America Needs Tough Grading

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I attended Undergrad from 1997 to 2001 and I distinctly remember the first paper I received from a new Associate Professor in my major (History) that was a C-. I argued that it would have been an A-level grade in any other professor's class; this new professor told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was most definitely a C- grade and I needed to do better. I did and it made me a better researcher and eventually writer.

I finished that course with a hard-earned B+ and I felt better about myself and my abilities thereafter. As a D1 athlete, I had clear goals and expectations set for me by those who I was against and whom came before me. This was the first time in my academic career where I felt I had received a challenge and clear guidelines on how to improve; something I felt helped me achieve better outcomes.

Education is not intended to be a breeze; it's intended to be a challenge to help you stretch and grow. Just because you and/or your family is spending tens of thousands a semester does not give anyone the right to skate by with the bare minimum effort applied.

I have high expectations for my children academically. My undergrad and graduate degrees were paid for by others (athletics and my employer) alongside of my own work in both. I want my children to grow up and be successful and they will not be if I smooth the road for them in unfair ways. I explain that, in life, they will face uncertain and likely unfair challenges from external forces and they need to not only stretch and grow in their knowledgebase to challenge these forces, but they should also learn to navigate them with grace--an academic exercise in and of itself.

> It’s no coincidence that as grades have gone up, civic friendship between people with different views and backgrounds has gone down, both on campuses and in the nation at large. Students are so confident in their beliefs that they verbally assault professors and guest lecturers and physically assault classmates and janitorial staff. A dose of humility is needed, and it can start in the classroom.

I'm not convinced that grade inflation is causing verbal and physical assaults.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2...

Here's a whole book about the issue, published in 2003: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b97309

And here's one from 1991: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.5.1.159

Folks, this is an annual grouching point among folks who care about or work in academia. Nothing to see here.

-- Edited to add that I am a community college English professor. Most people pass my class because the college has set the final drop date one month before the end of the semester, so students have plenty of time to avoid a bad final grade.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/america-needs-tough-grading-educ...

Too frequently, what people (and clearly the author of this piece) mean when they say "tougher grading" is just a return to forcible bell-curve application and faculty who take out their personal insecurities and annoyance over being required to teach classes on their students. That's not making academics more challenging, it's just torturing statistics and arbitrarily modifying the race-course in order to satisfy other agendas. If you have a good teacher and a good course and more than half the class does well, you should consider making the next iteration more challenging, but you should not feel obliged to fail 10% of them because "there's always a bell-curve", nor should you be using grading as a means to "humble" your students.

I emphasized the word "consider" up there because not every course needs to be a slog up Everest, either — an "intro to X" course might well be a class in which many people do well. Some percentage of them will be people looking to make that their major, so they'll already know enough to be ahead of the curve in an "intro" course. Others will be bright people who learn well and adapt to the material. As someone who teaches classes regularly at the college/grad-school level, I try to make the content interesting and challenging, but if most of my students turn in work that exceeds standards and are coming out with a good understanding of the content, I feel like I've accomplished my goals — academia is supposed to be about learning after all, and they're displaying that they've correctly learned the content I wanted to communicate to them. I do spend time trying to re-work the course regularly (something I'm forced to do much more since the explosion of sites like Chegg...), but past a certain point if something is clearly working, why am I obliged to break it?

Like others report uni profs made me better. Wherever my English prof is at ... thanks a ton! Leadership, caring, and know how. You were marvelous.

What is the goal of "tough grading" when they, and a majority of the population, actively despise any kind of expertise?