Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

aspen
Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:02:27 +0000

It would be interesting to know if Prof. Grossman’s English course is a required or elective course. My guess is that it’s a required course. Otherwise most students would have learned of his grading system and found alternative teachers.

My opinion is that the absolute fairness of Prof. Grossman’s grading approach depends on his definition of ‘standard requirements’ and the university’s definitions for the various grade levels. Then there’s the relative fairness that depends on how Grossman’s approach compares to the grading approach used by peer professors.

From a pragmatic point of view, unless the Prof. Grossman offers a superior classroom experience when compared to other english teachers, a student needing or desiring higher grades would be better served by avoiding Grossman’s class.

Unfortunately, colleges and grad. schools don’t ask “What do you know?”, they ask “What was your GPA?”

Care to guess why the SAT/ACT scores are given so much weight?

The issue of ‘effort versus results’ is a whole other discussion.