Re: Advice for Tina and other rookies...

[Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

I'm wondering now if the problem of grade inflation (or at least the onset
of such) isn't tied to the extensive use of student course evaluations in
faculty evaluations.  I'm sure this is not a new thought.  I can't remember
seeing such an evaluation until I was into graduate school (early 70s), and
even at that point, I'm not sure they were a serious component in decisions
of retention, tenure, and promotion.  Once being popular was more important
than be effective, then grades started to rise.  I will note that the
breakdown of our student evaluations has always sorted by the student's
expected grade (always higher than the level at which they were working),
which I found often showed that the best ratings came from the B through A-
students with a small drop off from the A students ('aim at the middle and
bore the good students') and a big drop off for the C and D students (who
thought they were getting B- to C).  Now, of course, most classes are
populated by Lake Wobegon students so the spread is B to A or even B+ to A.

I'm becoming more convinced that the only way out of the grade inflation
morass is for North Central and other accrediting agencies to set average
grade guidelines and to penalize schools that fall too far outside the
'normal' range.  If student evaluations are not abandoned as an evaluation
tool for faculty positions, then average grade in the class will have to
also be a strong criterion--too high is bad!  The argument that 'everyone
did what was expected' just means that expectations were too low!  ;-)

(Just finding excuses to keep from grading papers and writing exams.)

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Edmiston" <edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: Advice for Tina and other rookies...


> Michael Monce reminds us about the correlation between low grades and poor
> course evaluations.  This has indeed bugged me for some time.  The
teachers
> who grade easy and try to be the students' friend typically do get higher
> teaching evaluations, and this can have all sorts of political and career
> ramifications.  On a chemistry-education list we recently discussed how
> chemistry and physics grades tend to run lower than grades in other
> disciplines and how this hurts science in several ways.