TIPsters: FYI EPAA document re: grade inflation, etc. article, etc Excerpt from: Education Policy Analysis Archives/ http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v3n11.html Volume 3 Number 11 June 26, 1995 ISSN 1068-2341 ------------------------------------------------------------------ EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES A peer-reviewed scholarly electronic journal. Editor: Gene V Glass,[EMAIL PROTECTED] College of Education, Arizona State University,Tempe AZ 85287-2411 Copyright 1995, the EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES. Permission is hereby granted to copy any article provided that EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES is credited and copies are not sold. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Academic Policies and Practices that Contribute to Grade Inflation A variety of institutional practices and conditions are thought to contribute to grade inflation, and some of them are academically defensible. For example, any grade increases that are due to increased learning are not only defensible but welcomed. Others, however, are clearly questionable. One suspected cause of grade inflation is the admission of increasing numbers of poorly prepared students (Birnbaum, 1977). Despite additional instructor time and tutorial assistance, most poorly prepared students are unlikely to exceed the average levels of performance exhibited by their better prepared peers. Instructors whose classes include substantial numbers of such students must lower expectations or risk creating an insurmountable pedagogical task for themselves. If expectations are not lowered, many students fail, enrollment is lowered, and student satisfaction is decreased--all decidedly unrewarding outcomes. Conversely, lower expectations make passing grades and continued enrollment attainable for all. Other inflationary factors are curricular options that permit students to elect less challenging courses and programs (Prather, Smith, & Kodras, 1979; Sabot & Wakmann-Linn, 1991) That is, the proverbial "underwater basket weaving" courses. Also, academic policies that permit students to enroll in a large number of courses and later drop the ones in which they are failing can inflate average grades. So can a policy such as permitting students to replace failing grades when they repeat a course (Geisinger, 1979). Whatever the wisdom of these policies with respect to other academic considerations, they all have the effect of adding to the need for expanded funding. Attempts have been made to offset the impact of inflated grades by adding plus and minus to the formal grading scale (Singleton & Smith, 1978) and by altering the GPA minimums for advanced programs. As is true with respect to policies such as the above-cited change in the GPA required for academic honors, these adjustments are more cosmetic than substantive. Student Ratings of Instruction as an Inducement to Grade Inflation Despite widespread usage and surface credibility, the use of student ratings with respect to merit, promotion, and tenure decisions remains a controversial matter (Zirkel, 1995). Many faculty suspect that institutional reliance on student ratings of instruction is a prime cause of lowered standards and grade inflation (Cohen, 1984; Goldman, 1985; Mieczkowski, 1995; Renner, 1981). A case for relying on them, however, can be made on the grounds of correlational studies that have shown student ratings to be valid in the sense of having a statistically significant relationship(r=0.4) with measured achievement (Benton, 1982; Cohen, 1981; Marsh, 1984). Moreover student ratings have had great appeal in higher education because they afford convenient and seemingly objective assessment of teaching without the exercise of peer or administrative judgment. Institutional reliance on student ratings of instruction has grown steadily since the mid to late 1960s. Seldin (1993) reports that over 85 percent of 600 colleges surveyed used them as of 1993. Of course, this is precisely the same era in which grades inflated and academic learning outcomes first declined and then stagnated. Thus, whatever it is that student ratings measure, they apparently failed to detect the flawed teaching practices that produced these unwanted phenomena. The apparent inconsistency between research reporting validity for student ratings and their failure to detect declining achievement and inflated grades may be due to the way in which they are used. A statistically established validity of r=0.4 means that 16 percent of the differences among the ratings of instructors are attributable to differences in measured student achievement. However, the remaining 84 percent of the variability in ratings is attributable to factors that must be controlled for in their use and interpretation with respect to individual instructors. The most sophisticated and convincing student rating validation studies carefully control student achievement, reported grades, and other possible sources of bias (Benton, 1982). Typical institutional applications of student ratings, however, rarely employ the monitoring and controls found in validation studies. Thus, rating instruments with a modest degree of validity may be producing invalid faculty evaluations because they are used without appropriate precautions. Although it is understood that student-opinion-based assessments of individual instructors should be corrected for watered-down objectives, inflated grades, and other potential sources of bias (Aleamoni, 1981; Seldin, 1993), in practice, ratings are typically presumed valid, sometimes despite indications to the contrary. For example, although instructors who receive the high ratings often report higher grades, administrative interpreters of such data most often simply assume that such higher grades are a function of superior student learning. Their assumption is rarely checked. Instructors are evaluated on the basis of a comparison of their student ratings with those of colleagues who teach similar courses. Given that the biasing effects of insufficient expectations or too-lenient grading serve to increase, not lower, ratings, individuals who receive relatively low ratings must question not their own ratings, but the expectations and grading of their colleagues who have received higher ratings. Because most faculty are understandably reluctant to raise such questions, instructors who are judged unfairly have little choice but to accept student opinion and quietly find a means of competing with their higher rated peers. In contrast to those who receive less favorable ratings, instructors with ratings that may be biased by low expectations or lax grading are comfortably insulated from skeptical inquiries and otherwise given little cause to be concerned about the student rating/evaluation process. Without unrelenting vigilance, local standards against which teaching is judged can become biased. Because students have no basis for judging whether an instructor's expectations were too low or grades were too high, inflated ratings can occur any time student ratings are collected without appropriate checks (Seldin, 1993). If they are entered into the normative data base, the benchmarks against which faculty are compared become biased by default and to an unknown extent. The longer term impact of teaching evaluated by student ratings now seems to be evidencing itself. It is as a former American Association of University Professors president, Fritz Machlup, anticipated: We now have "Poor Learning from Good Teachers" (Machlup, 1979). The fact that learning has declined and stagnated during the twenty-five or so years that higher education has relied on student opinion as a measure of "good" teaching speaks for itself. Economists Gordon Tullock and Richard McKenzie (1985) argued that economic theory predicts that professors will ease that which is expected of their student customers to buy higher ratings. Are typical institutional procedures for interpreting student ratings sufficiently stringent to prevent such transactions? Proponents of student ratings must agree that even if student opinion can, under carefully circumscribed conditions, serve as a sound basis for evaluating teaching, the task of insuring correctly interpreted ratings under real-world conditions may be beyond the practical limits of institutional ability. Although most students want to learn, their idea of academic accomplishment is often very different from that of the professor, or for that matter, that of the taxpayer (Mieczkowski, 1995). As the Integrity in the Curriculum (Association of American Colleges, 1985) report bluntly observed: "The credential is for most students more important than the course." Higher education makes a very great mistake if it permits its primary mission to become one of serving student "customers." Treating students as customers means shaping services to their taste. It also implies that students are entitled to use or waste the services as they see fit. Thus judging by enrollment patterns, students find trivial courses of study, inflated grades, and mediocre standards quite acceptable. If this were not the case, surely there would have long ago been a tidal wave of student protest. Of course, reality is that student protest about such matters is utterly unknown. Tomorrow, when they are alumni and taxpayers, today's students will be vitally interested in academic standards and efficient use of educational opportunities. Today, however, the top priority of most students is to get through college with the highest grades and least amount of time, effort, and inconvenience (Chadwick & Ward, 1987). A fundamental misconception underlies the student-as-customer view. Students are not higher education's only customer or even its most important customer. Rather, higher education's forgotten customers are the taxpayers, the parents, and the employers who both "pay now and pay later" for higher education's failures. It is these customers--the "paying" customers-- who are insisting on better results. ----------------------------------------------------------- Contributed Commentary by Damon Runion on Volume 3 Number 11: Stone Inflated Grades,Inflated Enrollment, and Inflated Budgets: An Analysis and Call for Review at the State level. Level ------------------------------------------------------------------ 31 May 1996 Damon Runion [EMAIL PROTECTED] John E. Stone's work brings to light an issue of profound significance to all educators and public administrators. Inflated grades clearly point to structural problems in American higher education. If one accepts Stone's argument, which is carefullyconstructed and well supported, the very idea of such educational fraud issomewhat unnerving. On a national level consider the level of resourcesgoing to support students who twenty years ago would have been academically dismissed early in their college careers. In addition, consider the ongoing expenses of retraining these "qualified" graduates and it doesn't take a degree in economics to see that much more harm is being done than good. Stone suggests that the large bureaucratic nature ofuniversity systems necessitates funding levels which must be financed through increased enrollments. Correspondingly, inflated grades serve to maintain these preferred levels of enrollment. One can quickly point blame to faculty members for such grade inflation, but total responsibility does not lie there. Faculty answer to department and college level administrators. These administrators control faculty research funding, as well as other financially linked items. Careful manipulation of these funds insures that the desired level of students will be maintained from year to year. Whether faculty members agree to this under pressure from key administrative personnel or a conscious decision is made independently is not the issue. The issue is grades are inflated. Stone concludeshis work by offering seven areas of potential change. What I find missing inhisconclusions is a simple tenet I have learnedthrough my own course work. As a student of Public Administration, I have had the fortunate opportunity to read the classic work on public management by Douglas M. Fox entitled "Managing the Public's Interest: A Results Oriented Approach."Fox makes continuous reference to a systems-based management approach that stresses production over process. What has evolved overthe years in higher education is a carbon copy of the iron fisted bureaucratic structure that runs the federal government. Bureaucracies manage the flow of information, nothing else. As is apparent in Stone'sanalysis, administrative personnel in higher education have far too much control over the outcomes of the process. Higher education is about learning. The faculty represent the most important input in the process of making the product, i.e., students who can recall, recognize and comprehend any given subject and who with ease andprecision can apply the skills learned from any given subject. Accordingly, higher education needs to be structured around the idea of production. Any process that does not relateto the effect of more products would be regarded as non-production. It is important to note that these areas are by no means unimportant. Campuses definitely need Student Affairs personnel, Facilities Engineers and a whole host of other support services. But the focus needs to be on the classroom and empowering thefaculty. Stone makes the rough comparison of the college faculty member to a federal judge. He states that faculty enjoy the same lifetime tenure as a judge but do not enjoy thesame freedom of controlling their destiny. Faculty members need to regain such freedom if we are to rid higher education ofthe plague of gradeinflation. Higher education officials, faculty members, and public administrators must take the time to study what makes higher education function properly. It is clear that the case made by inflated grades does not paint afavorable picture of the current state of higher education in America. However unsavory the truth may be, it affords the opportunity for examination and ultimately correction. ---------------------------------->>> [[(#:-) >>>> ---------------------------------------->>> + ...John C Damron, PhD * ...Douglas College, DLC * * * ...P.O Box 2503 * * * ...New Westminster, British Columbia ...Canada V3L 5B2 FAX: (604) 527-5969 ...e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.douglas.bc.ca/ http://www.douglas.bc.ca/psychd/index.html Student Ratings Critique: http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/psych/Damron_politics.html <<<<<<<<========///==========>>>>>>>>
