Grading is a sensitive issue at colleges and universities. A lot rides on grades, and not only for students but also for the school and its administrators, staff, and instructors. Students pass or fail based on grades. Schools hold students accountable or fail to do so on grades, pleasing or displeasing employers and accreditors, and encouraging or discouraging students. Administrators must deal with grading issues, both for the affected student and the involved instructor. And the instructors themselves can elevate or diminish their reputation and standing with students, colleagues, and administrators based on their grading practices.
Grading policy violations are, therefore, common employment issues for college and university instructors. College and university instructors get hired and fired, promoted and demoted, and lauded or embarrassed over sound or unsound grading practices. If you are a college or university instructor facing alleged grading policy violations affecting your employment, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Defense Team and national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento to help you achieve your best employment outcome. Get the academic administrative representation to turn your grading issues around.
Common Grading Policy Issues
Grading policy violations and issues are all over the map. They can involve higher grades, lower grades, incomplete grades, or incorrect grades, as follows.
Higher Grade Issues
If you award and enter higher grades than the school's grading norms and guidelines, you may look good to students but bad to colleagues and administrators. Your higher grading may be due to your better instruction and assessment. You may be properly grading on sound criteria against appropriate academic standards rather than using norm-based grading against the curve. But if colleagues and administrators believe your higher grading violates norms and policies, you may face discipline or termination.
Lower Grade Issues
Lower grading can also get you in trouble. You may legitimately award lower grades to hold underperforming students accountable to academic standards. But students won't be happy when your grading deviates from school grading norms and policies. Your low grades may cause academic probation, suspension, and dismissal, or disqualification from student loans under your school's SAP policy. Those issues don't generally make administrators or students happy. And low grades may suggest that your instruction was the problem, even when it clearly wasn't the problem.
Incomplete Grade Issues
If you submit incomplete grades, you may likewise stick a fly in the school's administrative ointment. The incomplete grades you award may be entirely appropriate from your instructional standpoint. But they may exceed or violate the school's grading norms and policies. Incomplete grades, like low or failing grades, can also seriously affect student advancement and administrative review and responsibilities. And if you fail to complete grading timely or submit only some of your grades, then you've truly caused big student and administrative issues, even if you have good cause for your delay.
Incorrect Grade Issues
Incorrect grades may be the most damning grading policy violation. Grading incomplete work with a low grade instead of an incomplete grade, grading with pluses or minuses when policy doesn't permit plus or minus grades, entering grades incorrectly, or having an assistant do so without your checking the grades, can all cause student and administrative havoc. Instructors get fired and non-renewed over submitting incorrect grades. Few, if any, responsibilities are more important to deans and other administrators than correct grading.
Example Grading Policies
The University of Virginia's elaborate grading policy is a prime example. The policy, written for instructors to follow, includes admonishment after admonishment to do certain things and not do other things, making clear how important the instructor's responsibility is to comply strictly. Indeed, the university requires submission of a request form to the school or program dean, and receipt of the signed form back, to deviate from grading policy. That requirement alone is a sure sign that grading in nonconforming ways, like the above several examples, will very likely result in reprimands or worse for the offending instructor. See, similarly, Ohio State University's grading policy and the grading policies at nearly any other higher education institution.
Grading Issue Impacts on Your Employment
Grading issues can impact your employment. Colleges and universities routinely incorporate their grading policies and other critical academic policies and standards into their instructor's employment contracts. Michigan State University's Faculty Handbook, for instance, “The Michigan State University Code of Teaching Responsibility holds all instructors to certain obligations with respect to … grading criteria….” MSU's Code of Teaching Responsibility further specifies the instructor's obligation to follow the university's standards for approved grading criteria. Violation of these grading policies can result in non-renewal of the employment contract. Deans retaining adjunct instructors or making assignments of adjuncts, tenured, or tenure-track faculty members can certainly use grading policy violations to make their discretionary hiring, assignment, and promotion decisions and recommendations.
Employment Procedures
Your college or university should have some form of employment procedure for your retained defense counsel to invoke on your behalf, depending on your employment status. Instructors serving at will may have limited procedures, although those procedures may provide appropriate relief, or your retained counsel may seek relief outside of established procedures. Instructors having tenure-track or tenured faculty rights should have elaborate procedures through which to challenge their unfair employment treatment over alleged grading policy violations. Don't let grading policy violations undermine your college or university position. Get the skilled and experienced school employee defense representation you need for your best outcome.
Premier Defense Representation for University Employees
If you face your college or university employer's charge that you violated the school's grading policy, you need skilled and experienced attorney advisor defense to prevent your employment termination, suspension, or demotion. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Defense Team and national education attorney advisor Joseph D. Lento for your best employment outcome. Call 888.535.3686 or go online now.
