Inflation

No, this isn't about the cost of gas, utilities, housing, or dairy products. It's about grades at university. I'm thinking about it as I finish my round of grading the most recent assignment from my students. I'm teaching a writing intensive section, which means by university policy that if a student doesn't pass the writing component, that student fails the course.

This ups the ante in what is already the high stakes, high pressure grading scenario at the college level. Each semester, I find myself engaging in a process of lowering my standards in what I consider not only A work but passing work. So both ends of my scale fluctuate in a way which widens the range of passable and good work such that it encompasses products which I do honestly feel are substandard.

Why do I waffle so? One reason is that I suspect my standards are not commensurate with the level of work students at my university typically produce. All the talk about how we have a larger number of high quality students simply doesn't add up when I take informal stock of the overall level of work my students produce. This spans semesters and years and different courses I've taught. This holds true across my colleagues and peers too. Because I am by nature a relativist, I tend to adjust my scale to accommodate what seems to be the norm here. That is, what to me is B or C level work apparently at my university warrants at least a full letter grade higher in the final accounting.

Another reason is that even in the cases where there is no reasonable basis for awarding the higher grade, I have had students complain, insist, wheedle, flame, contest, and confront about the grade they earned. One such student brought her belief that she had received an unfairly low grade all the way to the head of undergraduate studies for my department last spring. The course had ended four months prior. She missed the final, she turned in a fragmented final essay, she had missed a good deal of class at the end, and had missed a writing assignment mid way through (which despite my giving her the entire rest of the semester to make up on account of me being a really nice person she never did make up). The grade I gave her, a low B, was charitable. Her basis for contesting her grade was that she thought I hadn't taken all her work into account when I awarded her final grade. This was nonsense, but is one of the few legitimate bases for contesting a grade. The head of undergrad studies was sympathetic to my situation as an instructor, but suggested that I look over her work and my records anyhow to see if I had missed anything. I managed to give her a slight boost, to a full B, after bumping up her participation grade (which had been moderate, a reflection of her missing so many class meetings at the end of the semester) and allowing her to make up the final (she did poorly on it, not a surprise since it had been four months since the class ended). Again, that was charitable and not at all the grade her work had earned, but at that point I just wanted her off my case.

She was disappointed, but thankfully she did not proceed further with the grade contesting request.

I was truly appalled that the undergrad studies director had not been more strict with her from the get go. He sends out emails once a semester reminding grad student instructors of the policy on grades and grade contesting. Belief that the grade was miscalculated or that the instructor missed or didn't count significant work on the part of the student are the only legitimate reasons to change a grade after it's been submitted, and yet here he was encouraging me to go on a fishing expedition to find some way to elevate a grade which was already somewhat inflated.

I know I am not the only one (cf. "A's for Everyone!"). I know that this happens with other instructors at other universities. Still, although I don't want to be part of this trend, it is incredibly difficult to work against that aspect of the system.

How are instructors ever to feel confident assigning the grade student work has earned when even the instructors' own departments seem to falter in support of stated grade policies? I know I feel a hell of a lot less confident now.

And so here I am, nearly done reviewing these papers. I saved what I figured would be the most tricky ones for last so I could at least grade them with the lowest possible standards (that is, standards relative to what was most likely to be the best or typical work of their peers on this assignment, which I had started with). I'm looking them over and thinking "Ok, on a non-relative scale this thing deserves a C, tops..." but I know for at least some of these students, the amount of effort they have put into the assignment is what they expect to be graded on. And I know for my more tricky students, that is, the ones who I've already identified as having problems with the topic or the manner of writing about it, there has been a reasonably high level of effort involved in getting the assignment done.

So...here I am wondering not just do I inflate but by how much? How much can I justify before I feel like an academic whore, pimped by the university and my department, here simply to at least minimally gratify the majority of my students?