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Re: [Phys-l] Who really failed?

I would tend to agree, obviously. But of course we do not know all of the
facts. The one thing that I find extremely troubling is that an
administrator can just arbitrarily come in and make changes, which is
apparently what happened. In TX there is a law that public school
administrators can not change student grades, and only the teacher can
authorize a grade change. This of course does not apply to non public
schools, and even in public schools there are cases where administrators
have changed grades, but that is concealed from the teachers. If the
administrators were found out, they must be dismissed.

Private school administrators are known to change grades. Both types of
administrators are known to pressure teachers to raise grades. I was once
accused of failing too many students, and another teacher asked the
administrator if they were talking about physics. The administrator said
yes. And my friend pointed out I had NO failures in physics. Actually I
projected the idea that students had to figure out things on their own, and
students were afraid of this, and of failing. So the easiest thing was to
complain. This same school made teachers sign a paper that they would only
fail 15%. Later the administrators changed that to mean 15% F & D combined.

We do not know if she was a good teacher, but we do know that the
administrators reacted arbitrarily without even consulting the teacher. I
think this is a harbinger of things to come unless there are repercussions
from the administrator's actions. The university in question should be held
in low repute for this type of thing, and if industry informed them publicly
that this will put their graduates lower on the hiring list, they might
recant. $$$ talk.

There was one former student of Homberger who thought the professor was
horrible, so one does not know how good she really was. Mazur points out
how student opinions of teachers are not a good way to rate them.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


I managed to find this from a student willing to stick her neck out:

. Dr. Homberger is the best instructor I've had
. Posted by Elizabeth A. Cook , Medical Illustration at Johns
Hopkins on April 15, 2010 at 4:45pm EDT
. In case anyone is thorough enough to follow through on this issue,
I want to completely support Dr. Homberger in all of her efforts. I have
had a great fortune of being her student and working with her in her lab
for the past year. Students that care, students who love to learn and to
be challenged revere her and respect everything that she does. She
teaches in a way that has become outdated because it isn't product-
oriented...i.e. how many graduates can we churn out each year as if we're
producing sausage or some other horrible packaged meat.

Education has become an institution that is now subject to productivity in
numbers but not in quality. Americans may wonder why we're so behind in
the world in terms of education, and this is exactly it. If something
doesn't have an immediate and demonstrative value in practical or
economical terms, we are quick to discredit it. This is a battle that art
and art education have always dealt with, and it troubles me to no end
that this mentality has infiltrated higher education and the political
nonsense that has no business butting in with how universities go about
educating our future.

bc


On 2010, May 20, , at 06:03, John Clement wrote:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/15/lsu

This story should make the national news, whether of not it is picked up
by
the networks and newspapers. Anyone who supports the business model of
education should read this story. Quake before the administrators!