For the first time in my career, the professor professor (I'm an assistant instructor) let me do THE grades. So I was feeling pretty good today. That is, until I actually had to fail people and hit "submit." Nothing about that feels good. But I have to. It's not fair to my passing students who worked hard to pass not to. I'll never understand people who sign up for a course and PAY FOR IT and don't even remotely try.
To that point, it's sort of like an unwritten/pseudo-written rule that we're not supposed to grade on attendance for three reasons and I'm going to tell you why they're all bullshit.
1) It's not a true measure of performance.
First of all, neither are tests but we grade them on about three of those every semester, but I digress. Performance is important, but when you have a job, you actually have to show up to that job to perform. Any boss in the world is going to take a C performer who's always there when needed over an A performer who misses days constantly.
2)Students have other engagements which preclude them from participation.
Then don't take the class??
You signed up for it. You gave your word. You made a written commitment. You're over 18 and that means something now.
I know you have a life. Two years into my career and I've already seen it all. I've had full-time workers, soldiers, police academy recruits, firefighters, EMT's, nurses, mothers, fathers, caretakers, disabled students, sick students, and everything else. Most of them, actually, managed to do very well.
If something comes up that severely limits your participation, talk to me and we'll set up a schedule for you to make up work. I'm not a drill sergeant. But if you completely ignore my class all semester, I'm going to ignore you on the spreadsheet.
3)It creates bias towards students who attend regularly.
You're god damn right it does!
If you score 1 point below a grade level (let's say you got 79 and 80 is B-range) and I see you twice a week every week busting your butt, I'll say "close enough."
If I don't know who you are, when I submit my grades, I'm going to treat you like I don't know who you are.
Guilty as charged. I am biased towards students who show up.
Why? Because your job is going to be biased towards employing people who show up.
Everyone gets sick and has bad days. I don't expect you to be perfect. I'm talking about students who are out here scoring 31/100 for the semester because in four months I saw them three times, with no correspondence.
I swear, I'm the nicest guy in the world, but when you make a commitment to a course and straight up ignore it for months on end, you have pushed my comprehension beyond its limits.
Now don't get me wrong, everyone gets the same points on tests and papers and attendance does not factor in to those grades whatsoever. That's technically what the rule is, and that's the way it should be.
But there's also going to be a bunch of in-class assignments and students who were in class to do in-class assignments are getting an extra 20-30 points on their final grade. That's a loophole we've found to reward attendance and we've gone out of our way to do that because most of the faculty agrees that the kid who shows up for the midterm and the final, and f***s off the other 14 weeks and gets an A for the course because he tests well, is not how it works in the real world.
