Okay, I get that's more work, and sounds like a hassle. So this isn't a criticism of your mom.
But on the A- and extra credit issue, I never understood the point of rigid grading schemes. I've taught at a college level, and I always give students the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work. To do otherwise seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-level knowledge, you're still getting a lower grade".
> I never understood the point of rigid grading schemes
My wife is a college psychology professor and is fairly strict with her grading scheme. She makes this clear on the first day of class and spells it out directly, in bold, on the syllabus.
Her rationale is this: The likelihood of you asking for extra credit, or excuses, or various "grade grubbing" activities is largely influenced by your socioeconomic background. Students who make special grading requests overwhelmingly skew white and female and are more likely to take place at institutions that take students from more affluent backgrounds. She doesn't want her grading inadvertently biased against males, non-whites, or less affluent students so her grades are final. Despite this inflexibility, her student evaluations are sky-high.
Perhaps because I teach math, my grade-grubbers definitely skew male. The women just figure they're bad at math and the world is fine with that assessment.
That's an interesting stance, I haven't noticed that pattern but the composition of colleges varies greatly.
In any case, I get around the whole "grade grubbing" issue by having my policy of "extra" work spelled out, also up front on the syllabus. No one gets anything extra just for bugging me about it. Basically it amounts to allowing homework assignments to be re-done (once). A single quiz grade can be replaced by doing some fairly difficult extra problems. No makeups on the midterm and final, but a research project can be done to get up to 5 points on their final grade. Beyond that I hold office hours and happily spend them further helping students with anything they're stuck on.
Short of (provable) extenuating circumstances, that's about it. I even ask for a police report for students claiming "car accident" for things like missing a quiz. (In one case, a student told me there wasn't one because it was just a minor accident that scratched the side view mirror... I pointed out that an accident like that wouldn't have prevented them showing up to class, even if it was a few minutes late.)
It’s absolutely true. My wife teaches in a lower-income district where many families are African or Asian immigrants, and she loves it precisely because she gets no such bullshit from parents. When their kids misbehave or get poor grades, they apologize to her and promise the kid will do better next time. I hate to say it, but this “customer is always right”mentality is totally a problem specific to well-off whites.
True in other domains too. My brother's a doctor and prefers working in a lower-income neighborhood, where he never gets challenged by patients doing internet research. Of course the lack of knowledge of the "rules" that allow you to challenge authority is part of what keeps people economically disadvantaged.
It’s more work, and that’s exactly the problem. A teacher deserves to go home and enjoy their family and life outside of work. The only way to make this possible is to have students and parents understand that after a certain point the grade is simply final, so if you want a good grade it’s your responsibility to learn the material prior to exams or large projects or assignments being due. Everyone knows this; there is no secret. So I don’t think it’s fair at all to expect the teacher to do more work for you when you didn’t put in the effort to learn the material the first time.
I don't think "everyone knows this", not to the degree you indicate. Yes there is a balance to be made, but I and many of my colleagues believe the opportunity for learning shouldn't stop once an assignment has been graded. We believe that such grades are in fact the diagnostic we should use to determine which students need to be helped along, given the opportunity to learn the material better.
You also say that a student who does poorly didn't put in the time. In some cases yes, but broadly it's simply not true. I've analyzed LMS data at large scales: Students who get F's don't put in much time on average. But students who get D's, on average, are putting in just as much time as the students getting A's and B's. The F students I can't do much about, with some notable exceptions, they mostly don't want to help themselves. But the rest are teachable.
For me and my like minded colleagues, it's not that we expect ourselves or others to do more work. It's that our vision of what the job's baseline work requirements entail goes beyond a rigid grading process that implicitly assumes that learning takes place in discrete bits of time, uniformly for all students.
Using intermediate grades to figure out which students to focus on is perfectly fine, and in fact I'm not sure it has much to do with what's being discussed. We're talking about a teacher being asked by a parent to create extra credit work so a student can jump from an A- to an A so they have better odds of getting into X/Y/Z.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that teachers can't dynamically adjust their attention across students as the class progresses based on grades. But at the same time teachers should not just be the pawns of parents. A parent shouldn't be able to just demand extra credit work for their child. This sort of special exception is something that should only be made by the teacher, at the teacher's complete discretion, if they legitimately think there's a truly good reason for treating that student differently.
In that case, I agree. I don't change final grades. By that point, students have had plenty of opportunity to approve upon the negative grades that feed the final one.
As a college prof, I divide assignments into formative and summative. Some assignments are to help you learn, and you can try again, improve your work, etc. Some are designed to measure what you know at a given point in time -- and the timing matters.
Giving students the chance to learn is important. Expecting them to actually master some skills within a given timeframe is also important. I have a relative in a European system in which changes have been made to allow students to take tests on a class for the next two years. The students are not better off -- it sounds miserable for all.
It's not a big leap from "pay extra for extra credit assignments to improve grade" to "pay extra to improve grade".
I'm not suggesting that the vast majority of teachers would be tempted or give in to bribery. But it sets up perverse incentives and the optics are terrible. It's also unfair to students who didn't do well and whose families can't afford to pay the teacher to grade their extra credit assignments.
I've hearrd of teachers in the local school district that offer for-pay tutoring to their students... It's always struck me as something of a conflict of interest, but I'm really not sure how I feel about it.
I was tempted to agree when I read this, but then I thought that this creates an unfair advantage for parents who can afford to pay for extra time from the teacher.
So the parent with more money pay for a different tutor. What's the difference? Or are suggesting the parents with more money should not be allowed to pay for there kids to do anything a parent with less money can't afford?
The problem isn’t with the parent paying for tutoring, but with the teacher receiving pay for tutoring. It creates a perverseincentive for the teacher to grade students harshly until/unless they pay up for tutoring.
I have two daughters who took orchestra, we couldn't afford private lessons. They did well, the teacher was excellent and they enjoyed themselves. They never reached the "top" orchestra. Our school has 3 levels.
My third daughter played in the band, and we decided that we could finally afford $20 a week lessons from one of the instructors. She's in the top band and got to play in the county competitions. She's had alot more opportunity.
I don't personally think she's significantly better, even though the lessons have helped her notice certain shortcomings more quickly. I do think she's noticed more by the band leaders.
Yeah, then I can feel like I'm selling grades to the highest bidder too. I didn't sign up for prostitution: the only reason I'm cool with the low pay is the purity & honesty of the job.
I had a professor who taught algebra and pedagogy of math in local university. He has a nice scheme for grades (1 to 5 in Russia are F to A respectively): each lecture except the first starts with 3-5 minute test on previous topics, marks for working at practice hours and final exam. The grade was calculated as an average of avg(tests)+avg(practice)+exam, so you have to work throughout the whole semester or you won't have a chance for C or higher which is a minimum to pass.
It’s obnoxious and unfair that squeaky wheels with pushy parents get do overs and normal kids get screwed. My dad travelled for work and mom was a nurse. There was no time for them to go in and harass teachers over my grades.
If little Jimmy wants to get into Princeton, he should study.
I agree with the stance that the +/- nomenclature should be taken outback and shot. It's that bad.
A+ Student has demonstrated that they have exceeded a firm grasp of the subject. (How do you measure to 11 on a scale of 1-10?)
A Student has demonstrated that they have a firm grasp of the subject. (makes sense, this means they know their stuff.)
A- Student kinda has a firm grasp of the subject. (WTF?)
Now apply that silliness to B, C, and D. A,B,C,D,F is enough. Excellent understanding, Good understanding, General understanding, Poor understanding, Does not understand.
It’s more that the A+- system is supposed to help identify a student on the edge. “You have a B+, which means that with a bit more effort, you could be an A” in comparison to “With a B-, you’re at risk of getting a C”. It also helps create more granular buckets out of a percentage scale, which most teachers seem use on grades behind the scenes.
In Russia we use Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory and Weak from 1837. The worst grade wasn't used for some time scools but is coming back in common practice for missing work ([0]English Wiki doesn't have it but states that it's a 5-point grade system).
Lithuanian schools in up to about 1998 (might be wrong on exact year) had same system, then it was changed to 10 grades, but the lowest grade - 1 was ever used as a disciplinary action. Lowest you would get for failing assignment or homework was a 2. But even when it was 5 grade system the 3-, 4+ or 5- was quite regular occurrence and depended on teacher and subject mostly, as +/- were not accounted officially so 4- was exactly same as 4 for the final grade of a quarter/trimester.
A few of my teachers who'd used +/- signs added them to differ between a strong qualification of work to the grade and a one step for higher/lower grade respectively, i.e. 3- converts to "almost 2", which is just a written clarification.
In life there are things you won't always get second chances for.
The problem is the absurd college process that way overemphasizes clearly inflated grades in a ridiculous race to get into college. It's a shame what kids have to go through these days.
In the real world, you don’t get a chance to get “extra credit work” when you don’t do your job at the level the job expects of you.
Why should students be coddled instead of being prepared for the real world? I have a high school student who is always getting better grades because of “extra credit” and “make up tests”. I cringe every time he does it.
In the real deal world, sure you do: ever not get something right the first try at work? Ever have to work longer hours because a project ran over the expected time? The real world doesn't have all of the arbitrary limits we see in the modern education system.
Schools very rarely have 1 test per semester, and if you fail you fail.
Often times there is homework, multiple tests, projects, etc.
If you fail your job multiple times I highly doubt you will be progressing in your career. Just because you aren't fired doesn't mean you aren't losing out in some way.
Right: you don't get infinite chances at work, and what I'm talking about isn't infinite chances either. If you want to compare school & work, then consider what I offer students to be a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP).
>In the real world there are lots of drop-dead deadlines with no possibility of extension, usually imposed by external constraints.
What I find interesting is that people like to talk about how much harder the real world is than school... but that just isn't my experience.
At work? as far as I can tell, 70% means I get a pretty good raise. A really good raise if one of the things I got done was really impressive.
(that is one of the weird things about school for me; At work? if you really hit one out of the park, that matters. In school? you have to be within 10% of maximum all the time if you want to do well academically... and going above that maximum doesn't really help you.)
At work? If you aren't good at something, but are really good at other things? they give the things you are terrible at to other people. In school? they make you spend all your time on that thing you are terrible at.
(I mean, I totally understand that people have different experiences of school and of work, and I also understand that I have an unusually good experience of work... but all this "real world" stuff makes me laugh, just 'cause it is soo much easier for me to keep a job where I work with people that got good grades at good schools than it is for me to... get into good schools at all.)
At work? If you aren't good at something, but are really good at other things? they give the things you are terrible at to other people. In school? they make you spend all your time on that thing you are terrible at.
That’s very true. My last four jobs were supposedly for a “full stack developer”, but it didn’t take long for managers to realize that when I told them up front, my weakness was on the front end and any pages I design look like something you would see on Geocities was not an exaggeration. Once they realized I was telling the truth, they stopped assigning me front end work.
In high school, I was forced to take Art classes - hilarity ensued. I’ve never been in favor of participation trophies but the B I got was definitely a “participation grade”.
Sure, and in school, even within the confines of the flexibility I offer, there's still a drop-dead deadline: the end of the semester, and test dates. I don't give infinite chances, but I do set up a system that prioritizes maximum learning opportunities over strict cut offs for when that learning occurs.
In the real world you usually have the option of scaling back the scope of what you deliver to meet a deadline. If school were more representative of typical workplace conditions, you'd have the option of taking the first half of the midterm half-way through the semester and then taking the other half at the end, and then you could scale back the credits you get for the course from 3 to 1.5. Then you could do the second half of the course the next semester.
There were at least 3 classes I recall from university where I really didn't learn anything of substance past the midterm. I managed to pull a B+ or an A- by turning in every single assignment on time, doing a decent job on the project, and applying test-taking tactics on the final. For at least one of those classes I wish I could slow the pace and spread it out into the next semester. But the way it was structured at my university, it as "all-or-nothing" on the curriculum within an artificial period of time.
Some specific examples of real deadlines I'm thinking of include: Giving a talk at a conference, submitting a bid for a contract, anything involving the court system (continuances are by no means guaranteed), a product launch with a firm already publicized date, or even worse, a product launch with a firm already publicized date and dozens of external partners (this is what I do at work).
In most of these cases you can't really scale back; you're either ready by the deadline or you're not, with catastrophic consequences for not being ready.
If we accept that the characteristics that grades are meant to represent are dynamic, what is the benefit of recording them at all? They will be perpetually out of date as people continue to learn (and forget).
We don’t accept that. Lots of people think that a grade is meant to represent performance on or by a date, either performance in an exam or performance on some weighted combination of exam and homework.
I’m honestly unsure whether extra credit is even a thing outside the US and it’s near abroad in Canada. I don’t think there’s a single country in Eurasia without a school leaving exam with summative assessment, some of which have a coursework component.
If you learn more, the improvement will be demonstrated in later grades. Grades have to be final at some point; it's more fair if that time is the same for everyone.
A better way to handle this case is to drop the student's lowest grade, or maybe even the lowest couple of grades.
Just to be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with giving extra credit assignments, if the teacher chooses. But the availability of extra credit should be clear to everyone, not given out because a specific student (or parent) demanded it.
Oh, absolutely: it's part of my sylabus, everyone is aware. Perhaps a bit paradoxically, it makes giving final grades much easier. If a student gets a bad grade, it's because they ignored all opportunities for improvement and I fail them with some sadness, but no regret.
Technically this is the intrinsic motivation (task-oriented student) vs extrinsic motivation (goal-oriented student) divide. The thing is that everyone agrees that meaningful learning needs the former and this ideal lies at the root of every methodological innovation, but in practice everyone pushes for the latter because school has also other uglier social jobs. This is a cognitive dissonance that pervades the whole education system which should be faced at some point. Basically it should start with: "you can speak freely, what's the main purpose of school?"
> I've taught at a college level, and I always give students the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work.
Isn't it 'rigid' to give only a limited amount of time( end of yr or whatever) for that chance. Seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-level knowledge, you're still getting a lower grade".
yep, the time is rigid, but I can't do anything about that. and anyway there has to be some balance between the extremes. Within the confines of what I can control, I place that balance where I feel it maximizes student learning. And over the course of the semester I probably only spend an extra 2 or 3 hours dealing with supplemental like this. Seems worth it to me.
But on the A- and extra credit issue, I never understood the point of rigid grading schemes. I've taught at a college level, and I always give students the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work. To do otherwise seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-level knowledge, you're still getting a lower grade".