justification for higher education provided by college professors, as a group, exhibits a stronger sense of entitlement than students, as a group.

Students are consumers and colleges provide a service heavily subsidized by the taxpayers. If we want to change the students consumer expectations, we should change higher education, starting with cutting loans and funding.

Most of these students shouldn't be in college. But as long as we're paying for it, then their entitlement makes more sense.; 4/30/15, 12:16 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Waste of time to make the case of "working hard" to a professor...at least in the UW system. The concept is foreign to them."

If your lawyer is billing by the hour, someone who has to put in extra time to produce even a substandard result ought to be the last person you would hire.

Imagine the reverse image of the worked-hard-but-got-a-C student. Hardly worked at all but got an A. Who would you pay by the hour?

We don't know that the student who didn't work hard never works hard. We just know that he effectively and efficiently performed the task at hand.; 4/30/15, 12:18 PM
Big Mike said...: It's been roughly forty years since I taught in a university setting, and I found "but I worked so-o-o-o hard" excuse to be annoying then. I'd hate to imagine how'd I'd feel these days. First, there's no way to know how hard they really did work, what with social networking and electronic collaboration, and second, the better student is the one who got the right answer without breaking a sweat.

But I have to admit that I utterly despise teachers who grade on a curve. What would you do if you had a classroom full of geniuses or a classroom full of dolts? IMHO any teacher who doesn't know an A assignment from a B assignment and a B from a C shouldn't be teaching. If it's a requirement for teaching at Wisconsin then it's a requirement. But I don't have to respect it.; 4/30/15, 12:19 PM
mccullough said...: Big Mike,

Intersting point. Should tests be like drivers licenses where everyone can fail or get all the answers right?

At even a very high level distinctions between the top 1% arise. We see this in sports most easily. LeBron is noticeably better than anyone else in the NBA and is exponentially better than the "worst" player in the NBA.

The issue is whether college professors can distinguish between the best. Judging by their own scholarship, I don't think so.; 4/30/15, 12:26 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Either the student gets the right answer or they don't."

Well, the questions on law school exams are complicated enough that there isn't something called "the right answer." In fact, even if the prof thinks taking one side rather than another would be the better result in a court case, a student taking the other side and supporting it well could do better than a student who took the seemingly "right" side.

Making good points and using the material that was studied in the course and putting it together lucidly are all valuable, and there's no end to how good it can be. So the ideal is something like what I think I would write if I were under pressure and highly motivated, and the A in the class would just be the student who got the highest raw score either by approaching what I would do or doing something else that was impressive. The A+ would be a student with a high raw school that was an outlier above others in the A range. Et cetera.; 4/30/15, 12:29 PM
Paddy O said...: "That was my fault for making the exam too easy. Why penalize the students?"

This is my philosophy too. I want to test students, but I don't want them to bear the burden of my mistakes. I use grades to gauge assignments and make adjustments.

After hitting a sweet spot with an assignment, where it really is gauging the level of learning each student is putting into the class, I am fine with however any particular class performs. Some classes have lots of good students, some have lots of bad students.

I had some really badly designed tests in college and masters level, and that makes me sensitive about my role in explaining and shaping assignments.

Grading on a curve seems to emphasize competition as much or more than formation. It makes sense in law school, in more of a zero sum field, where there are winners and losers at every stage. Working hard is something, but there's someone who works harder or better, and that person then wins the case.

I don't think this is fitting in most other fields.; 4/30/15, 12:30 PM
Bill said...: At Snowflake U., students choose their own grades!; 4/30/15, 12:33 PM
Paddy O said...: "Who exhibits a greater sense of entitlement, college students or college professors?"

Equal entitlement. Often the same exact. I sit in on faculty meetings and hear much the same complaints as from students. Everyone wants the most from the least. Add the administration into the mix and there's three competing entitlements battling each other.; 4/30/15, 12:33 PM
Ann Althouse said...: At this point, I can't think how I would grade without the curve. If I read the first exam and give it a raw score, I could not at that point tell you want the grade should be. I figure that out in comparison to the other exams.

I use a raw score system based on 25 possible points for each question. That grew out of exams that had 4 questions, even though I'm more likely now to have only 2 questions.

Frequently, students get a score of around 30 -- 2 questions that get 15 -- which should correspond to 60%. That sounds like an F, right? But it's probably a B+ in the end.

Why is that? Because to me 15 on a question means that you've done decently well. Each point above 15 is meaningful and I rarely go above 20. But 25 is theoretically available.

Then, 10 is the low benchmark. Many scores are between 10 and 15. I give a lot of 12s and 13s. Anything below 10 is quite bad.

But it's only after all the raw scores have been done that I can turn these numbers into grades. I find the median, and work from there.

I'm very confident that this approach is fair!; 4/30/15, 12:39 PM
Gabriel said...: @Ann:Well, the questions on law school exams are complicated enough that there isn't something called "the right answer."

This is true of the sciences as well. There are degrees of rightness.

100% right can never be achieved anywhere, because the laws of nature are not fully known (it is not even known that "laws" are anything more than human descriptions).

The model you use may be appropriate, or inappropriate, for the task at hand. Sometimes it's enough to know that "hydrogen plus oxygen yields water", and sometimes you need to know that not only is that not completely true but you might need to know how quickly it happens and what percentage of the mixture is water under what conditions.

Calculation mistakes are sometimes given full credit if the method is appropriate. Depends on how bad the mistake is. If the student realizes the answer cannot be right and says why they will get most of the credit. If the student ignores an obviously absurd result, they won't. If the student gives a bogus justification for why their answer must make sense, they will lose what little partial credit you might have given.

If their answers are confused enough to have no physical relevance, or cannot be meaningfully assessed, they are "not even wrong", which has a "rightness percentage" of square root of negative 1, and they can expect no points, and may God have mercy on their souls.

So it's a little more subtle than the what you and some of the commenters seem to think science is.; 4/30/15, 12:40 PM
Adina said...: I took multiple classes in college where the teacher was trying to be "helpful" by making it possible for everyone to get an A if they just did x,y,z. I think having so many of these kind of teachers made me stupider.

As far as curves go, in AP American History we had a curve so that it wouldn't kill our GPAs. Many of the students did well on the test because the class was so hard.

In Calculus, in college, the graded the final exam on a curve, so I ended up with an A on the exam and the course. I think they did this to cover up how incompetent the teachers were. My teacher seemed to be the type who had been told about some strategies, but didn't know what being a good teacher actually meant. Add on her Chinese accent, and many times she was incomprehensible. I would rather have gotten my B than my undeserved A. Also, the students whose Ds became Cs were set up to struggle with Calculus 2. What good does that do anyone?; 4/30/15, 12:41 PM
Michael K said...: There was a short story that I liked many years ago. Can't remember where it was. The story was about a student who wrote an essay exam that was on a book he was supposed to read. He went on a long sea voyage right after the exam and returned months later. When he went to check his grade, he was asked to see the professor. When he did, he was asked if he had read the book (Can't remember what it was) and he answered no. The professor then gave him an A on the exam.; 4/30/15, 12:46 PM
Gabriel said...: @Adina:Also, the students whose Ds became Cs were set up to struggle with Calculus 2. What good does that do anyone?

The students get their stamps for having passed Calc 1, and since they all suck at Calc 1 the same procedure will have to be applied to keep them all from failing, so they won't have to learn Calc 2 either but will still get credit.

The deans and chairs don't get calls from angry parents wanting to know why their little snowflake, who works so hard, isn't getting credit and what are they going to do about that awful foreigner teaching the class?

The instructor who has teach the class doesn't get called on the carpet for students complaining about their grade, and if that instructor is an adjunct they don't get let go at the end of the year.

The university doesn't have to explain why it's retention rate is so low, and gets to cash another year's tuition checks.

Low standards are win-win.; 4/30/15, 12:47 PM
LTMG said...: Many years ago I was an adjunct teaching MBA candidates. About one-third of my students were from countries other than the US. I graded on a B+ curve. Nearly half of the students earned an A. After submitting final grades I got a call from the Assistant Dean asking me about a B grade for a student from Venezuela. Seems she was about to graduate and the B she earned in my class was the only grade that stood in the way of her graduating with a 4.0. So I looked at the grades again. Hers was not the highest B I gave so I informed the Assistant Dean of my review and my decision, which he backed up. The student had a work-study job in the international students' office. Once she realized I wasn't going to change my mind, she sent out an e-mail to all of the international students telling them not to elect my sections. What goes around comes around, they say, and I hope she is enjoying her life in Caracas.; 4/30/15, 12:52 PM
American Liberal Elite said...: At a Christmas party at my professor's house, she told me that she was giving me a B+. I asked her if she couldn't find it in her heart to change the grade to an A-. She did.
Moral: It never hurts to ask.; 4/30/15, 12:53 PM
Anonymous said...: "Let’s say a student who received a C grade on a paper asks you to reread it and change their grade because they 'worked so hard on it.'"

...but professor I'm a poor benighted inner-city youth and you're adhering to Eurocentric standards.

In a flash the grade gets changed.; 4/30/15, 12:57 PM
Meade said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/30/15, 1:13 PM
JackOfVA said...: As I recall the mandatory grade curve in law school (this comes close to ancient history since I graduated 39 years ago) first year classes had 0-5% E, 5-10% D distribution requirements.

My assumption then was that it was a second prong to the admissions process; at the edge of the admissions cut, the correlation between ability and LSAT and undergrad grades wasn't as trustworthy as at the upper or lower end of the admissions test score. Hence, use mandatory D and E grades to weed out the marginal admission types.

2nd and 3rd year curves dropped the mandatory E and reduced the D range to 0-5%. However, the grade polity had sufficient flexibility to handle esoteric classes with a dozen or two students all of whom were in the upper rankings of the class.; 4/30/15, 1:19 PM
Meade said...: @Fen
Are you sure you didn't plagiarize your comment at 11:31 from Penthouse Letters?; 4/30/15, 1:20 PM
Kyzer SoSay said...: That seems to be the default accusation 'round these parts.; 4/30/15, 1:23 PM
Big Mike said...: @Althouse, you've convinced me it's easier in STEM than in Law. If they have the right answer they got a perfect score, and I worked down from there according to what mistake they made and how egregious it was (e.g., forgetting to convert to degrees Kelvin).; 4/30/15, 1:23 PM
PB said...: If the professor makes a mistake in grading it should be corrected. They're not fallible.

If the student makes an assertion in a paper and the professor grades the paper poorly because the professor mistakenly claims the assertion isn't true, the student has the right to a correction.

For example if the student asserts that 1 in 5 women on campus aren't sexually assaulted but the professor gives them low grade because of this...; 4/30/15, 1:27 PM
Patrick Henry was right! said...: A grading curve for Law School. That tells you all you need to know about Wisconsin lawyers and higher education.

How about a curve for all results in court? Plaintiffs 50% Defendants 50%???; 4/30/15, 1:33 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: A grading curve for Law School. That tells you all you need to know about Wisconsin lawyers and higher education.

Curves are pretty standard in law schools. At least for the core classes. The problem is that of grade creep - apparently at a lot of Ivy League undergraduate schools, the average GPA is an A- or so. Maybe even higher now. When I was in LS, the profs just ranked their students 1-N, and let the registrar assign the grades. And, most of the tests were anonymous, so all they did was give the registrar a list of numbers, not names. I may not have liked the prof, or the test, but never had any questions about the fairness of the entire system.

Part of the problem with law schools is that they are used to rank graduates for use by employers, esp. larger law firms. They are mostly interested in class rank, and not in GPA, which can inflate over time, and has inflated in much of the rest of college.

The other thing is that law schools teach aspiring lawyers, and lawyers are often the types of people who would, and do, contest or compete, for most everything, and esp. something as important to their careers as grades. Grading on a curve makes it much harder for students to go into the prof's office and try to argue them into a higher grade - because that essentially means in many cases, lowering someone else's grade. And, yes, my understanding from law profs I know, is that a certain segment of the LS population regularly try to get their grades adjusted upwards. That is why they are in law school - they are just that type of person.

So, don't go blaming the UW law school. Blame the fact that they are training lawyers.; 4/30/15, 1:53 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: Fen talked about how being in a fraternity harmed his grades. I had just the opposite experience.

I got back one accounting test with a 99%. The prof told me later that he had a choice of giving me a zero, or the 99%. He was an alum of our chapter (and two of his boys joined about the time I was graduating). So, he picked the 99%. Turns out that I had reversed every debit and credit on the entire test - but I was otherwise consistent and completely correct. So, he took the one point off for the reversal, and graded it as if I had not reversed them. (After all, the convention of debits on the left, credits on the right is completely arbitrary - what is important is how the various entries work together).; 4/30/15, 1:59 PM
Rusty said...: Then, 10 is the low benchmark. Many scores are between 10 and 15. I give a lot of 12s and 13s. Anything below 10 is quite bad.

This one goes to 11.; 4/30/15, 2:03 PM
jimbino said...: "Dear Student Who Must Be Out Of Their Mind"

I wouldn't consider taking a class from a teacher who insists on using the singular "their."

The bad salutation headline needs to be rewritten as:

"Dear Student Who Must Be Out Of His Mind"

or the wordy;

"Dear Student Who Must Be Out Of His or Her Mind"

or maybe even:

"Dear Student: You Must Be Out Of Your Mind"; 4/30/15, 2:23 PM
Douglas B. Levene said...: 1) I've changed grades because I've made mistakes in adding up my little check marks. Otherwise, never.

2) I've found that posting the two or three best student exams on the internet generally short circuits any requests for regrading. Once students see what I was looking for (which is admittedly in some cases subjective), they are satisfied.; 4/30/15, 2:54 PM
Sebastian said...: "I'm very confident that this approach is fair!"

I hope your students agree :).

Question: do students know in advance how you assign points? For example, do you provide old questions with points/assessment included? Do class sessions go over grading examples?; 4/30/15, 2:54 PM
Wilbur said...: I took a class in Federal civil procedure - it was called Federal Courts - with about 75 students in it. The professor was a younger man, more than slightly socially inept, who told the class on the first day that anything and everything he said in class could end up on the final exam. He made no small talk and lectured for 90% of every class.

Wilbur realized very quickly that this nimrod meant exactly what he said and scrambled to copy down every syllable he uttered the entire semester. Luckily he had a tremendous gift for synthesizing and organizing the material so even my scribbled notes ended up making perfect sense.

His exam consisted of roughly 25 questions each of which required a paragraph or two to answer. You either recognized the issue and knew the answer or you didn't. It all tracked what he said in class.

Two-thirds of the class received grades of C- or below. No curve. A lot of tears and rants ensued when the grades were posted.

I learned more from this professor than any other I had, and took as many other courses from him as I possibly could.; 4/30/15, 2:56 PM
Shanna said...: Is somebody else raising grades in response to mere begging?

They did in high school. I had a friend that ran around getting grades changed. I had another friend whose MOTHER forced the teacher to change her grade.

college I don't know. I only went to the professor about my grade once and he changed it.; 4/30/15, 3:14 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "The other thing is that law schools teach aspiring lawyers, and lawyers are often the types of people who would, and do, contest or compete, for most everything, and esp. something as important to their careers as grades. Grading on a curve makes it much harder for students to go into the prof's office and try to argue them into a higher grade - because that essentially means in many cases, lowering someone else's grade. And, yes, my understanding from law profs I know, is that a certain segment of the LS population regularly try to get their grades adjusted upwards. That is why they are in law school - they are just that type of person."

I don't think anyone has asked me to change a grade in the past decade. In the whole 30 years, I think I have been asked 3 times. I changed a grade exactly once, in the case of a student who began a answer on the second page of a form sheet, causing me to see one question as skipped, when in fact it began on a second page. I had scored that question at zero.; 4/30/15, 3:29 PM
DanTheMan said...: >>(Beautiful student): Oh Professor, I'd do _anything_ to get a good grade in this class!
Professor: Anything?
BS: _Anything_.
Professor: Would you - study?

Mike R: Plagiarized from "The Eiger Sanction". Here's your "F".

And don't ask me to change your grade, either. :); 4/30/15, 3:50 PM
Unknown said...: I was a non-traditional student i.e., older) student in an engineering school where a co-ed received a grade lower than she wanted. She cried, and the grade changed.; 4/30/15, 3:57 PM
Drago said...: While getting MBA at an ACC school with the initials "NOTDUKE", I was a member of a cohort of 3 dudes and 1 chick. We all contributed towards our group project and we all received an "A",...except for the chick. Which was surprising since that chick was the smartest of us all and did the most work.

Foriegn born professor.

So, seeing this outrage we 3 dudes wrote a letter wherein we related the particulars to the professor and copied the department head.

In 1 week the chicks grade was changed to an "A".

3 years later I married that chick.

Because I totally rock.; 4/30/15, 4:20 PM
luagha said...: President Obama was a known grade renegotiator. Must be part of where he trained his schmoozing skills.; 4/30/15, 4:50 PM
Meade said...: Now Drago's story I believe! A+ !!!

Even if he totally made it up.; 4/30/15, 5:37 PM
Skyler said...: I was always amazed how the cute girls would wiggle the noses and butts in front of the engineering professors and get their grades changed or extra help on problems in a test.; 4/30/15, 6:32 PM
JackOfVA said...: "I was always amazed how the cute girls would wiggle the noses and butts in front of the engineering professors and get their grades changed or extra help on problems in a test."

How times have changed ... BSEE 1968 here (before law school) and of the 1000 or so engineering class across all disciplines, we had 2 female students. One Chem Eng and one Mech Eng.; 4/30/15, 7:16 PM
Skyler said...: They were still a minority, but then women were only about 30% maybe a little more in my school back in the early 80's. Probably 15% in engineering.; 4/30/15, 9:12 PM
Static Ping said...: When I was in college I did have a professor review my final exam. It was a hard science course that I really was not grasping all that well (mostly my fault) but I finally had my eureka moment during the final exam when everything clicked. Still I ended up with a mediocre grade, so I went to see the professor to review it, partially because I wanted to see where I went wrong. Turned out that the eureka moment was real and the the grader failed to total my score correctly. The professor was explaining to me that he had been generous considering my mid-term was not very good (true), and going over the grading procedure when he realized the goof and I got a priceless facial expression. Ended that conversation other than where to go to get my grade changed to an A. He was a good professor regardless.

As to punching down not being funny, please stop. Everyone needs to be laughed at and I mean everyone. Those that are not laughed at are not prepared for the real world. Yes, there are lines where funny becomes cruel, but professors should make fun of their students and students their professors and truck drivers those eggheads in the university. In my opinion the only style of humor that is not funny is libelous humor, the type where the humor comes from mocking things that are completely false. While exaggerating and flanderizing is funny, lying is not.

Anyway, a student with too high an opinion of himself or herself needs to be corrected. Mocking humor is often one of the gentler ways of doing so. The smart ones learn from it.

As to the letters, I give my vote to Takiyah Nur Amin for brilliant use of the term "fooleywang." Unless that's Laslo's term for a part of his anatomy. However I do have to deduct some points for the use of profanity and (possibly) encouraging Laslo.; 4/30/15, 9:40 PM
Static Ping said...: In my computer science classes there were no women. At all. This was in the 90s. Then again there were not many men in the classes either. It was a difficult program but if you got a degree you were more or less guaranteed a good job. In my senior year a few females managed to stick with the program into the second year at least. We did have women in the higher level mathematics courses though though most of them were aiming to be teachers.; 4/30/15, 9:46 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Static Ping said...
"However I do have to deduct some points for the use of profanity and (possibly) encouraging Laslo"

I am always encouraged by great stories and great writing, such as your post. Great commenters here, and I read ALL of them. OCD, but Althouse feeds that mightily.

I am Laslo.; 4/30/15, 9:46 PM
Skyler said...: In law school we were allowed to review our exams after the grades were posted and final and I took full advantage. It allowed me to understand what I did wrong and how to adjust my studying strategy.

Judge Higginbotham was one of my professors and I guess he was so intimidating to the youngsters that hardly anyone asked to see the exams. When I asked to review mine, he invited me to his downtown office in Austin and spent about an hour and a half reviewing my exam and discussing the law with me. His office was bigger than most people's homes who have six figure salaries.

At the end he asked to be excused because he just had to get to a death penalty appeal he was working on.

Never once did I ever ask a professor to change a grade. But there's nothing wrong with reviewing the test.; 4/30/15, 9:51 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Some people feel like they are "punching down" when they insult me -- me being a custodian at a whore house, and all.
You use a lot of bleach.
Anyway, they stop looking down on me if they see my equipment. I'm a regular Hodor. Nothing to brag on, just blessed by nature.
If that don't get 'em to change the way the way they look at me I tell 'em I get the pick of the girls. The new ones are best. Nothing gets a feller to feel more low down than to tell him you had his girl first.

-I thought I was Laslo.; 4/30/15, 9:57 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: When asking a prof to review a grade, I always make sure to fold a bill in with the paperwork. A Lincoln for a humanities prof, a Hamilton for a law prof. For a science prof I stick in a Playboy centerfold. They always think it is pic of their girlfriend. Science profs are funny that way. Always walking on the sunny side of the street.

-I thought I was Laslo; 4/30/15, 10:23 PM
Drago said...: Meade: "Now Drago's story I believe! A+ !!!
Even if he totally made it up."

LOL

A prudent and understandable amount of skepticism regarding an online assertion.

You could of course chat with her by phone if you'd like.

Or, better yet, in the very near future she and I will be rather close to your area as I, a Denver based dude, am working primarily with a client on the far west of Chicago which places us just about due south of Madison near Rahm-land. And the wife plans on coming out very soon in order to kibbutz with my client execs.

What a great opportunity!

Unless it's not.

In that case forget it. I never mentioned it. Further, I wouldn't have dinner with you if you begged me.

Unless you'd like to. In which case it would be totally cool.

But if you don't, then to hell with you!; 5/1/15, 12:52 AM
Etienne said...: I don't know about the rest of you, but the picture of the Professor in that article, who had a salmon colored suit, was just "to die" over.

The tie put the whole thing over the top.

I mean, it was swell!; 5/1/15, 1:28 AM
Etienne said...: Admittedly, I didn't read all the responses, but one of the professors touched on a subject from the distant past.

Before the lottery draft system, you could get a draft deferment if you became a student. But if you performed poorly, you could lose that deferment. After the lottery system, if you got a number higher than 200, you were pretty much safe.

So, a mere professor could really change your life. (if you were a man). They might feel sorry for you and up the grade a bit, to keep from falling below a 2.0 GPA.; 5/1/15, 1:44 AM
Meade said...: Heh heh, Drago. Hell no I'm not going to call her up on the phone. She sounds scary smart!

Sure, let's try to meet up at a Culver's somewhere between here and Rahm-land. I've gotta meet this power couple in which she has all the brains and he has all the charm.; 5/1/15, 5:59 AM
Douglas B. Levene said...: I grade my law school exams exactly like Ann. The point of grading is simply to rank order students. That's all. So you start with raw scores, and assign grades or points to them to reflect their order and relative quality. It may be different in STEM classes, where there often is a right/wrong answer, and a defined body of knowledge that students are expected to know. But law school exams only incidentally test knowledge (I usually give open book or take-home exams) per se and are more interested in the student's analysis of problems to which there usually is not a right or wrong answer.; 5/1/15, 6:58 AM
Anonymous said...: I was in the honors program at my university and I had two professors for my world civ class. One professor is describe as a moderate and other was an avowed communist. Both were terrific instructors and challenged us with great questions. One of our assignments was to craft a social justice paper about a particular subject. My subject happened to be the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII. As I researched the way Truman decided to drop the bomb and the lives that were killed versus the lives it spared, I came to the conclusion Truman was just in dropping the bomb. One fact that especially weighed on me was that Russia was attempting to beat the U.S. to an occupation of Japan - which would have condemned the islands to communism. So I wrote a damn fine paper defending that position. Unfortunately, it was the communist who got the paper. And I got an F. Well, I pulled a bit of trickery and I took my paper to the other professor and told him I thought my paper was supposed to go him instead. I got the paper back and I recieved an A (though, he said he disagreed with my conclusion, my argument made him rethink Truman's decision on several points). I then went to both professor and laid down both papers and asked him to figure out my grade - but that I very certain it wasn't an F. I got a B and the cold shoulder from the communist the rest of the semester.; 5/1/15, 8:22 AM
JAORE said...: Soils and Foundations Prof. Gave hella hard tests. MY first exam I got a 48. I thought I need to drop this class until I learned it was the second highest in the class and he graded on the curve. One exam had been recycled from years ago. Three guys in the Engineering Frat used the original exam for their study effort. Three grades of 100%. When another student brought this up he replied, "Life is not fair, why should I be?"
Those three got the only 3 "A"s assigned. I came in next highest and would have killed them absent their 100's.
But I learned a LOT fro the old bastard and made sure I got him for my next foundations class.; 5/1/15, 8:49 AM
mikee said...: When I was a 23 year in grad school, I earned my keep by teaching Introductory Chemistry labs to freshmen.

I distinctly recall one class where I saw a student rapidly finishing his last-week lab report in the hall minutes before the new lab started.

I graded these labs as the students did their work in lab. When I got to his paper and saw it was a mishmash of errors, I balled it up, threw it across the room at him, and loudly asked him how he expected to get an A while turning in crap like that.

He earned an A in the lab class.

Sometimes "punching down" works.; 5/1/15, 9:28 AM
Drago said...: Meade: "Sure, let's try to meet up at a Culver's somewhere between here and Rahm-land. I've gotta meet this power couple in which she has all the brains and he has all the charm."

"Power couple".

she will enjoy the irony of that!; 5/1/15, 11:20 AM
30yearProf said...: I tell them that if I regrade they can go down as well as up. Most choose not to take the risk.

Occasionally, in my 40 year career, I have been going over an examination booklet when I realize that I made an error. When I do so, I own up and I add the additional points. Some times it pulls them up enough, sometimes it doesn't. The students seem to like the honesty and fairness.; 5/2/15, 1:47 AM