Worrisome Grade Inflation or Good Teaching?

My friend Elizabeth chairs the academic grievance committee at school, so I usually hear a blow-by-blow description of the events that occur at the contentious meetings where students protest their grades. The question that the committee members always ask the instructor is this: Did you warn the student at midterm that he was failing? College policy states that faculty members must alert students in writing that they are not performing at a passing level. An email digitally stored on the college server—not a verbal warning or a message written on an assignment that the student has since conveniently "lost"—is the agreed upon best method. [I am old enough to remember the days when we had to fill out a paper form, look up where the student lived, and then address the envelope to send the warning. The student received the top white copy, the department got the yellow, and the faculty member kept the pink.]

To cover my ass To abide by college policy, this week I emailed all of my students in five classes, letting them know where they stood at midterm. I noticed an odd pattern in the averages. In the three sections of freshman composition [approximately 70 students], I gave three As total: 2 in one class, 1 in a second class, and 0 in the third. In the two research classes, however, I gave mostly As and Bs. The occasional C, D, or F was usually the result of missing work averaging as zeros, not poor performance on the assignments I had received. In short, my grade distribution makes me look like a real hard-ass in freshman composition but an easily pleased grade inflater in the research class. Neither label is accurate.

Part of the grade distribution disparity is the different types of students in the two courses. In the research classes, which have freshman composition as a prerequisite, the students are proven performers; they have all passed the department-graded, do-or-die final exam. The freshman composition classes, however, are mixed bags: preparatory and ESL students who barely squeaked through those programs before attempting college-level work, drop-outs from four-year schools who spent their first freshman year partying too much and studying too little, resentful repeaters who couldn't pass the department exam the previous semester, and decent writers with college-level placement scores. In the freshman composition classes, my department means business. Since my colleagues will flunk any bad writers at the final exam grading—resulting in those folks earning Fs as final grades—I must let students know all along the way if they aren't writing at a passing level. Harsh but fair evaluation from me tempers the students' disappointment and anger when their blue books don't get passing scores. They can't complain about failing the course when I have said over and over in the comments on their essays that they have serious writing problems they must fix by the semester's end.

The reality of the upcoming freshman composition final exam explains the lack of good grades in those sections, but how do I explain the typically high grades in the research classes? As an aside, the research classes often have a low completion rate; ending a semester with 12 of the original 25 students is typical for many professors because the long research essay so intimidates students that they withdraw. I, however, can usually get 23 or 24 of the students to hang on and finish. Is it because I inflate grades, allowing students to perform badly but still receive As and Bs? There's no department-graded exam to squash the poor performers and insure quality control as we have in freshman composition.

The answer of course is no. My research students succeed and finish because I have set up the course so that if they follow directions—i. e., do exactly as I say—they will not only write a real research essay, a document they would be proud to show anyone, but also have a good average at the end of the semester. Students typically produce crappy research essays because they have never really written one. Oh, sure, they have been assigned long research papers over and over again, but they procrastinate getting started, try to write the whole thing over a weekend or in a single night, bang out some total piece of crap [probably half plagiarized], and turn it in to satisfy the assignment. What occurs on those pages is so not a research essay. When I was in college, a professor would say, "A paper on X is due such-and-such a day," and then never mention the assignment again. I could handle that; I was a good enough writer. Many of my colleagues today take their cue from a similar college experience and do exactly the same thing here at the community college. They might take their classes over to the library for a tour; they might warn the students not to plagiarize or show them how to set up documentation. But my colleagues assume that students have a plan for their papers, even though the final products they receive demonstrate over and over the faultiness of that assumption. One member of my department, so frustrated by the quality of work her students produce and so unwilling to change the way she does things, has decided that this semester's research class will be the last one she ever teaches, by god.

For many years I refused to teach the research class. I had seen too many disastrous efforts students had written for other instructors and decided hell would freeze before I was going to read a whole set of that crap from my own people. Then I decided that there must be a strategy to get them to write good research essays. They could write perfectly decent short papers in freshman composition, so where did their fuses blow in the transition from short to long? I realized that it must be right at the beginning, when the professor said, "I need an X-page [or Y-word] research paper on _____." The greater length and necessity of research paralyzed them because they didn't have a plan. They waited until the last minute because they didn't know where or how to start. They didn't start until complete desperation descended on them the night before the thing was due.

I realized that if I wanted students to write successful, long research essays, ones that I wouldn't mind reading, I had to provide the plan. This doesn't mean that I give them a specific topic. Rather, I demonstrate the stages—everything from choosing the topic, to deciding the logical flow of the project, to ensuring that in-text citations in the final draft flawlessly match the entries on the works cited page. We write the essay in a non-negotiable series of steps, everyone producing a similar new piece for the paper, no matter how divergent the topics are. Because the students are writing little pieces that we knit together, it doesn't matter if they produce the pieces at the last minute; the assignments are so small that even the last minute gives them enough time to write a decent effort [and thus earn a decent grade]. We all do the research together. For example, on one day, two database article summaries are due. One student's summaries might chronicle the advancements in prosthetic devices while another student's summaries document the efforts to preserve the Great Barrier Reef in Australia or the advantages of maggot therapy for diabetes patients with necrotic tissue.

Providing the plan—the formula or recipe for the essay—means more work for me, and more grading as well. Instead of one paper worth 25, 30, or even 50 percent of the course grade, I read 12 different assignments, the last one the final draft. But because I have seen the 11 pieces produced before the final product, because I have actively guided students so that the final draft has a logical flow and all the components of a real, correct research essay, the papers are pretty good. As a result, I can give those papers good grades, contributing to my students' successful averages. If the students remember for future papers that the key is little pieces stitched together to make the longer effort, they then have the skill to produce real research essays for professors who just announce the assignment and due date and never mention the paper again.

Am I mollycoddling my students? Maybe. But I have good papers to read at the end, and I'm not complaining to my colleagues that students can't write. If a student completely mishandles a short piece, I read 300-400 bad words, show that person what to correct, and can usually expect the next piece she produces to meet my expectations. We have more fun, everyone preparing the same short piece on wildly different topics. Student morale is high because they see both themselves and the rest of the class getting through the arduous course requirement rather than watching their classmates disappear one by one as they realize they can't complete a long paper without a plan. Do I worry that I give too many As, too many Bs? Not really. This is one class where I can clearly communicate what each piece must contain, and since the students are proven writers, they have the capability to do the work. Will the majority of my colleagues follow suit? No way. They are too convinced that they are single-handedly enforcing the only real standards on campus to try something that might allow everyone to succeed [not just the handful of really bright students]. In addition, they're too busy complaining about the horribly prepared students in their classes to have time to rethink their pedagogy and try something new.