The "F" Word

In My Humble Opinion
1

I mean “Fail,” of course.

I teach college. I don’t think I’ve given an “F” in the last ten or twenty years, as far back as I can remember, actually, to a student who has shown up for more than half the classes and handed in some portion of the work.

And that’s wrong. I know it’s wrong.

I’ve found a way to award such students “INC” grades (which turn into Fs, if they fail to hand in the missing work), or give them referral grades (grades that appear on their transcirpt only after they do some remediation, like taking and passing a non-credit course in writing skills) or I’ll give them a “W” (withdrawal with instructor’s permission) for almost any reason they can devise.

The reason it’s wrong is that I believe it to be pedagogically useful to give "F"s as a way of saying, in effect, “Your work falls well below the standards, as I see them, of adequate work in this college, and you need to seriously step up your effort or your skill-level or both. Take this grade as a clear, unambiguous sign that you have done such little work or such poor work that you have succeeded only in wasting your own time, and when you retake this course, or when you take other courses, please remember how frustrated you feel right now about wasting your tuition money and whatever energy you may have sunk into this course.”

I got an “F” in a college course once myself. I was pissed-off, because I thought I deserved to pass the course, but I certainly took the above lesson from getting that “F” and my effort certainly never again fell as far as I let it fall in that course. I think the self-centered twerp who gave me that “F” helped me take my studies more seriously, though I still have very little respect for him otherwise.

I don’t give "F"s simply from personal convenience. So few of my colleagues give "F"s that even when I fail students for not turning in work, some of them march into my office and argue at tedious length that their work deserves some credit. I’ve had a student hand in a single paper that I’ve graded with a generous “D” and none of the other work in the course, that his one “D” should mean that he had earned a “D-” not an an “F” in the course. I don’t like having such tedious discussions, and I don’t enjoy being the professor who grades on a “C” curve in a department that grades on a “B” (or “B+”) curve, and having students constantly arguing about their grades.

My favorite example was an illiterate student who wrote out a formal complaint against my harsh grading, which document stood as my single best piece of evidence against her.

I’m seriously considering adopting a no-grading policy in my courses. I’ll simply give every student in the class an “A”–I’ll continue marking their papers and offering comments and otherwise doing my job, but if I’m going to abandon the grading system by continuing to give no "F"s, and very few "D"s, and to endure complaints and arguments (and bad student evaluations) when I give students "C"s, then is it worth it to make the distinction between "A"s and "B"s anymore? Why not just take the entire issue of grades off the table, and make the class about the subject?

2

Some of the really good colleges do that – like St. John’s Annapolis. But you have to be very accomplished to be accepted there anyway.

If college professors allow themselves to be bullied into giving away grades that are not deserved, they will soon have your job and all is lost.

If a high school teacher can stand tough against threats of physical violence and not change a grade, then where is your backbone?

3

You can’t question the location of my backbone any more than I’m doing myself. The only thing that’s letting me even consider this as an option is the rationalization that I’m doing this absurd thing as an act of defiance to my colleagues: If I, after years of arguing that their standards need to be tougher, now refuse to give out meaningful grades at all, maybe they need to decide now whether grades like C, D, and F have any meaning.

Maybe that’s weak. But I don’t consider my job to consist of arguing about grades with students, or explaining to them at great length what my grading stanrds are and why each paper that I grade has gotten the grade I’ve put on it. My job, as I see it, is to teach, and all I’m doing lately is taling and thinking and arguing about grades.

I don’t want to rant about current students’ sense of entitlement too much, because it’s off the subject, but I certainly never considered chalenging any of my professors’ grades, even when I felt strongly that I had deserved better than the grade reflected. So the way I see it, since their own sense of self-respect and humility is lacking to suppress the urge to argue grades, they’re already determining against my will what my job consists of.

This is radical, I know, but I’m looking for a solution that works. I want to teach again.

4

Well, I never challenged a grade either, but I don’t disagree with the concept. Everything is subjective, and if a grade wasn’t fair, it’s only right to be able to negotiate. And of course if the grade was fair, then the teacher should stand ground.

I’m really not fond of the idea of no grades. Or of a guarantee of passing for showing up. Ranking is valuable to the student, to the school’s student community, and most importantly to society after the student leaves. “A” work is better than “C” work and should be recognized as such. Just as it should be (and is) in any other competitive goal-oriented endeavor.

As far as the pain in the grading process, that’s just how it is in any position of authority. Ask any manager whether they’d prefer to do work or do reviews.

5

I feel so betrayed!

6

That was fine, Bill, back in the day when I would have one or two students a term politely inquiring as to my reasoning process. But now it’s gotten so I can’t give out a grade lower than a B without the student feeling persecuted, and insisting on my detailing every bit of my thought processes. Most of the thought processes boil down to “This just wasn’t nearly as rigorous or as thoughtful as most of your classmates’ work” but I can’t show the classmates’ work to prove my point, nor do I think that they would accept my judgment, blindingly obvious though it may be to me or to some other reader.

What they’ve learned, I’m afraid, is that to be belligerent results in getting your way, just to save time and tedious discussion. It takes a minute to change a C- minus to a C+, but it takes an hour or more to stick your guns. Most of my colleagues rarely give out C-s in the first place, and give in when a C- student disputes the grade, thus encouraging other students to think, “Hey, what the hell, I can do more for my GPA by devoting a single day to arguing with each of my professors than I could have done in a whole semester of hard work.” And from that limited perspective, they’re absolutely right, it is much more time efficient.

The real problem is that negotiating rewards the most argumentative students, not necessarily the same as the most deserving.

7

In my Masters program there are no grades, it’s all pass/fail, which I absolutely love.

In high school my grades were inflated and didn’t reflect the work I did. It’s because my school/program were ‘harder’ than others so someone decided to add some percentage points to everyone’s final average to make up for it. (All unspoken, of course, but I know for a fact I didn’t do the work to merit the grades I got.)

In undergrad my marks also didn’t reflect the work I did, at all. Some classes were clearly graded on a curve. One exam seemed to be intentionally designed to take longer than the time allotted - I was writing steadily for the whole three hours, answering questions pretty briefly, and still I ran out of time.

In some classes I got the exact same mark on each exam I wrote: one of which I studied like mad for, one I casually reviewed for, and one I was stoned out of my head on cough syrup.

I’m comfortable believing something dodgy was going on because in order to see your exam after it was marked you had to pay cold cash, and in order to get it remarked you would have had to pay more cold cash. Their intention may have been to avoid situations like the one above, where profs waste so much time arguing with students who want that one extra mark, but I think there’s much more to it than that. They could have been concocting our grades out of whole cloth (I suspect they were in the case of my three exams with the exact same result), and so few students would call them on it that they could reasonably deny anything fishy.

So I’ve never had much faith that marks actually reflect anything meaningful in the student’s work. Naturally I love the pass/fail thing.

An amazing result is that there’s virtually no competition among the students. “Hey, what’d you get?” “Pass. You?” “Pass.” No room for gloating. Also it’s easier for the profs because they don’t have to try, on any level, to compare our work with each other. Since it’s a Masters course we’re all doing kind of different things and there’s no ‘standard’ with which to compare work.

That said, it does happen (regularly) that a prof returns work to us and requests that we do it again because it was unsatisfactory. So it’s not like there’s no accountability.

8

Lower than a B? You lucky duck. I spent half an hour the other day listening to complaints from a student who wanted to know why she kept getting B-pluses on her assignments. I can only assume that high schools nowadays condition students to think of everything other than a flat A as an insult.

I’d love to see a gradeless system; hell, I’d love to see any classroom innovation that removes the emphasis from the product – the final grade – and puts it back on the process of learning. But I can’t justify compromising the system myself by handing out As to everyone who registers for the course. Even if I weren’t a lowly grad student who would be in major trouble as soon as the Powers that Be noticed, it would still be unfair to my colleagues who take grading seriously, and unfair to students who get the idea they’re producing acceptable college-level work when they aren’t.

Sigh … well, I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying I don’t know what to do. (It’s been that sort of week.)

9

Over the summer, one of my professors had the best grading system that I have seen. I wish I had kept his syllabus so I could post it for you. I suspect that he had endured pressure from student also. He created an unbiased formula for evaluating a student’s grade. I don’t know what you teach, so I can’t really elaborate on how you’d do this. If the coursework in based on essays, you could create a rubric similar to those used by standardized test graders (like the sat 2 writing rubric). Anyway, I think you should create a grading system that leaves little room for your own opinion (or at least limits anything that could be construed as impartialness). Define everything–every single part of the grading process and what is necessary from the students for a good grade–in the syllabus.
I think it is unfair to go to a pass/fail system. Some students will be willing to work their butts off to get A’s. They shouldn’t be kept from getting A’s or B’s or whatever they are willing to work for just because some others are not going to put out any effort.
Leave no room for haggling.

10

I’ll relate my one experience in arguing a grade with a college professor.

There were several tests and a final exam, averaged for your final grade. It was a ten point scale. Thus, one could calculate one’s final grade for the course as soon as the final exam grade was known.

Eureka! I’d achieved an average of 69.8! Clearly, 69.8 rounds off to 70 and I’d have my C in the dreaded Calculus course. To my great dismay, upon receiving my grades, a D was there.

Now the discussion:
Me: “69.8 rounds off to 70. I feel I should have a grade of C.”

Professor: To earn a C, one must have a grade between 70 and 79. Since this is a college math course, can you tell me if 69.8 is between 70 and 79?

Me: “No, it isn’t. But…”

Professor: “If you need a C, retake the course next quarter.”

End of discussion.

I think you should stick to your guns. If they earn the F grade, give 'em what they earned. When they go into a business or profession, laziness, mistakes and errors will be costly. That lesion is better learned now. That’s why they call it school, no?

Good luck!

11

A tip of the hat for a poignant typo, Mr. Carter. Sadly, methinks the lesion is growing larger, and I’ve no salve.

12

Looks like I didn’t do so great in speling either. :wink:

13

As a current undergrad student, it annoys the heck out of me when I work really hard for an “A” on an assignment and the slacker next to me slops his together and gets the same grade.

On the other hand, there are lots of classes where students all know all they have to do is turn in an assignment to get an “A.” In those classes I feel its a waste of my time to put a lot of effort into it. Yes, its the end product (the grade) that important. That’s why I’m willing to work harder in a class that grades harder. Probably not the best route, education wise, but I have a lot of credits.

Students’ will only work as hard as you make them. In the begining of the semester, be upfront about your grading policies. Tell them you are a hard grader, right from the bat (I’ve had profs say this and I took it to heart). In your syllabus, spell out exactly what’s required of them. Hand out grading rubrics for all assignments. If students know exactly whats expected of them, they’ll have a harder time arguing over the grade when they don’t fulfill the requirements, plus you’ll have something concrete that shows your thought processes.

I’m voting for sticking to your guns…

Supposedly my school is trying to fight against grade inflation. We’ll see…

14

Don’t feel too bad PRR, I’m the same way. I haven’t taught as long as you, and I’m only a PE instructor, but I have only given a few F’s in the going on 6 years that I’ve been teaching. People have to really try hard to get an F in my classes.

If they show up for at least half the classes, and make a decent attempt at handing in the homework, or some portion thereof. They’ll usually get at C.

Maybe it’s wrong. But I know how it was when I was in college. I think that if someone’s trying, and they just get overwhelmed or something, especially around midterms and finals, something’s got to give.

I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Particularly those that I see trying, and the ones that email me and let me know what’s going and, and when and why they’ll miss classes.