No, I do not. It’s harsh enough that the student is likely to remember that forgetting instructions can have serious consequences (and the world is full of serious consequences for not following seemingly inconsequential instructions), but at that stage in life I do not believe those consequences are THAT painful.
Try sending in your tax return without your name on it. You’ll end up paying a late filing fee. How about leaving a name off of the signature card in the bank and having a check bounce because of it. You’ll be out one NSF fee. There are many, many examples.
All of which, of course, is beside the point.
When I was teaching at college level, I didn’t have the missing name on the paper problem often. It’s easy to return tests and announce “Anyone who took the test and didn’t get yours back, come see me after class. I have one without a name on it.”
A final is different. After the final, I might never see the students again. If I received a final without a name on it, I could either track down every student who didn’t take the exam (Yes, there always seemed to be at least one who didn’t show up. Mindboggling, isn’t it?) or just take the easy route: give 'em a zero and let them find me. Then I could decide how to deal with the situation.
Lest you ask how hard it is to place a phone call or two, I was never given lists of my students’ home telephone numbers, and many of them left their parents’ numbers with the school because they moved around. Tracking down those kids could be difficult.
Getting the the OQ (original question), I think 10% would have been gentle for a homework assignment, but my expectations would be quite a bit higher on a final exam. I think 10% is a reasonable ding.
In most real life situations your name is all over the form anyway. On a test it’s the only chance you have to identify yourself.
I like the 10% penalty.
What, are you comparing apples to anvils? Now you want to compare an essay question to putting your name on the test? Seriously, what’s the problem with leaving the unsigned paper to the side until you’re done grading the rest. It gets painfully easy to find out whose test it is when they’re the only one in th egrade book without a grade next to it.
IMHO if stated ahead of time it could be as high as 33% off, if stated ahead of time AND while the test was distrubuted to the students, I would say it’s fair to give a 0 for the paper.
Well, if that’s the case, you should have given him a far longer and more complicated name. Then he’d EARN that ten points! 
I think this was my Linear Circuits prof…
Stranger
I find it very interesting seeing the different viewpoints about the value of a written name and what punishment (if any) is needed to get across to a kid that he/she shouldn’t forget to record it. I’m currently in my 4th year at university and I can certainly understand that with assignments or essays the prof has a legitimate reason to hold such a harsh policy in order to keep things easy (since the prof usually has between several different classes of which can reach hundreds of students). The standard has always been no assignment (or no name) means 0, no lates, and no excuses unless you were hit by a car. No names are kept though and if the student bothers to try to challenge the 0 mark they can try to prove it’s their work. I totally disagree with the policy though when it comes to exams. If the proctor or professor can’t make sure the student has written their name down before allowing the student to leave the examination room then the prof has bigger problems to worry about.
It has been standard practice for me in all my classes that for exams and tests you are not allowed to leave the room until you have been cleared by whoever is in charge. This also includes having students sign attendance sheets proving they were present. In highschool we had an almost identical policy and in grade 7-8 we also had this policy though there were only tests and no exams.
Is there a reason some teachers can’t hold a similar policy in exams? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any problems when it comes to exams or tests using this policy (other than the teacher accidently losing it).
We’re talking about a 7th grader. They don’t have proctors, and the “turn in your test” procedure is usually handing them up to the front of the row for collection, or dropping them on the teacher’s desk on the way out the door. When that bell rings, the students are gone!
You seem to be differentiating between a test and an exam. Where are you from? Are tests and exams two different things where you live? They’re synonyms here.
Fine. Then we both agree that forewarning is not by itself sufficient to justify any possible penalty. We’ll just have to disagree over whether or not 10% is too severe. Again, IMO, a rule that could penalize a hard-working student two full letter grades on his final, and whatever havoc it plays on his total grade, his grade point, and any honors he might have received–for unintentionally omitting his @#$%ing name on the test paper–is authoritarian bullshit. It is completely unrelated to his command of the subject and completely out of whack with the minor inconvenience it creates. IMHO.
I’ll ask this question for the second time. How do they determine who to assess the 10% penalty against, given this indecipherable mystery?
Well, we wanted to keep it simple, so we went with Cadwallader Aloysius Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis IV.
How about sending an unsigned rent check to your landlord? Do you honestly think that the banks will say, “Oh, he must have forgotten. No big deal.”?
And what about filing forms with any number of government agencies? If you fail to complete the forms, they may send them back or reject them outright. Do you really want to take that risk with the IRS or the BCIS?
Nitpick: It’s one full letter grade, not two.
At my son’s school an A is 93 - 100, a B is 85 - 92, a C is 78 - 84. So, a 93 is an A, an 83 is a C.
I remember those times when teachers would use the pass the test forward policy but would still quickly scan through each pile before allowing the row to leave. Then again I don’t know what your school culture is like and things may be done differently in different places, but around here it was often understood that students arriving to their next class may be late if they are coming from a test.
I’m from Canada. I admit the two terms are pretty synonymous but a test is usually in the middle of the term and not worth as much of the grade as an exam. Exams typically consist of a midterm (if any) and a final. Sometimes the midterms are thought of as tests but more often they are worth alot and labled as an exam. Also tests are scheduled during class hours whereas exams are scheduled any time that the school decides.
Ah. I’ve only taught at schools where A is 90-100, B is 80-89, etc.
If you don’t provide all necessary information you shouldn’t get all possible credit. 10% may be too much or it may not be enough depending on where this child is going to be 10 years down the line. Some people can get by without always remembering to sign everything. A doctor who forgets to sign a prescription could cause enough of a delay in recieving necessary medicine it could possibly kill someone. A contractor who forgets to sign an order could delay the building of your new house by a week or more. An artist who forgets to sign his painting may never have their work recognized.
If you are moving from one place to another and the moving company tells you, “this is not a binding quote” and you sign and then later they jack up the price by $500 dollars or more that is a much bigger deal than losing 10% of a grade. That could prevent you from being able to make your mortgage payment or your electric bill, all because you did not heed the warning that was given. Learning to follow instructions and pay attention to detail is important and it is better to find out in 7th grade how important it is to dot your i’s and cross your t’s than when it will cause a much bigger problem.
I think the point that is being missed by those supporting the teacher, is not that there shouldn’t be “consequences”, but that having the consequence be the grade is not the best approach.
Emabarassing someone in class, not recording the grade til they come in after class and claim the paper, making them clap erasers (do they still do that?) are all fine consquences. Deducting 10% from the grade is just not appropriate. I don’t see how you can justify giving the same grade to someone who got 10/10 questions right but left off their name with someone who only got 9/10 questions right.
It’s also not a question of being fair. In Saudi Arabia they cut off the hands of people that steal. If they tell you in advance, and treat everyone the same, it is perfectly fair; but that doesn’t make it right.
Can I point something out?
If a child doesn’t put her name on her paper, then I, her teacher, don’t know whose paper it is.
So she gets a zero.
It’s not always easy to identify whose paper it is. I don’t have 120 students’ handwriting memorized. And there might be more than one person who hasn’t turned it in. Yes, there might even be more than one person who skipped the final exam.
But if this is a final exam, then the students aren’t going to be in class tomorrow for me to even try to identify whose exam the unsigned one is. It’s very likely to get no credit at all, for a huge impact on the student’s final grade in the class.
If I manage to figure out whose test it is, and only dock it 10% in accordance with the policy, that’s hugely better to giving it a zero because I don’t know who wrote it.
For the record, my class policy is as follows:
If you don’t put your name on your paper, it doesn’t get credit, because I don’t know whose work it is. I’ll put it in a folder labelled ‘papers without names,’ which is available for you to look through.
I don’t even try to figure out whose paper it is. I have better uses for my time.
If you notice that you never got the assignment back, find your nameless paper, and give it to me with your name on it, you get full credit.
If you don’t go looking for it, the assignment stays a zero, and I throw it away with about 30 or 40 other nameless papers at the end of the grading period.