Students could see grade distributions on their transcripts within two years if the Faculty Council approves a policy proposal at its April 23 meeting.
The distributions would be part of a larger policy change designed to address what some faculty members see as a trio of related grading problems: inflation, inequality across departments and instructors, and an inability to distinguish high performance from adequate performance.
The policy could put “contextual information” such as the distributions of grades, students’ class years and majors in a course on transcripts. It could also report to faculty members how their grading patterns compare to their department and the whole University.
The proposed policy
-Report contextual grade information about each section on students’ transcripts, such as the proportion of students in the section receiving each letter grade, the distribution of class years in the section, the percentage of majors in the section’s department and similar information.
-Distribute to instructors information about their grading patterns relative to the patterns of others in the department, school and across the University at the end of each semester.
-Create a committee, to include at least three members of the faculty and one undergraduate student, to work with the registrar and provost’s offices to implement the principles for the 2011-12 academic year.
Members of the educational policy committee — the group of faculty members and students presenting the proposal — hope more information about grading will raise awareness of these issues and drive some faculty members to change their grading practices.
“Even after we make this reform, we’re not done,” said sociology professor Andrew Perrin, who leads the committee. “We expect to need further reforms on the issue.”
The proposal is driven by a 2009 report that found that the most common grade given out at UNC is an A and that average GPAs have been increasing steadily over the last four decades.
UNC has had to raise the requirements for recognitions such as the Dean’s List as a result of the trend. Because the increases have happened at different rates in different departments, significant discrepancies exist in the number of students from each department who receive such honors. Some faculty members say it is unfair to compare students across departments.
But some students and faculty members say the proposal fails to get at the heart of the issue — significant differences in grading methods across departments and instructors that have developed in a culture where grading methods are rarely discussed.
Students and faculty members also worried that reporting such information on transcripts could harm students applying for jobs and graduate schools.
Some members of the committee acknowledge that the proposed policy change might not have a significant effect on the way some professors grade.
“The only way I’m going to change my grading is if somebody tells me to,” said committee member Susan Klebanow, a music professor who said most students get A’s in her restricted-enrollment class. “It’s going to be embarrassing in the context of these discussions, but I’m going to keep doing it.”
Different grading strategies
Klebanow’s reasoning is shared by many faculty members. They have methods of evaluation that work with their teaching styles. Changing one could force them to change the other.
Faculty members develop grading methods in graduate school and once they start teaching. They take note on how students perform on tests and adjust accordingly.
But they rarely discuss their strategies with one another, and there is no formal training when new professors come to UNC about how to grade.
History professor William Barney said he has had only a few discussions about grading methods with his colleagues in the 38 years he has been teaching.
Because faculty rarely discuss grading criteria, they develop different grade distributions.
While the chairmen of the English and chemistry departments don’t agree on the best way to grade, both said they would not want to evaluate students’ work in the other department.
“I recognize that all the professors here have terrific expertise, but I would never presume to tell anybody in another discipline how he or she should be grading,” said Beverly Taylor, chairwoman of the English department.
Faculty members also disagree about whether students are better than in the past, which could account for higher average grades.
The looming vote
Adopting the policy would put UNC in a small group of schools that has addressed grading issues.
Indiana and Cornell universities already report contextual information on transcripts. Princeton University has set an average GPA that departments may not exceed, a strategy the UNC faculty said it would not pursue.
Because there are differences across departments and because grading is tied to academic freedom, votes on grading policies tend to bring out emotions.
The last proposal to change grading policies at UNC, presented in 2007, sharply divided campus. The proposal, known as the Achievement Index, was a statistical calculation that measured student performance against their peers’ performance in other classes. The proposal failed by one vote in the Faculty Council with strong objections from then-Student Body President Eve Carson.
Perrin said he doesn’t see that situation arising with this proposal because the committee chose a policy that was likely to pass.
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