‘Grade’ expectations
A recent New York Times article by Max Roosevelt discusses how professors and students see assigning grades. To put it briefly, students think they deserve higher grades than they sometimes earn. But is the problem with the students, as the article suggests, or the K-12 system of hyper-testing, or is it with instructors’ expectations?
First, note the words used in the first few paragraphs of the article: students “expect,” “deserve,” and feel a sense of “entitlement.” In a consumer-driven education system, these are very common feelings, and at this point it can be difficult to convince students otherwise. I do make it a point each semester to get students thinking about whether college is a “right” or a “privilege,” but I haven’t yet ventured far into the discussion about “consumers” versus “learners.” A worthwhile discussion, but not one that I feel ready to take on just yet.
Second, notice one of the interviewed professors’ way of grading: students’ default grades are C (where C = average). They have to extend themselves and exercise their ideas to raise it. This, I think, is not typical of all college classes and is the area where the article doesn’t dig deeply enough. For starters, different classes grade very differently. In math classes, if you get the correct answers, you get an A. In freshmen-level writing classes, if you demonstrate the skills of writing (critical thinking, rhetorical awareness, proper source usage, revising, etc.) then you get an A. This, I think, more than the sense of entitlement or the hyper-testing K-12 education, is the problem that sets up those expectations: different classes and different professors have different ways of assessing grades.
I don’t think that’s bad, but I do think it’s missing from the NYT article, and perhaps from students’ consciousness. Different fields of study prize different abilities. Duh. That’s why it’s college and not trade school: students are meant to experience a wide range of ideas and learn lots of skills. So I would argue that the problem isn’t with students’ expectations; it’s with instructors’ and professors’ communication skills: rather than just outlining grade distribution in the syllabus, they need to explain why they grade the way they do, and what it is about their grading system that will benefit students in the end. The article almost touches on this in the last part where Prof. Bower says, “Unless teachers are very intentional with our goals, we play into the system in place.” But alas, no further discussion.
I should add that this isn’t a final opinion on the subject; it’s more of an initial reaction. I’m finding that I have few set opinions these days…thanks a lot, grad school.