TA confession: I'm sorry, but most of your children (my students) are average

Parents Forum
221

Isn’t there a high probability that there is plenty of evidence to support that “idea” and that they would only have to look at the performance of the incoming freshmen or the constant cries by educators for remedial classes. That or simply compiling accounts such as the one posted by the OP.

This is not about casting aspersions and it does not help to blame the teachers or the parents. It should be about finding solutions to a problem that is simply getting bigger by the decade. This will not happen until the next generations collectively call for changes because the former ones are quite happy to believe in the fallacy of the Lake Wobegon kids. Our current system is no longer a highly performing one as evidenced by FOB kids who come to the US with huge handicaps in English catch in no time and leave their peers in the dust. Feel free to track down the tools they rely on and perhaps see that they hardly rely on your daily classroom to compile their better records.

If the free school is not the problem, it surely is not the solution. And by a mile and a half.

222

Can’t one test critical thinking without grading on a curve?

223

Your grade inflation! :slight_smile:

When I went to college, back when dinosaurs roamed freely, the “mean” was a C+, and one SD below was time to drop a class.

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UW-Madison makes available the Grade Distribution Report for every semester. It is a 500 page pdf which lists every section for every class and shows the % of students earning each grade (A, AB, B, BC, C, D, F).

https://registrar.wisc.edu/course_grade_distributions.htm

I wonder if such information is made available by other universities.

225

It doesn’t sound like students graded on a curve are getting answers wrong; it sounds like too many are getting them right. How can getting 95% of the material correct be considered B work? No wonder the kids are stressing out.

226

I believe getting a 95% and getting it curved to a B is a rare event. More typical is the thrill of getting a 40% and having it curved to a C or a B. Curves often, and maybe even usually, benefit the students.

227

When I went to college, a typical grading curve in a large course was centered around B-/C+. However, most below-median grades were C-/C/C+. Typically, only a small number of students got D or F grades, generally for obvious reasons of not even getting the easy stuff correct.

The median grade is probably more like a B or B+ now.

228

You are ascribing his motivations without any discussion with the professor himself. However unorthodox his approach, it’s hard to believe that he is sitting in his room at night rubbing his hands and cackling “how can I get more of those worms to fail my course? Hahahaha!!!”

Really. We don’t do that.

229

Personally, I rarely curve and if I do it is on the end of the semester grades rather than on a particular exam. My personal belief is that students are competing with the material, not with each other. If I DO curve, it is to the benefit of the students, not to their detriment. If I considered the average on a particular exam to be “too high”, I would blame that on myself and look for some way to compensate on another exam or homework assignment or by not adjusting the grades with any sort of EOS curve.

Of course, if an exam average is “too low” that is totally their fault :wink:

230

For professors and instructors who don’t curve, would you ever assign every student an F?

231

^I can’t imagine that happening unless the class size is only 2 or 3 people who do nothing all semester.

232

Many years ago I knew someone whose students went of strike with the false idea that no one would fail an entire class. Even after the program director came to class and told the class that they needed to hand in decent work to pass, some continued not doing the work.

Education is one of the few places where consumers sometimes want less for their money.

233

In a really small class the situation is different. But in a big class giving everyone an A sounds as silly to me as giving everyone an F. If you’re just going to give everyone the same grade there shouldn’t even be grades.

For almost any class I took they could have written a test where the median grade would have been a 0%. What classes do you all teach where every student in the class just completely masters all the material, and can adequately answer any question that can be asked on the subject. If every student got an A in the class, would many of the student have been capable of being the instructor for that class after the class was done. Not saying that should be the standard for an A, but if they’ve truly mastered the subject then they should be able to.

234

That on-line grading chart makes everything very straightforward.

Also, that type of data should help parents to stop telling their kids they are failures if they do not score an A (since only 25% or maybe 35% do) or that the teacher is not fair if they get a C. For most students, their grade does correspond to effort … so if they get a C, the right response is … well, you have to work harder … and if they get an A, maybe send them a gift card so they get get a special sundae treat.

In terms of grades on one test, especially early in the semester, it is often the case that in order to provide anything of value to the students, you have to give a pretty rigorous 1st test and basically scare the students into trying harder for the rest of the semester, improving their study habits, or maybe deferring this class until they have more time available or are better prepared. You can’t give all As and Bs to students who are hoping for an easy A and then get them to actually buckle down and learn. If they aren’t studying, aren’t learning, aren’t we setting them up for the “I have a college education and am still making $30K future” and likely a lack of ability to work hard that their employers will have no problem seeing? How is this of value? Not to mention that if say a college that is ranked fairly highly started letting their students get As without working … etc … within 5 or 10 years that prestigious and probably expensive diploma will no longer mean much at all (oh, that’s a party school, we haven’t been able to do much with those kids the last few years, it’s a shame).

I think most professors want to see their students succeed in both learning and in getting good grades. Again, the C student is not being graded unfairly in most cases, there is likely something missing there … at least in comparison to your peers. If you want As at MIT, yes that will be harder than EWstateU. You will also have learned more since you likely had to in order to get an A … and at some point, that is pretty clear in many fields.

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It would not be the first time that someone has tried.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/04/27/professor-fails-his-entire-class-and-his-university-intervenes

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Professor admitted he had non-disruptive and academically qualified students in his class, so at minimum should have exempted those students from his punishment. Failing grades should never apply to people who do not deserve them. Disruptive classes are just as miserable for the students as the professor … they are learning much less and getting reprimanded for things they have no control over. Imagine you are a good student, getting say As, you take this class and have to put up with this … and then get an F and not graduate?

Obviously this professors academic career at A&M is over, regardless of his intentions (and due to his insulting behavior to people above, I am not sure they were not more vindictive than anything else). One could argue fairly convincingly that the school failed the students and the prof by not sending in someone else to clean up that mess for the rest of the semester. It is one thing to stand there and threaten, but I bet these cheaters and bozos would have either fled or straightened up if the admin had taken some real action.

Psst … most schools very much pressure people to grade on their typical curves … in other words, there is sort of an unspoken average curve of grades at a particular school. Again, most professors do force students to do an appropriate amount of work by grading individual tests, assignments, homework, projects appropriate to core parts of the class and typical class performance. In other words, for anyone who has taught a class more than once, there is a minimum mastery and effort (yes, effort does count on projects, essays, homework, etc) that can get you a C or B or A. Rarely do you not have people at those standards anyway, since most people want a value from their class, so you are merely prodding people to work harder and focus.

Once you calibrate your tests to reasonable mastery of the material (possibly including some stretch your understanding criteria for Bs and As), this is really easy to do, and the complaints become easier to deal with since you can tell students exactly what they need to do to get their desired grade (or tell them to try again later). Extra credit can be very educational too, and help students really move from a C to a B …

237

Yes, that’s my point with a readily available Grade Distribution Report such as the one UW-Madison has - students and others can have more information in order to have realistic grade expectations. Of course such a report is always used to sleuth out the easy A (highest % of A grades earned) courses.

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However, is that necessarily always the case? If a small (not on a forced curve) honors or advanced course that is difficult attracts only the most capable students, it may have a high grade distribution because all of the students learned the material well. An analogous situation would be the score distribution of the AP exams in calculus BC versus calculus AB, or the SAT subject tests in math level 2 versus math level 1.

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@sylvan8798

That seems reasonable to me.

IMO testing for advanced understanding or ability to work out an especially difficult problem can be done without a downward curve grading policy.

I’m just not understanding why there would ever be a downward curve in a class unless it is specifically to ensure that not everyone passes/gets an A-B-C (even if they all mastered the material and some really shined with an ability to think critically etc etc).

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“Average” for any of these classes would depend on the major and the school. That is, “average” at an elite school is sort of like “middle class” on a 250k income on cc?

If I were a prospective student, especially one interested in pre-med or pre-law where performance in a specific set of intro classes or overall GPA were to matter very much, I would be interested in also having disclosure wrt incoming stats, at least for the large intro classes that grade on a curve.

This would provide a rough estimate, but if the typical CR/M SAT is 1500 plus (as was the case in AP classes at our high school), 70% or more of the students already took the AP/IB version of the class and did well, and the class is curved to a B-, this might also provide information that is useful. At least, more useful than being told “If we admit you, you can do the work.”

I believe our high school AP classes are curved to a B+, and that students failing to earn a B are required to drop down to the college prep level for the next class. In contrast, most university STEM departments seem to curve somewhat lower, with some students dropping the class, and require a C- or higher to proceed to the next level.

It can be difficult to compare college GPA’s since there are no weighted classes in college and many students who took a “most rigorous” schedule in high school are taking a “least rigorous” schedule in college, especially if gen ed requirements are flexible. And, students are entering some types of classes with widely different levels of preparation even if stats are compressed, and can sometimes take a while to judge how time-consuming a course will prove, or to figure out how to access supports if necessary.

The flip side of all this is a student who concludes that college is “easy” until they get to second semester or second year and can no longer coast on material they learned in high school.

OP - did you get any kind of training to help you respond to students who complain that they have been working hard yet are not seeing results in their grades?