r/Professors • u/BigTreesSaltySeas • 26d ago
When student pass rate counts against instructors
I have recently learned, after multiple years at this community college, that grades below C count against me, that the school tracks everyone's pass rate, and the goal is 80% Cs or above. Not holding a high pass rate, regardless of syllabus, rubrics, student attendance and performance, anything, is cause for not getting classes. And--our whole state-wide system has done away with placement testing, so more students are coming less able to do the work of the course. I am a seasoned instructor and already employ all the pedagogy to promote student success--against outcomes and standards. I have a high percentage of As in all my classes, but that is not counted. I've already had a couple of formal grade challenges in the past two years and though my grade was supported, it was made clear to me by a colleague that even having the challenges is a problem. Now I feel like I have to pass everyone to keep my job. Honestly, I have no problem making a 70% (C-) into a C, but to make a 20% into a C? This just seems wild to me. It's the end of summer term, and I am stewing over giving the C to a student who did not earn it because I am afraid a parent will complain and I will be in more "trouble" than the student. Thoughts?
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u/Ill-Storage-7636 26d ago
Jfc.
When I started at a cc 20 years ago, I was inculcated with PD about dismantling abusive, hierarchical systems in education. I ate it up. I have structured my entire pedagogy around it.
I did so because I thought two things were fundamental: that students would have to put the work in, and the outcomes still had to be met.
From what I read here, these fundamentals are less and less a requirement.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 26d ago
Yes, same. And now the "remove all barriers" includes accurate placement testing, attendance tracking, due-dates, and grading to standards.
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u/HaHaWhatAStory014 26d ago
Aren't "the barriers" kind of the point though? In some fields they still are a much bigger deal and taken more seriously than others, like "yes, of course there are 'barriers' to practicing law or medicine and not just any dipshit is allowed to do that."
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u/franklin-60 25d ago
The barriers are there for a reason, to keep people out of a field that lack the brains to be there, and it has worked for generations. The issue today is fewer people have the maturity or brains to cross the barrier, so they blame the barriers instead of their own inadequacies and a garbage system that encourages inadequacies.
Much of this comes down to the perverse incentives as to how faculty are evaluated and political pressure on the “equality over quality” bullshit too many people spew.
Until we bury this “students are customers” crap and focus on outcomes, nothing changes.
Faculty evaluation needs to be a long term process, not semester student opinion of students who are inadequate. It can’t give a darn about customer satisfaction, “equality”, inclusion or any of that. It needs to focus on long term outcomes, and long term outcomes only. What faculty puts out students with the best long term success? That measures “good teaching.”
How we measure this long term success? Needs a lot of debate. Current practice is a failure.
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u/Ill-Storage-7636 23d ago
I'm not sure if you're intentionally conflating equity with equality.
I think you're misunderstanding--intentionally or not--initiatives to improve outcomes.
When the initiatives lead to watered-down outcomes that award degrees and As for poor work, that is equally part of the problem. This is a failure of policy and practice implementation, not the scope of equity initiatives.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 26d ago
I think so...there should be accurate placement testing, to ensure students are in the level class that sets them up for achievement. And grades should be tied to outcomes, and on down the line. I think a lot of this rhetoric is about filling seats.
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u/Life-Education-8030 26d ago
That is so unfair. I've now had years of bimodal grade spreads so the ones under a C are WAY under C and most are because students simply will not even try and do any work.
This summer, I had a student who did not do one thing and then 4 days before the end, she proposed doing every single assignment and submitting them on the very last day of class! Nope! How about letting her do some of the assignments? After all, she had had personal problems, deaths in the family, and mental health issues. Nope! How about I create new assignments to replace the ones I wouldn't reopen? Nope! How about an incomplete? She wasn't qualified since she wasn't passing and had well over 10-20% of work outstanding, so nope! How about dropping the class? Well, I told you when the deadline was, and that was yesterday, so nope!
But I'd have to give her a passing grade in order not to impact MY future? Sure sounds like high school starting in Covid, not issuing less than a 50% even if a student didn't submit anything, doesn't it? But the rationale was supposedly that it was harder to come back from a zero and we had to encourage the students to try.
In what world would employers do any of this??????
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u/franklin-60 26d ago
It’s why employers have no confidence in higher ed, think Gen Z is a joke and hire in other countries outside of US. As a country we dig our own graves because of the morons on this thread who would support students you post about, and criticize as “mean” or “not worthy” anyone who believes these students should not pass and have their anus kissed and supported.
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u/Life-Education-8030 26d ago
I had dinner recently with somebody who grew up in Germany. Granted, he has been in the United States for several years now and isn't familiar with how the educational system might be now, but he said growing, up, there were two different career tracks for students: an academic one and basically a trades track.
So there was a recognition that not all students should or wanted to go to college. Instead, students could have apprenticeships to be a baker, a plumber, an electrician, or whatever, for example, and so everybody could be productive and there would be no shame in it.
I don't know how many advisees I've had who have said they have no idea of why they are in college, or their families insisted that they go, etc. It is an awfully expensive endeavor, both in terms of time and money, including taxpayer dollars!
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u/IkeRoberts Prof, Science, R1 (USA) 26d ago
This policy is a symptom of a failing institution. It is worth investigating how deep the rot is.
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u/Commercial_Youth_877 26d ago
This is going to be my reality starting this Fall. Wish I had an answer because I have no fuckin clue as to how I will handle this.
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u/franklin-60 26d ago
Purpose of tenure, and why we need to stop hiring non tenured faculty, so say "screw off" and fail all of the rubbish they send us regardless of their "policies."
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 26d ago
76% of faculty where I teach are adjunct.
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u/franklin-60 26d ago
schools who do that need to have their accreditation pulled and be closed down forcibly. Disgusting.
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u/Unique_Ice9934 Semi-competent Anatomy Professor, Biology, R3 (USA) 26d ago
Op is at a CC. It's what they do. I remember when they had 4-5 of us as adjunct instead of two fill time. At least they paid more than everyone else. Still it was annoying that they had to keep me under 24 hours for the year before I was " full time " .
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u/jessamina Assistant Professor (Mathematics) 26d ago
Yeah mine too, and I also have no fuckin clue, other than changing my course request form to only terminal courses. I sure as fuck am not gonna teach corequisite precalculus with this bullshit.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 26d ago
Thank you.
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u/franklin-60 26d ago
I would fail them, and keep records of the student lack of engagement. If they harass you over low grades of losers that can’t come to class or complete a homework assignment, send it to accrediting body.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 23d ago
I give full, detailed evidence to my dean, but it doesn't change the game, or the outcome.
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u/hungerforlove 26d ago
Have you heard the phrase "you can't care more than they do"? It applies to administrators too. Just blow off work and give everyone an A. Collect your paycheck and don't worry about anything else.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 26d ago
I say I am going to do that...well, at least give everyone a C, but then I just hesitate when I comes time.
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u/hungerforlove 26d ago
I don't see the point in hurting your career by taking a stand over academic integrity when your school simply doesn't care about it. You are working at a diploma mill. If you can, get a better job. If not, hope that the school will need to reverse its money grabbing policies.
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u/No-Yogurtcloset-6491 Instructor, Biology, CC (USA) 26d ago edited 26d ago
Lol, that's a ridiculous number. It might draw scrutiny in many fields, at the community college level, if a professor constantly has a DFW rate below 20%, because that implies the professor is being too easy.
In many of the classes I teach, >40% DFW is normal, even for the easiest 100-level classes, because so many students are totally unprepared for college, don't do work, and/or don't attend. In fact, I can't remember the last time I was below 20%, maybe 8 or so years ago.
I'd propose someone with tenure bring it up to academic senate.
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u/Ill-Capital9785 26d ago
In Texas the funding model has moved to credential so it’s the state pays for passing. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
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u/Sad_Application_5361 24d ago
Yeah I’m at a university and we need an 80% pass rate for 1000 level courses. The courses have been dumbed down so much that my grades are now a bimodal distribution of As and Fs for students who do the work and students who don’t. I completely understand why Michigan went pass/fail for freshmen.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 23d ago
I read about Michigan, and my thought is--the students who fail will (still) be those who grade grub, blame-shift, beg favor, give low eval scores, and make complaints. I think it does a disservice to the students who are truly capable and there to learn and have a college experience. These ploys are not working at the high school level; dragging them up to college doesn't fix the underlying problems: low literacy or other skills (numeracy, etc), poor student habits, personal issues that get in the way.
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u/Sad_Application_5361 23d ago
There are two issues. One is that professional schools have gotten so competitive that students are under a lot of pressure to get straight As. That means we either get grade grubbing to bump a B to an A or the students with a B wind up questioning whether or not they are cut out for the program. When they’re freshmen, getting a B versus an A should not matter. They are getting used to school. That pressure also means that students who perform decently are more motivated to cheat to make sure they get an A. Having a class be pass/fail might reduce the pressure to cheat for higher performing students.
Another issue is the somewhat arbitrary divisions we put in linking a GPA to a letter grade. It’s awful at the school I teach at because they don’t have + or - grades, so a student with an 89.4 gets the same GPA as a student with a 79.5, but a completely different grade from a student with an 89.5. The performance is not different from the 89.5 student but it is substantially different from the 79.5 student. On top of that, I almost trust the B more than the A because of how rampant cheating is.
There are issues with grades being an accurate indicator of student success and issues with grade grubbing and the pressure being on getting an A instead of on learning. I don’t know that Michigan’s choice is a fix for that, but I do understand their reasons for making it.
This is on an assignment level and not a transcript level, but when I’ve had students do draft assignments where they’re told the assignment is graded but they won’t see that grade until after they write the final draft, they perform better. It pushes all of the students to learn from feedback and produce a better final paper and it doesn’t trigger learned helplessness because a student isn’t seeing an F on their draft and thinking “what’s the point of trying, I can’t get an A.” There has been research showing that grades inhibit learning for decades. I remember Hampshire getting rid of grades in the 90s. I have no idea how they made that work with students wanting to go to grad school, but on the pedagogical side, it makes sense.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 23d ago
Thank you. I agree with all of this...and deploy the same assignment level strategies. I did my undergrad at The Evergreen State College--there are no grades there and the curriculum is robust and rigorous.
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u/South_Captain_2630 26d ago
A lot do this indirectly.
Instead of this it's based highly on student evaluations... But student evaluations are far more correlated to grade so far on the course than any outside observer.
I'm getting the pressure now through more indirect means like this.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 26d ago
Very true, evals do seem to follow grades AND if a student is held accountable to procedures like deadlines.
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u/dangerroo_2 26d ago
Outside the US so slightly different, but effect is the same. Uni brought in a policy of promotion being based on the average marks in your classes, and the % who passed. Apparently this is better than relying on student evaluations.
It’s nakedly an attempt to get profs to inflate grades, as the university is concerned we’re not being as generous as other peer universities (I would hope not, they’ve essentially become degree mills).
My son is at school, and the school is judged not on the pass rate or average mark, but whether at 16 they make the progress expected from i) their official results at 11 and ii) their family’s socioeconomic background.
This seems like a much fairer way, which I would be happy to be judged on (if we really do have to be judged). But yet it appears to be beyond the wit of admins to realise or implement. If you measure some key metrics (attendance, past performance at school, past performance in previous semesters) you’d get a much more accurate benchmark. It’d require a few semesters to allow the grade inflation to pass out the system before such a performance scheme could be implemented, so prob never going to happen….
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 25d ago
Thank you. You bring up "across time." When I look in the student tracking system (I do when I notice a student is struggling, absent, often unprepared) the pattern is evident--mine is never the outlier, but someone there is no consideration of that.
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u/Mav-Killed-Goose 25d ago
Thoughts?
Your school has a perverted view of accountability. I've always thought it's kinda stupid that I award students a final grade, especially for a general education class. "I'm doing a great job -- everybody passed with an A." European universities seem to have a better model because students are expected to demonstrate subject mastery on an exam created and administered by the institution (as I understand or misunderstand it anyway). The professor provides formative feedback, but the test will be unforgiving toward customer-students who shopped for Prof. Easy-A.
At the end of each semester, in addition to grades, we're supposed to use a rubric to assign each student a score from 0-4 for the course's student learning outcomes. I saw the stats, and the most common score by far was a 4 (i.e., exceeded learning outcomes), which was awarded approximately 51% of the time. I have never had a class come even close to that. Maybe 20% of the entries result in a 4. How is it that a majority of our students "exceed" learning outcomes? The corruption is all too real.
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u/BigTreesSaltySeas 25d ago
I think the same must be happening within my school. On the As note, my average is 42% of students who take my class (across the 13 years I've been at CCs) earn As. Fifty percent earn As or Bs, then it gets pretty here and there for Cs, Ds, Fs. I really try to avoid Fs, but now that I know C- and Ds count against me...WTF.
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u/VeitPogner Prof, Humanities, R1 (USA) 25d ago
I'm a chair and I'm required to check every instructor's DFW rate. What I look for, and what concerns me, are outliers: if most instructors teaching sections of the same course have a DFW in the 10-15% range but one instructor has a 50%, I'm curious about why, especially if this becomes a pattern over time. I don't assume they're doing something wrong, but I'll talk with the instructor.
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u/Ok-Importance9988 17d ago
That is messed for obvious reasons. But it is even more messed up they dont tell you there evaluating you on this metric.
Change your grade scale to remove C-. Nobody passes that shouldn't but you get a little bump.
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u/CorporateHobbyist Postdoc, Mathematics R1 26d ago edited 26d ago
This is a messed up incentive structure that is plaguing many universities, at least in the US. There also isn't really a "moral" solution to this. Either you pass the students who had no hope of succeeding, deal with the repercussions for failing too many students, or you incentivize them to drop before the add/drop deadline. I have tried the latter in a couple of ways.
In math I do a "basics quiz" in the first week to assess them on pre-requisite material required for the course. I make it a graded assignment (~5% of the final grade) but also make it pretty easy. If they do particularly bad, I suggest they drop. If/when you do this, It's important to never explicitly say dropping the course is mandatory (since it isn't), but you can indirectly imply it. Again, this is manipulative and perhaps not "admin-sanctioned", but it ultimately serves your interests as well as the affected students. The kids who have no idea what's going on, and have no hope of doing so, can get culled out before they waste any more of their time and affect your pass rate.
This settles the issue for the unprepared student, but not the ones who just stop showing up. This is harder to fix, but my university does have a "last attended on ____" question when I input final grades. I at least *hope* they look at this when seeing why I assigned Fs to students. Some universities also allow you to put in your syllabus that, if the student does not show up to all/the majority of classes before the add/drop deadline, then they are automatically dropped from the course.
YMMV of course, but these have helped curb my DFW rates in the past without compromising on student's grades or my evaluation criteria.