Grades

"In an ideal world I would give about a quarter of them [students] Fs. Why? Because they have no aptitude for history, no appreciation for the connections between events, no sense of how a historical situation changes over time, they don't want to do the necessary hard work, they skimp on the reading, and they can't write to save their lives.... Most of them will get B-."

So writes Patrick Allitt in his book, I'm the Teacher, You're the Student. (I think Allitt must be a very good teacher, judging from his knowledge and the lessons he describes in his book. My concern is not with the quality of his teaching, but with his evaluations of students. The book is worth reading, especially to get tips on good teaching.)

I was reminded of this earlier this week, when thinking of a past student's request for an incomplete grade in a class. (The time frame is within the past two years.) Among many other things, the student said he/she couldn't stand/afford to get a C in a class. I suggested that a "C" was a pipedream, that the student's grade was going to be considerably lower than that. OK, it was an F. No incomplete, but the student could withdraw from the class and the college wouldn't accept the F grade.

I don't blame this student for the attitude, although the lack of work and, what little there was, it's poor quality, the absences, and so on fall squarely on his/her shoulders. No, I have no doubts he/she really believes that a C was his/her grade at the time. No, I have no doubts he/she really has few if any C grades. And, no, I have no doubts that he/she has done as little work in other classes as in mine--with higher grades, of course. After all, Patrick Allitt is alive and well in K-12 schools and colleges throughout the country.

In my 33 years in the public schools, in one way or another (orally or in e-mails) each of the principals under whom I worked questioned my low grades, low, that is, compared to other teachers in the department and building. (I make no claims of being Attila the Grader; in fact, except for the last year, when I decided to go back to standards, I think I was embarrassed by how easy my class and grading had become--although still, apparently, much more stringent than others.) Rather than approach others for grading much too leniently, assigning work that was much too easy, the principals came to me for low grades. And why do I think the others were too easy and I not too difficult? I learned the very first time I was questioned about this when I asked the first principal to compare the grades students get in my classes with their state and college entrance test scores, then to compare the grades given in other classs with the standardized tests--then, see whose grades match up best, that is, are more accurate. Each of the principals backed off and never came to see me again. It took the hiring of new principals before the game was started anew. (The good news is that in my 13 years at the colleges, nobody has questioned my grades/grading.)

Why do we do this? Is it the silly self-esteem garbage that grew out of the '60s and '70s and blossomed later? Is it that teachers no longer know their stuff and, to keep that from becoming known, give high grades? After all, high grades never (as evidenced by my own experiences) attract the attention of the administrators? Is it that they are afraid, of parents, of administrators, even of students (read Allitt)? What good is an A if everyone gets an A? I guess an analogy might be redefining a "marathon" to be one mile. Then, many more people can claim to have run a "marathon." Wow!!!!!

My dean told me a couple years ago that the average grade at the school was "a little higher than a 3.0," that is, a bit better than a B. I was floored! I don't understand. Essays? Despite homework assignments leading up to them, despite repeated caveats that they'd have to write about a page or more per essay, despite getting questions in advance with instructions to "be detailed, complete; use examples," despite all this, student, maybe a majority of them, turn in "essays" of 4 or 5 lines (often not even sentences). Others write maybe 10 lines. Often, I can't tell what question is being answered (I've had to tell them to write out the question or at least the number). How do these students earn 3.0 or better? Again, I am not, at least in my own mind, a hard grader.

And, that is one thing that ticks me off about one of our governor's pet plans, "Everybody goes to college!" Oh, you have to be kidding me.

More as time....