Faculty Discuss the Future of Grading

At the faculty meeting on October 7, 2024, the main topic of discussion was a change to grade distributions, along with an update on four-week comments and continuing to update the definition of “scholarship” in governance documents.

The meeting began by bringing the minutes from the August 27 and September 9 meetings, both of which were approved unanimously. President Audrey Bilger then opened her report by acknowledging the heaviness of the date. “The past year has been enormously difficult,” she said, “but it’s good to be together as a community.” She then shared that there was a board meeting at the end of September, and there are several new officers on the board of trustees. She also mentioned the previously announced generous gift from alumna Martha Darling ‘66, which will fund student success.

Dean of the Faculty Kathy Oleson then took the podium. She provided an update that she’s still working on planning a one-day faculty retreat, looking at May 28, 29, or 30 this spring. Next, she invited Meghan Wieters, Data and Systems Analyst in the Student Life Office, to share an update on four-week comments. Wieters reported that 5,200 assessments were turned in for all students, and 178 unique students received a “does not meet expectations” report. Of those students, she said, sophomores have the highest number (as expected), and 38 students were tagged for care referrals to Student Life; the number of care referrals totals at this time of year is about the same as last year. The top categories for those students who do not meet expectations were difficulty with course material, meeting deadlines, and attendance, Wieters reported. Finally, she said that the four-week comments team will be having one-on-one interviews with faculty and students on how the comments worked or did not work.

Next up was Ann Delehanty, chair of the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning (CAPP). First, she brought a new course proposal for approval: BIO 333, Systems Neurobiology. This class is already being taught and just needed to be approved, which the faculty voted to do unanimously.

Delehanty then moved on to a proposed amendment to the faculty code, which would change guidance on letter grades. This part of the code (Chapter V) previously read, “The recommended distribution of passing grades over a period of years for all courses is as follows: A - 25% B - 45% C - 25% D - 5%.” The proposed change would eliminate the recommended distribution; instead, it ties grading practices to the mission of the college and provides qualitative descriptions: A should reflect “excellent” work, B is “good or very good,” C is “satisfactory or acceptable,” D is “minimal advancement towards the goals of the course,” and F is “failure to achieve minimal advancement towards the goals of the course.”

This proposal is a continuation of several previous discussions on this topic, most recently the May 2024 faculty meeting, but beginning several years ago at the April 2023 meeting (see the April 21, 2023 edition of the Quest). The rationale for the proposed change, according to Delehanty, is that faculty were not following the recommended distributions anyway, and the code should reflect the current practice. CAPP is not proposing to replace this with a new distribution, she said, because it would likely be temporary, unlikely to be followed, contentious, and at odds with some faculty’s approach to grading itself.

Registrar Jason Maher noted that the D grade currently satisfies prerequisites; if this is approved, he said, it’d be worth having a conversation about whether that should be changed. 

Darrell Schroeter (Physics) requested that faculty be able to see in detail what the grade distributions actually look like, across divisions and departments, and expressed his concern that faculty were being asked to make this decision without access to the relevant data. The Academic Success Committee (ASC) looked at the data across divisions when they originally made the proposal two years ago, which showed that no division was in compliance. At the time, data was shared with all faculty showing an aggregate of college-wide grade distributions over many years. The committee did not look at department-level data because they didn’t feel that they needed it, and because it would raise privacy concerns for smaller departments, according to Delehanty and Troy Cross (Philosophy, former chair of ASC). There was some discussion about what it would take for faculty to see division or department-level data and whether that would be necessary.

The faculty agreed to vote on the motion as is, which passed, and then they returned to the topic of grade reports. This would be data on grade distributions sent out to faculty at the end of every semester or every year. One topic of discussion was about what data should be included in these reports: should it be split by division or by some other metric, like class sizes or introductory vs higher-level classes? What period of time should it cover? No conclusion was reached.

Faculty also discussed the pros and cons of having grade reports at all. The main point in favor is that they would be useful for faculty who felt that consistency was important, as well as for new faculty to have a basis for comparison to see if their grading was reasonable.

On the other hand, several professors expressed concerns about preserving faculty autonomy and ensuring that the existence of a grade report didn’t require faculty to fall in line. Is data transparency always a good thing? Would other entities use the grade reports to evaluate performance? Is there harm in sharing data without accompanying interpretation? Some faculty said that they didn’t think grade reports would be useful to them personally, as they keep their own data of their personal grade distributions over time.

There were also concerns about whether grade reports would lead to grade inflation. Jon Rork (Economics) pointed to literature showing that when you tell people how they’re doing in comparison to other people, those who are below the average go up and those who are above the average stay where they are, ultimately leading to an increase. Several professors felt that this would not be a bad thing; they believe that Reed should inflate grades in order to be in sync with the rest of the world of higher education, especially for the purposes of fairly and accurately representing students when they are applying for higher education programs.

Sarah Wagner-McCoy (English and Humanities) said that she thinks that comparing to other institutions is less important than how grading practices communicate expectations to students and how grading practices have been shown to impact learning. Peter Steinberger (Political Science) expressed the opinion that we do have grade consistency: if a student is doing excellent work, they get an A; he would not be happy if the institution tells faculty to give students As who he thinks do not deserve As. 

“The faculty is now questioning the truth,” observed Delehanty, to laughter. She summarized three takeaways: there’s room for the CTL to consider grading practices, for CAPP to take up the topic of grade reports, and for interdepartmental discussion about grade consistency.

Following this discussion, the final speaker was Jan Mieszkowski, chair of the Committee on Advancement and Tenure (CAT). He shared that CAT is about to start reviews of faculty, and there’s still time to submit letters in support of tenure for their colleagues. He then brought to the table a proposed revision to the language about scholarship in the Faculty Handbook. The faculty approved new language last year, and they’ve already changed the constitution; this change was simply to bring the handbook in line. Steinberger expressed his regret about the change they made in the first place last spring, but the motion passed unanimously nonetheless.

For new business, a professor noted that structural deficit data was presented last spring, and they are yet to discuss what to do with it. Bilger said that the CAP Budget Advisory Subcommittee (CBAS) will have an upcoming meeting, and they might have something to bring to the faculty soon. Sameer ud Dowla Khan (Linguistics) asked for more information about the previously mentioned Martha Darling gift. Bilger pointed to a press release available on the Reed website with more detail, but summarized that the gift will create four funds: a first-year adviser within student life; support for peer mentor programs; a residential college program director; and support for CLBR to reach all sophomores. This particular money is following the donor’s wishes; faculty will have more chance to weigh in on other funding.

With that, the meeting was adjourned. The next faculty meeting will be held on November 4. Students interested in attending should email presidentsoffice@reed.edu.