Efforts Based Grading

Jeff Quinton alerted me to this alarming not surprising news:

Benedict College has fired two professors who refused to go along with a policy that says freshmen are awarded 60 percent of their grades based on effort and the rest on their work's academic quality.

Benedict President David Swinton says the Success Equals Effort policy gives struggling freshmen a chance to adapt to college academics. He expects students to improve - the formula drops to 50-50 in the sophomore year and isn't used in the junior or senior year. But he says he's "interested in where they are at when they graduate, not where they are when they get here."

Students "have to get an A in effort to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade," Swinton said. "I don't think that's a bad thing."

This is the most idiotic policy I have ever heard of...and I've heard of a lot of idiotic policies! I know individual professors who give effort points (mostly in the School of Edumacation), but to make this policy? At most institutions the faculty would throw a serious fit over this. One tidbit of information students are often not aware of is that most universities have faculty governance of some sort or another. What this means is that the faculty themselves, not the administration, usually writes the rules. Either the faculty at Benedict is full of crap, or the university is an outlier, not following the normal faculty governance arrangement.

Science professors Milwood Motley and Larry Williams defied that policy and Swinton dismissed them. Neither had tenure, which could have protected them from firing.

Motley, a veteran five years at Benedict, said he didn't like concept from the beginning but went along with it grudgingly. Then he faced an academic dilemma of passing a student he thought had not learned course material. In his case, giving a C to a student with a high exam score of 40 percent was too much.

"There comes a time when you have to say this is wrong," he said.

Motley said he started in the Spring awarding grades strictly on academic performance. But the historically black college "told us to go back and recalculate the grades, and I just refused to do it," he said. A letter in June, informed Motley and Williams they were fired. Williams would not comment to The State newspaper for its story on the situation.

Fellow political scientist Steven Taylor had this to say:

Well, yes it is if the point of grades is to measure the degree to which students have mastered the material. And how does one measure “effort” anyway? Surely the best test of how hard one has worked is how well one has mastered the material–and yes, some people have to work harder than others. Such is life, I’m afraid.

Why do I have the feeling Dr. Taylor and I would get along splendidly?

The article continues:

A faculty grievance committee voted 4-3 vote to reinstate Motley, but Swinton overruled that, dismissing Motley's claim that his academic freedom had been violated.

"The record makes it abundantly clear that Dr. Motley has committed this infraction," Swinton wrote in a July 13 letter to the committee's chairwoman. "Moreover, the transcript of the hearing reveals that he admits to refusing to comply with college policy and states that he would not comply if reinstated."

The professors "were not dismissed because they did not follow the policy," he said. "They were dismissed for insubordination. They were openly defiant and in some cases hostile."

This is why the faculty at my, or any university that I have been associated with, would go nuts. Academic freedom is sacrosanct. Academic freedom is normally construed to mean more than the freedom to say what you want in class (and out--especially in your role as an academic researcher) but also the freedom to do what you want in class.

Another colleague, Dr. James Joyner, had a different take on the academic freedom angle:

Well, clearly, this isn't an academic freedom issue; this isn't a debate over contending theories in science. It is, however, a manisfestly idiotic policy. Indeed, aside from a student's performance on exams and other graded events, it is not clear to me how it is that a professor would assess "effort." Further, effort is an entirely meaningless concept if it doesn't translate into performance.

I disagree. This is about academic freedom, unless one construes academic freedom so narrowly as to only apply the term to research and speech issues.

To further complicate matters, the Benedict College is an historically black college (HBC). Unfortunatly, HBCs have acquired a reputation for less than stellar academic standards. Morris Brown and Barber-Scotia recently lost accreditation, and let me tell you it takes a lot of hard work to actually lose accreditation!! In the case of Barber-Scotia the underlying reason for losing accreditation was "a fundamental issue of integrity" including degrees "being offered without students having completed work, and that sort of thing". I'd be worried if I was at Benedict that these types of shenanigans would affect the College's accreditation.

HBCs were once important institutions committed to educating African-Americans in the face of the hardships of segregation. Booker T. Washington's autobiographical Up From Slavery recounts the history of the Tuskegee Institute and the strict demands that institution made on its students. Even Washington's arch-nemesis W.E.B. Dubois would be rolling over in his grave--from what I understand his courses at Atlanta College were not especially easy nor did he grade on effort.

One of the major problems faced by smaller universities (which most HBCs are) is the dominance of Ed. Ds over Ph. Ds. An Ed. D. is a Doctor of Education and is trained much like your normal high school or elementary school teacher. Ph. Ds are not trained teachers, rather, they are trainded in a specific academic discipline to pursue scientific knowledge. Imagine the local high school social-studies teacher, but in charge of a university--that is how Ed. Ds tend to run things. See the problem? They actually tend to believe the university is an extension of the public school system. They tend to believe that every one ought to get a college degree. The tend to think effort is just as important as achievement....etc.

In my estimation, the problems facing HBCs have their underlying causes not in the ethnic make-up of faculty and students, but in the academic preparation of faculty. The education establishment has a hard enough time running our nation's schools, they should never be put in charge of running our universities.

These are the same people that want to do away with using red-ink in elementary schools, for fear of emotionally scarring students.

It's crap like this that scares me into blogging anonymously. Tenure is how far away???

UPDATE: James "I left my job in academia for more money and prestige than you'll ever have Rusty" Joyner resorts to the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) definition of academic freedom and says:

If a professor decided that he wanted to call his black students "niggers," for example, he would not ordinarily be covered by academic freedom (although I can think of narrow pedagogical exceptions). If he wanted to argue that affirmative action is a policy harmful to blacks, it would. Even then, the topic should be appropriate for the course content and the professor's expertise.

I disagree with James and the AAUP. I do not advocate dropping the 'N' bomb on students, but there is a serious question of who decides what the exception to the rule is. If the academic freedom policy is a general rule which allows professors the leeway to express unpopular ideas except when those ideas may be offensive--well then the rule has no meaning whatsoever. Why? Because the except whens are purely subjective and are therefore are at the whim of some group of people or another. Hence, academic freedom is a farce unless it completely covers all situations--even when professors utter idiotic and even hurtful drivel.

Otherwise, I fear, professors can (and have) be censured for saying idiotic things which the academic community disapproves of (for instance, racist ideas), but will receive no such censure for saying equally idiotic things which the academic community has no problem with (for instance, Marxist philosophy). When you carve out exceptions to rules you are allowing a group of people to decide when the exception is valid and when it is not. The same problem arises with Constitutional Law. Freedom of speech, except when, is nothing more than freedom of speech as long as the Supreme Court doesn't mind what you are saying. I would reject the AAUP standard as too narrow, and would have a much broader standard in it's place.

(PS-I'm waiting to hear from fellow political scientists Dr. Choas (also untenured and anonymous) and the not so anonymous but ever mysterious Steve the Llamabutcher)

Posted by: Rusty at 09:13 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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