“If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”
Students feel entitled to an A, because of effort, not output. We're going to discuss this article in class, as I wait for the projector to warm up.
UPDATE: More from Megan McArdle and Tim Burke.
Apt. 11d 
No, they do not deserve A’s. I tell them that doing everything they are supposed to do, if it is done competently, gets them into the B range. If they are sloppy in what they do and late with assignments, we are moving toward C’s. Perhaps B’s are too easy; and that is why A’s must be harder to achieve. For me, an A demonstrates not only mastery of the material, but adds some sort of originality or creativity. I do not expect them to come up with their own unique theory (we’re all social scientists, after all); but if they want to get an A they have to do something interesting with the way they use the sources at their disposal, or in the way they make an argument. Something original.
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The part about doing everything the teacher asks of them and more? That is what I’m seeing with “A” work. If they meet and exceed the assignment expectations, they’ll do well.
We can’t assess and weigh in perceived effort when we’re assigning marks. I know some students are breezing through their work, earning “A” grades with minimal effort while others are struggling to achieve even a “C” standard for a class. As a teacher, I need to reach out to those who are having trouble doing the work to see if I can help them with their work, but not to the extend of handing them an “A” just because they tried.
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Ask them to apply this “logic” to, oh, sports or the arts. Hey, I’m trying as hard as I can to play the trumpet, so I must be excellent! I’m trying as hard as I can to pole vault, so I must be great!
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I was just talking about this with my students. I was telling them that when I write “good” on their papers, that means that they came up with an idea I already had and agreed with. Those kinds of comments lead to B papers at best. When I write “interesting,” that means that they came up with something I never thought of before, and it’s intriguing me. Those kinds of comments can lead to As.
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I just did a round of annual reviews for a group that included recent college grads, and I can’t tell you how damaging this “everyone gets an A” culture is later in life! I seriously get this argument from people: I did everything you requested and so I should get promoted. Wow — are people really learning what it means to excel, that results count in addition to effort, at 25 or 26? And this helps them how?
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I wonder why it’s such a problem to find out your work isn’t good enough to get an A. Do they think they’re just plain not good people if they’re not good enough to get an A? Is there nothing else in their lives that they can be proud of? Or is it just the widespread sense of entitlement?
I suppose this is due to the inflated credentialism: if they don’t get all As how can they get a decent job, when every job requires honor roll just to apply now that the old requirement of having a degree is too broad?
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Hah! I was just about to send this to you.
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I think the professor who lays blame on the K-12 system gets it partly right; but the system is responding to the prevailing cultural attitude that tells kids “You’re the best you there is.” Which is true—and self-esteem is not a bad thing in itself—but that sentiment too often gets translated to: “So everything you do is the best just because you are you.” Not true.
I recently took an Assessment class for my Master’s degree, in which we were taught that, as the teacher, you must evaluate only students’ mastery of the material you have taught. Not effort, not respect, not attendance, not enthusiasm. But that’s not the policy in most schools, for a whole host of reasons, including students’ and parents’ expectations, pressure on the teachers and administration, disparity in students’ backgrounds, desire to reward those who cooperate with the school agenda and dole out consequences to those who don’t, and so on. If I were running my own school, I’d separate the components of the grades, so that purely academic marks stood alone, and the soft stuff like effort (which does matter a lot in a K-12 setting) received a separate grade; the two would be averaged for the final subject grade, but the components would be visible. I don’t know why more schools don’t do this, except that it’s a lot of work and there’d be a lot of arguing over things that are tough to evaluate. Not that there’s not already, hence the article.
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I’m not sure that I buy that entitlement issue is a big problem in higher ed. I have found that when students put in the effort, they produce better exams and papers. 95% of the time, the students that do the reading and come to class get good grades. (I blind grade the exams which are short answer and essays.) The remaining 5% are mostly super well prepared students who are coasting off great high school educations. They cram the night before and get As. It is the rare student who works hard and still bombs. I give out review sheets to help the smart, hard-working students who don’t know how to study for exams.
I think that students do think that if they work hard, they should get an A. I do, too. The question is whether we define hard work the same. I think that hard work involves more than showing up for class and skimming the first page of the reading.
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Suze’s proposal is interesting and it’s something that we’re sort of instituting at my (higher ed) institution. Whereas many English departments explore portfolio evaluation these days, we have an (for lack of a better word) exit exam, i.e., on-demand writing. This is assessed by faculty who are not the students’ professors. Thus, we distinguish writing skills from in-class performance (which includes effort, participation, etc.). We have three assessment categories that come down to Really Good, Good Enough, and Not Good Enough. We (I am the coordinator and one of the assessors–I’ve assessed some 250+ essays this past week) rarely give anyone an assessment of Really Good.
We’re at the end of the term now, and I just handed back assessments to about 400+ students. I expect to receive a handful of e-mails and phone calls within the week, students who are shocked, SHOCKED that they’ve been receiving an A in their English class but were assessed as Not Good Enough.
Sometimes all it takes is my reading back to them what they wrote. Sometimes I have to tell them that it’s not unreasonable to expect that a college student should be able to distinguish between you’re and your.
Students who are assessed as Not Good Enough have to take developmental writing. One student in my class was an incredibly hard worker and showed real improvement. She is smart and thoughtful. She passed and was assessed as Good Enough. That was last year.
She just sent me an essay she wrote for a non-academic reason, asking me to help with it. I have the file open right now. Let me show you some of what she wrote:
“However, I always been very involved in community services and volunteering because for me is a form of desire to be connecting with my culture, community and help out in society.” (Bonus question: Who can tell what her first language is?)
I don’t care how hard she works. If she writes like this, she will not get As. And it is depressing that she wasn’t able to maintain the skills she had developed in class (though what she sent me is a lot better than her first essay in developmental writing).
Maybe it’s the difference between skills-based classes and content-based classes?
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“for me is a desire to be connecting”
I’m betting Russian, some other Slavic language, or something East Asian, although I’m sure there are other options. I can’t narrow it down any further. Don’t answer right away–everybody should have a chance to play.
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I’d say Wendy’s student is originally from Asia–I’d guess Korea. The thing is, that would have been a stellar sentence from the majority of 9th and 10th graders I taught last spring. Assuming they showed up and did a modicum of work, they’d get As. They’d have to, because grades are relative to who else is in the class, though that may not be the ideal.
Not sure that the entitlement thing is inapplicable to higher ed. My professor family members & boyfriend complain about it often (as do the professors in the Times piece). The boyfriend has a number of students every semester who come to him and say “I know I’ve missed several classes and haven’t done any of the homework, but I need an A because I’m an honors student” or “I know I’ve missed half the classes and haven’t done any homework but I need to pass because otherwise I lose my financial aid” or sometimes just “I want the A (or B or whatever) because I want it, never mind your method for determining grades.”
I don’t think it’s a matter only of how we define hard work (though that’s a question too), but of whether a student who works hard (by a fairly rigorous measure) and doesn’t have good results on exams and papers still deserves the A.
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Missing subject, folks. Esta Espanol.
Context is everything while grading. Sometimes I’m harder on students who make stupid errors when I can tell there’s a high level of critical thinking. But obviously critical thinking isn’t a rising tide that lifts all boats, because some of these kids with terrific insights can’t remember the difference between “their” and “there.”
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