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Education

Should Students Still Be Graded In the Time of Covid-19? (thecrimson.com) 115

Posted by EditorDavid from the making-the-grades dept.
theodp writes: The LA Times reports that controversies over grading are roiling universities and colleges, as the coronavirus outbreak prompted them to shift to online learning and send most students home to disparate circumstances. Some students and faculty believe that normal grading practices during these times are deeply unfair, while others feel students should be able to choose between a letter grade or pass/fail, arguing that earning high marks can distinguish them for jobs, scholarships or graduate school.

At Harvard, all undergraduates will receive grades of either "Emergency Satisfactory" or "Emergency Unsatisfactory" in their spring classes. Faculty may supplement this terminology with a "qualitative assessment of student learning."

The coronavirus situation has also prompted grading changes at the high school level. The College Board announced that all AP exams will be streamlined and only include questions on material covered thru early March. Students taking the AP Computer Science Principles course will not even be subjected to an AP exam in 2020 but can still earn college credit.
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Should Students Still Be Graded In the Time of Covid-19? More

Should Students Still Be Graded In the Time of Covid-19?

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  • The Advantage of Diverse Learning Environments (Score:5, Interesting)

    by walkerp1 ( 523460 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @02:55AM (#59883980)
    This seems like an excellent time to be grading performance. What better time could there be to measure intangibles like self-actualization, initiative, and mental toughness? Achievement in times of adversity is a far more realistic and important measure than winning at rote learning. There will be plenty of time to measure the simple ability to regurgitate facts on demand, but the Covid overreaction provides an excellent sounding board for aptitudes that aren't fully explored in contemporary classrooms.

    • All the proponents of standardized testing are not amused by your suggestion. They don't care if someone is capable of self-actualization as long as they prove they can be a good worker drone.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yes, "standardized" testing. Produces a number with an error-bar basically as wide as the scale. Ignore that error bar and everything looks fine. Actually realize it is there and see that this whole idea is completely fucked.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by quenda ( 644621 )

          Yes, "standardized" testing. Produces a number with an error-bar basically as wide as the scale.

          That depends on what you are trying to test. Standardised testing has an important role, but the ridiculous amount of multi-choice standardised testing in American schools is counter-productive.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Well, for some rater unimportant things, standardized testing can work. For anything important, it is a complete failure and often worse than not testing in the first place.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by quenda ( 644621 )

              Well, for some rater unimportant things, standardized testing can work. For anything important, it is a complete failure and often worse than not testing in the first place.

              So, I take it you are an arts graduate? Or maybe social "sciences"?

      • The current grading system is poorly designed. The current situation merely reveals the faults in the design.

        Consider an alternative system: What if grades were only assigned on request? Until you ask to receive a grade, the course simply doesn't appear on your transcript. Need to take a course three times to master the material? No problem, only the last one where you ask to be graded counts. Want to try a class in something you might not be good at because you want to find out? No problem If you're bad at

        • No muss, no fuss, no value.

          It might be useful to look at what the purpose of grades is. Some people audit classes and don't get a grade, the vast majority of people go to the extra effort of getting a grade. Why?

          If you're going to school just for fun, I suppose grades don't really matter much and you can grade however you want.

          Most people don't go to a university just for fun, or if they do they'll regret that later when they get the bill. The purpose of grades, and the purpose of university for *most* peo

    • Re:The Advantage of Diverse Learning Environments (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @03:56AM (#59884028)

      mental toughness?

      My kids used to get up at 6:30 AM to get to the bus stop and ride to school for their 8 AM class.

      Now they get up at 7:55, login, and listen to the teacher in their pajamas.

      I don't think their mental toughness is being challenged.

      • Re:The Advantage of Diverse Learning Environments (Score:5, Interesting)

        by walkerp1 ( 523460 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @04:13AM (#59884052)
        Think of it in these terms, maybe. School provides a structure designed for learning. Toss kids out of that into a lax environment while tearing apart their social networks and bombarding them with doomsday scenarios. How much mental toughness does it require to remain focused and produce results in those kinds of sub-par situations? Not less, I conjecture. This is where they show their quality.

      • My kids used to get up at 6:30 AM to get to the bus stop and ride to school for their 8 AM class.

        Christ what kind of shitty school makes kids start that early. By far the majority of teenagers have a late circadian rhythm. They're most likely permanently sleep deprived.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by _merlin ( 160982 )

        Hang on, you previously said your daughter already left home. Which is it?

      • Getting up early to take a longer time to start school is perhaps more physically taxing. Being locked in all day, with you as a dad, now I can see the mental tax in that... ;-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem is you need to have fair and consistent metrics to measure those things with, otherwise it's just down to how much a particular teacher likes you. Measuring "mental toughness" during a crisis, remotely, for kids with varying levels of access to education at home (internet, books, computing resources) is impossible to do fairly, should we even want to measure that in a child.

      • The problem is you need to have fair and consistent metrics to measure those things with, otherwise it's just down to how much a particular teacher likes you.

        In other words, it works just like normal.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re "access to education at home (internet, books, computing resources) is impossible to do fairly"
        The smart students will do just fine. As they always did and will.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        Sure, because life is fair and consistent, and without challenges and pressures. Sorry no. You either learn to adapt and grow, or wither and fail.

    • Re:The Advantage of Diverse Learning Environments (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @04:27AM (#59884078)

      Well, you have a point. This does require a really good examiner though and individual circumstances and solutions must be taken into account. Some students, for example, may have no financial troubles and stay healthy. Others may struggle to get food on the table and keep a roof over their head (What fucked up society treats its brightest and hope for the future like that?) and, in addition, may get sick. If that is taken into account competently, the grades would be a lot more meaningful than in normal circumstances, as long as the students still manage to acquire the basics they need to learn in a course.

      • Some students have financial troubles every day, yet we value a Harvard education higher than "random metro state". Harvard student has 168,000 household income. For comparison, University of New Orleans average income is $70,000. Given this amount of disparity, I don't understand why graduates from New Orleans aren't automatically given straight 'A's to make up for their adversity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Except that you'll also be grading them on the quality of their parent's ISP, how many siblings they have, and possibly their parent's and siblings immune systems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Past generations got educated during wars, illness, at a time of a lack of money. Nations did ok as most of the smart people did ok.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          It was a bit of a crap shoot, though. My grandad's war memoir begins with him having to bluff his way past a conscription officer:

          In the autumn of 1942 I was rising 18 and it was clear that I was going to get my piece of this war.

          My Father had served in the Corps of Royal Engineers, as a Telegraphist, Signals Branch, Regular Army from 1900 to 1914, including the Queen's Boer War, and China. His eldest brother, Emmett, had served also as a Telegraphist, Signals Branch in the Corps in WWI in Salonica and Flan

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          I don't see any evidence of anyone suggesting that we halt the process of education.

    • What better time could there be to measure intangibles like self-actualization, initiative, and mental toughness?

      That's great but if I give someone an A in a physics course it is supposed to mean that they have an excellent understanding of the physics we covered not that they managed to keep it together while the world was undergoing a major upheaval.

      Not only that but circumstances are wildly different: some students live at home and have had to do nothing more than stop coming in others have had to suddenly move out or residence back home (wherever that is) in the middle of the term. So even if you want to crede

    • What better time could there be to measure intangibles like self-actualization, initiative, and mental toughness?

      Your own words betray you. How would one measure an intangible?

  • Scolarships (Score:3)

    by TheReaperD ( 937405 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @03:09AM (#59883986)

    Ok, what about financial aid and scholarship requirements. Do you think most of them care that you can't get a letter grade because the school you went to wasn't able to adapt well to the pandemic? A friend has two teachers ask their students to request their classes be dismissed rather than go online as they didn't know the tools and had no plan of earning them. At this time I wrote this, the teacher had not posted any grades and her scholarship deadline is coming up. The scholarship hasn't even hinted that they might make an exception due to the pandemic. You can always re-apply next year, after all.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      "You can always re-apply next year, after all."

      Very true. And, seeing as how the institution wasn't able to provide the services I was paying for this year, how's about the school credit this year's fees to next year's tuition?

      Yeah, not very likely, but we can hope.

      • Scholarship are a bit of a lottery, though. No guarantee you'll qualify next year. I ended up having to pay for my last year of university because a lot of the scholarships I was in suddenly became US-citizen-only in the wake of 9/11.
      • My kid's finishing up now, but I was terrified she wouldn't get into her 300 level courses. Her GPA was 3.9 but the competition is insane. There just aren't enough slots.

        Why was I terrified? Because I don't make a lot of money and the economy is very unstable (even before the corona virus) and it would be extremely hard to support her without employment for an extra year or two. It would've complete wrecked everything. Yeah, she could work during that year, but without a degree she'd be lucky to make $1
        • The economy was unstable, with a 4% unemployment rate, real wages growing by 4% and a minimum wage of $12 (so no way she could earn $11)? The problem isn't the economy - the problem is YOU.
    • to decide if you get into your 300 level courses. At least for medical there's a massive shortage of teachers and classes meaning lots of kids don't get to move on even with high GPAs, but without even that how do you decide who to let in?

  • Graded medium fever, high fever, fucked.

  • Unless i'm missing something, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gTsiros ( 205624 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @03:42AM (#59884018)

    reality does not change because we fucked up. Any specialist in any field still needs to know the same things.

    Either we accept that grading is bullshit anyway and give everyone random grades from now on ... or keep grading as we should.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      reality does not change because we fucked up. Any specialist in any field still needs to know the same things.

      Either we accept that grading is bullshit anyway and give everyone random grades from now on ... or keep grading as we should.

      So very much this! Sure, weaker students (and some average ones) fear failing. I get that. But the honest ones do understand exactly this point: If they get bad feedback via fluff grades, they may just find they are incompetent later and do a lot of damage. Also, the worth of a specific program drops through the floor if everybody just passes and that benefits nobody.

      As to grading being bullshit, that depends very much on the teacher and the material selection. IMO grading becomes bullshit mainly when the m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )
      A few years ago, I spoke to a freshman student who was mad about his grade in intro psych. He hadn't done most of the homework and had skipped lectures and quizzes, hence his poor grade (a D, I think). His argument was that he could have gotten an A if he had bothered to do the work, because he found it so easy, and therefore he should get the grade he was capable of rather than the one that he did the work for. When I told him it didn't work that way and he had no chance of winning an appeal of his grade o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Well, perhaps students moving to college and university can experience how things are graded - on the finals.

      Every post secondary class I've seen has taken it as you have to pass the final to pass the course - if you fail the final, it doesn't matter how well you did during class - you fail.

      Now, some classes let you benefit from this as well - if you do really well on the final but bombed the midterms, the final exam will be taken as 100% of your grade, allowing you the lesson of learning from your mistakes

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I can understand people wanting the option of pass/fail or a letter grade. But the morons demanding A's for everyone - holy self entitled spoiled brats batman.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, I think demanding an A for everyone should result in a close look at the person doing that and potentially a fail for "prohibitive character flaws". No matter what the subject is, a passing grade does not only judge your fitness in the subject matter, but also your fitness to represent the field of study out in the world. Anybody demanding As for everybody clearly does not have that fitness. That is also why we fail cheaters.

      • Why not just give them all "Participation" trophies?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          While I like that idea, it may be counter-productive ;-)

        • How can we test that they actually participated and not just partied? We could administer some kind of, I don't know, call it a "test". If they participated enough to do well, they get the Participation Trophy. Otherwise, they fail.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Alternatively, we could make that trophy completely worthless! Maybe print it on toilet paper,... oh, wait...

    • I just got an email from my uni that students have the option of Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory in lieu of a letter grade. It's a good balance. Good students who haven't faced too many challenges get their As. Those who have struggled don't get the hit on their GPA. I'm a part-time grad student. I'm just not sure of the impact on whether I am offered a thesis option or coursework for year 2.

  • That does depend, obviously (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @04:11AM (#59884050)

    On all types of exercises and exams, a good (!) teacher/examiner can judge how well the teaching went and can compensate for for special circumstances. I usually have written exams in my lecture, but in the present situations I would probably do video-conferencing aural exams to get better feedback. (My lecture is in fall, things may have stabilized by then.) I have done "irregular" exams for some students in special circumstances, including visiting a sick student at home for a somewhat relaxed aural exam and I think it was a fair arrangement each time and had a fair outcome.

    Hence for competent academic teachers, I see no problem giving out regular grades. With incompetent academic teachers (unfortunately a majority from what I have seen), the students are pretty much screwed anyways, the current situation does not change that. I think this discussion is entirely superfluous ans stems from persistently ignoring that the real issue is that academic teaching is not very good in general and doing nothing about that.

  • Why not? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @04:51AM (#59884122)

    If students are still learning then why not grade them on their knowledge. Not sure how it is in the USA, but here in Europe the wife basically moved her entire teaching system online within 2 days. Effectively students missed one solid day of school and are back to being taught by the teacher. Through a combination of homework, video demonstrations uploaded to Youtube, and Google Hangouts (the school's a Google shop) she is still teaching the curriculum and going through it at the pace originally defined.

    Even before COVID-19 hit there are whole independent school systems based on this style of teaching. They still graded their students. And what of next year? What's the knock on effects? Should universities ignore the academic achievements when selecting students for a year?

    • Should universities ignore the academic achievements when selecting students for a year?

      Yes, and no. The problem with this crisis is that it has made it impossible to accurately measure student performance. I would argue that letter grades in these situations are hopelessly inaccurate: did a student get that 'D' because they had to move out of residence and back home halfway across the country (and that can be a multi-day drive in Canada) in the middle of term? Did they get that 'A' because they cheated on the online final exam?

      There are so many differences in the way that this crisis has

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re " accurately measure student performance"... sit in front of a web cam and do a test, exam.
        Pass, do great... fail... just like every past generation did in person... take a test, show what they could do.
        Cant recall a topic... thats not the wuflu... thats just a student that cannot study. Like decades of past students.
        Some on average fail, some do ok, some can be educated.
        • How does sitting in front of a webcam help? What is to stop there being someone else in the room answering the questions for them or a mobile phone out of camera shot? What happens if they say they do not have a webcam? You cannot effectively invigilate an exam remotely.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            Online testing has been working well for quite a while. And there are measures to ensure that cheating is difficult (it's never impossible). It's not a new nut that needs cracking.

            https://intercom.help/easy-lms... [intercom.help]
            https://www.schoology.com/blog... [schoology.com]
            https://blog.mettl.com/assessm... [mettl.com]

            • This is a nut that has still yet to be cracked. The sites you link basically do nothing more than provide some simple ideas which many of us already use in online assignments to mildly increase the difficulty of cheating from "my browser's autocomplete did it for me" to "I had to deliberately google something". There are stronger methods than these which again offer a mild increase in cheating difficulty from the ones you linked - like needing a second device to look things up with - but nothing that actual

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dcw3 ( 649211 )

                I simply gave you three links that provide some answers. Your example of a second device fails in front of a webcam, unless the instructor is too lazy to monitor the exam, as does your example of someone else taking the test. You could have easily figured that out for yourself, or found other links to give you those answers, but you sound like you're convinced that it's impossible, and you're wrong.

                • Your example of a second device fails in front of a webcam

                  No it does not. How can you see a phone if it is out of the shot of the webcam? What happens if the student's network connection is intermittently lost after the start of the exam? What happens if a student claims they do not have a webcam? (remember we switched in the middle of a term). Webcams make it a bit harder than what you suggested but there is no method I have heard of which is not immediately easy to see trivial methods to circumvent.

                  The best attempt I have seen is one with a motorized webcam

            • Online testing has been working well for quite a while.

              Or they could re-open the testing centers. I had to drive 4 hours to find a private testing center (professional license) since all the (government) schools completely shut down. The testing centers simply need to use every other seat to maintain the 6' (2m) spacing between cubicles for the on-line tests.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by kr123 ( 6746568 )
              Yes, remote online proctoring is not a new thing. It has been extensively used for entrance exams and for the hiring of professionals. There are many ways in which this can be done and a lot of companies provide such services. https://www.adaface.com/blog/a... [adaface.com]

      • Yes, and no. The problem with this crisis is that it has made it impossible to accurately measure student performance.

        Not in the slightest. The ability to measure student performance remains unchanged. The only thing that has happened is that we have applied some university teach models to school.

        did a student get that 'D' because they had to move out of residence and back home halfway across the country (and that can be a multi-day drive in Canada) in the middle of term?

        If the student got a D because of a couple of days, they would have gotten a D if they came down with a common cold. Likely they would have gotten a D anyway. Oh right it's spring break now. Definitely they would have gotten the D because they moved somewhere anyway.

        Did they get that 'A' because they cheated on the online final exam?

        Likely they got an A because the teacher gave them a stupid exam

        • Likely they got an A because the teacher gave them a stupid exam that allowed them to cheat.

          Really? I would love to hear how you design an online exam such that it cannot be taken by a paid test taker instead of the student without having a trusted person physically present in the room. You may also be thinking of arts-based subjects. When it comes to the hard sciences and maths though if you set a problem, particularly at lower course levels, it is very hard to come up with something that is not very similar to questions that have already been asked and solved before and solutions are readily av

      • Dunno.

        Did I get a C+ in my Intro to Humanities course because I had a wife and we had a baby and I missed a paper due date? Or because right before finals I had to fly to Colorado and pick up a friend and drive him back to Florida? Or perhaps because for the rest of the term I was working full time plus taking two other courses?

        Hell just for the amount of BS I've gone through while trying to get my formal education to check a box in the HR department they should give me a freakin Masters or PhD

        • The key distinction I always make when granting accommodations is whether the reason was voluntary or involuntary. Wives, babies and picking up friends are things you chose to do: if those impacted your grades you may have my sympathy but it's on you. Coronavirus and associated government lockdowns are not something anyone chose.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Potential "employers" and prospective associates often need some kind of assessment of the students' fact bases (whichever ones you follow), conceptual superstructure (ditto), mental acuity, and work habits.

    As American education fails, all this is abandoned or distorted.
    I remember one humor line in the 1960s, dad visiting his son at the old alma mater, with the same economics professor.
    Dad: "These are the same test questions you gave us"
    Prof: :Ah, but we changed the answers"
    Today in education those

  • Depends on what you are trying to achieve (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DRichardHipp ( 995880 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @06:28AM (#59884288)

    If your objective is to graduate and issue diplomas to as many people as possible, then you should definitely not issue grades during the covid-19 disruptions. Instead you should make accommodations. Relax requirements. Emphasize asynchronous learning. Reduce your standards. Anything less than this will compromise your gradation rate.

    On the other hand, if your goal is to actually educate students and to teach them problem-solving, analytical reasoning, and creative thinking, and to equip students to cope with the contingencies that they will inevitably encounter in life and to thrive in the face of adversity, then grades become a measure of how well you have taught and how well the students have learned. In that case, grading should continue as normal. No accommodation. No reduction in standards.

    So whether or not you issue grades during covid-19 depends on whether your goal is to graduate students or to educate students.

    It is said that a person's character is best revealed when they are under stress. Universities are now under stress. What will this show us about their true motives and character?

    • Educate and Measure (Score:5, Informative)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday March 29, 2020 @08:39AM (#59884580) Journal
      Our goal is to educate students, measure their performance and then credential that. The crisis has impacted education somewhat (e.g. high level, undergrad labs cannot be done at home) but has massively reduced our ability to accurately measure performance because you cannot stop cheating on online exams.

      As any good scientist knows when the accuracy of your measurement decreases you increase the error bars. For grading, this means that giving one student an A and another a B under current conditions is meaningless since there is too much noise in the measurement from external, irrelevant factors. Hence we lower the resolution of the grading system to pass/fail which is about as accurate as we can be in assessing performance.

      No accommodation. No reduction in standards.

      No accommodation means a reduction in standards. We assess students' understanding of the material being taught. If we do not make accommodation for the fact that we cannot do this as accurately as we do under normal circumstances then the quality of our grades is going to be massively reduced since getting a good grade will be a measure of whether the student cheated, how much the crisis impacted them individually, how good they are at coping with a crisis and how much of the course material they understood.

      • > when the accuracy of your measurement decreases you increase the error bar

        Unfortunately, the process is now much more vulnerable to fraud. Children collaborating on solo assignments, or looking on Google for test results, or finding the online answers to homework assignments from their textbooks, have imperiled the quality of homework. It can be much more difficult to assess a multiple form test or review a homework assignment for cut and pasted answers when the test is online and there's so little opp

        • Unfortunately, the process is now much more vulnerable to fraud.

          Exactly, that's is part of the uncertainty. However, when it comes to degrees this is assessed over multiple years so an increase in the inaccuracy over one or perhaps two terms does not increase the overall inaccuracy of the degree much. This is why pass/fail is a good choice: it reflects the current inaccuracy and students who manage to get a 'pass' by cheating now will crash and burn next year when it comes to courses that rely on the material they do not understand.

      • So don't do online exams no one says you have to. No one says you have to graduate people in the spring. Give everyone an NA on the term and make them redo it, that's an option. Probably not a popular one but it's not like that doesn't exist. There's just too much mud in the water to properly evaluate people based on term to date. Some courses are highly weighted to final exams. If you have less instruction what do you do? Trim the material to match what you taught up to the covid crisis? Expect students to

    • Universities are now under stress. What will this show us about their true motives and character?

      I can only speak for American universities: They gave up on educating in 2005/2006.
      Now all they want is happy alumni who donate money. Most important skill for university president? Fund Raising.

    • To that, imo skipping what 1/3rd of your 4B term instruction and passing people anyways is a fail. If you have to run a last 1/3rd makeup mini course in the summer or fall and graduate students once they've met the requirements. Not the students fault things went to hell in their senior year but not future employers or grad schools either. Learn the material prove you know it then get your degree, however long that takes either because your failure to pass courses, reduced class schedule or shit hitting the

  • Sure (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday March 29, 2020 @07:53AM (#59884468)

    They are tested Positive or Negative.

  • Grades for most students this year will be fucked. I expect some public schools will just give up and give kids some kind of final quarter/semester grade that amounts to roughly equal to what they got in pre-coronavirus world, although I expect some cherrypicking and grade inflation, especially in urban districts who worry about failing their entire minority population.

    Some will just give out credits without any grade associated with them, thinking its the only fair way to do it although it might or might

    • The better colleges, especially the Ivy League schools, are going to have much reduced enrollment. They school may accept students on a "needs blind" basis but many families are being devastated financially and can't afford the expected family payment or support the massive student loans many students take on. I'll personally expect a lot of focus as well on more practical fields of study to ensure a job: Service or retail jobs have disappeared, so students and recent graduates who kept afloat until they co

      • Spoken like a true not-Ivy-League-graduate. Harvard and Yale, for instance, don't see $1 in parent share until the family is well past median income and typical assets. They've also capped their student contribution at next-to-squat: Yale's is $22,300 in 4 years.

        • I've paid for several Ivy League educations, which was the issue. I'll suggest that you need to revisit those numbers, a divorced parent is expected to contribute baed on a legal formula, not based on the school's needs assessment. And student loan often, if not always, comes out of their parent's pocket for years after graduation.

  • If they get bad grades because of the pandemic, grades will be working as intended.

    If they give these people better grades than they deserve so they can "get good jobs" or "get into graduate school", what is the point of grading in the first place.

  • Consider that - barring your parents being able to pay for another 12 years of college - you'll be out in the work force in a few years where GASP! people actually are working from home, too. This seems like a perfect way to learn how to organize your life and focus independently instead of being led around by your nose.

    First free college, and now a free pass to show if you know the subject you're studying because "I have to stay home!" Lighten up, Francis...

  • I'm going to put aside my desire for perfection for the next couple of months. Every solution for most of our problems will have issues.

  • I am supposed to continue to grade online work.

    However, I am to only mark missing work as missing, no zeros. Further, I am only to grade what is done. That means that if a student does one question, on a page with twenty questions, and gets that question right, then the score for the page would be 100%, not 5%.
  • Just just helped my stepdaughter pass her college psychology final by search the PDF of the text and answering every question for her. She got an A on the final. What I'm saying is, they should not receive grades because online learning is way too easy to cheat at, i.e. just have all your friends get together and answer the questions together. Or have somebody that uses google search for a living help you out.

  • Just guessing that if you are one of 50 or so students graduating from Harvard with the non-specific grade in your field with a "emergency satisfactory" you'll do ok getting into a grad school. Just a guess.

  • Testing tells whether students have learned the lesson. People don't like testing because testing shows they didn't. You don't want testing so I am guessing you are another person who doesn't learn.

  • My wife is a teacher and has been telling me how everyone is saying stuff about how nothing should be graded OR REQUIRED and that the students should just get passed. They say the students are not all in the same equal environment, so it's an equity issue and they should not be affected by it.

    So since some kids may be in a less good position.... No one should learn because it would be unfair to those who might learn less? Great future we have coming. Then again everything in school is looking more a

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      That's an excuse. We all go through things. While I was in grade school I lost my mother and in college my father. I had to care for both of them. I also didn't have much money... and on and on and on. Guess how much my teachers and professors cared about that? While they cared that I had a loss they didn't let it impact my grade. When I say that what I mean is - get it done anyway, bub! If you own a business, work for a company things happen. Work though them.

      Life's hard. Harder if you're stupid.

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