In the meantime, my daughter’s teacher last year did sort of the opposite (father brag incoming). She had a B+ in the class and he told her if she got a 5 on her AP exam, he’d bump the grade up to an A-. She didn’t think she could do it (thought she got a 4), but to her surprise, she did. She e-mailed him a screenshot over the summer and sure enough, he changed the grade when school started up again in the fall.
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The prof might say that, but it’s a lie. And you could then escalate to whoever is above the prof if necessary.
Once in my undergrad I disputed a grade and a different prof regraded my work more positively. It’s possible, but takes courage and knowing your rights. Most departments intentionally don’t inform students of their rights in this type of situation.
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Yeah, courage is key. I used to always give people the benefit of the doubt and when I was in high school, my mom told me I needed to stick up for myself more. I finally started doing that (tactfully and in the right spots, of course) my senior year.
I’ve been telling my kids, particularly my son, to not be afraid to stand up for yourself, especially now that they are of the age where mommy and daddy can’t always do it for them anymore.
My wife had a professor who never gave grades higher than A- as a matter of principle.
The faculty was out of line here, but treating a superior like a secretary is rarely optimal. And while understandable coming from an 18 year old, may have triggered the instructor anyway.
cass is right tho. hard to know for sure, obv, but the points in dispute probably aren’t worth enough for a grade change. but if can show that they are, you have grounds for a complaint at the end of the term.
It’s tricky to know the right spots. Some teachers for sure have a Back the Blue attitude and will not be reasonable in the face of a dispute. Then you’ve burned bridges and made future classes tougher. But I think that’s rarer than people would think. Most profs and teachers don’t care about each other that much and actually do want students to be treated fairly.
In my senior year of high school I was a complete screw off because of transferring after my sophomore year I basically had many more credits than I needed.
I was taking physics and was psyched for the class. The guy was not a teacher but instead someone who worked in the aerospace industry. He came in the year before and made a lot of big promises. His teaching was something much different. I think I had a D in the class. A bunch of the honors kids got in trouble for not knowing how to pad papers properly on a compared to make it longer and got in trouble. (This was near the early days of word processing and desktop printers).
When it was going to our final it was going to be open book. He promised whatever grade we got on our final would be our final grade if it was higher than your current grade. As I took the test the whole semester clicked and I aced the test. Did I get an A for the semester? Of course not, he reneged and gave me a B-.
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Yeah I don’t feel bad for that student. If you want your grade fixed, learn to send e-mails like you aren’t a douchebag.
There’s no reason to hold it - just tell the professor that you thought it was on time, but it received a late penalty. That stuff happens all the time and almost never leads to conflict. Usually it’s some TA making a clerical error.
I had this exact same conversation with several clients in my consulting days. I once had a client surprised I couldn’t deliver a project that took about 100 FTE hours, at a minimum, in 24 hours. Lol.
i had a professor who got flack from the administrators that he gave too many A’s. in response, he gave everyone an A the following semester.
this was in one of the foundational CS classes, so a gigantic lecture hall of 200+ students probably. but the impression of the majors was that he was really good at teaching that subject, and you could even track better grades in subsequent classes for students who took his class. there was probably something to that. IME not a lot of professors wish to teach intro to discrete math.
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W. Edwards Deming: 
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An old metaphor a colleague used was “Just because one woman can make a baby in nine months doesn’t mean nine women can make a baby in one month”
It hasn’t aged well but it kinda has a point
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I read something he wrote a long time ago that I liked a lot. I think maybe it was Out of the Crisis. Have you read that? Other stuff? My dad started out as an Industrial Engineer and though I don’t remember for sure, I think that’s how I got to Deming.
As the parent of a child who graduates from high school this year, I am more convinced than ever that in general the whole college rat race is a scam. Not always, but for the vast majority of people.
I went to Washington University, a (now) really prestigious place. My kid may go to Washington State University. What percentage of people both know the differences between those schools and also give a flying fuck?
And my kid goes to an arts high school in the theater program. Their friends are all traipsing around the country to do IN PERSON auditions for prestigious theater schools. Some of these people will get financial aid, most won’t. Can you imagine paying $500K over four years (I’m guessing) for your kid to get a theater degree from Columbia? And these places make the spots in their freshman classes seem like the golden ticket.
On the subject of grades, how much do they matter? For graduate school lol, sure. But for liberal arts doofuses like me, who the fuck cares if you got an A, B, or C. You graduated or you did not.
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sort of related, re: tough professors and reasonable grading standards.
Jones, an emeritus professor of chemistry at Princeton, was on the front page of The New York Times in October after New York University, where he has taught organic chemistry since 2007, notified him that it would not renew his contract. That decision came after a student petition last spring accused him of being too demanding in his expectations and too harsh in his grading.
Depending on one’s perspective, he is either an old-school defender of academic standards or a relic out of touch with modern pedagogy, his students either snowflakes or discerning consumers taking control of their own educations. Despite its catnip quality for culture warriors, Jones’ experience does highlight several controversial topics, including the status of adjunct faculty, the alleged dumbing down of higher education, and the changing power structure within the academy. It also raises some central questions, among them: Should students be expected to meet a professor’s standards or the reverse? And should grades represent whether students learned the material or how hard they tried?
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I think for the most part grades only matter for students getting straight As. You will win scholarships and get into grad school if you want. Also better letters of recommendation if that matters. But yeah, I’m not sure if there’s any difference between a B and a D for most people.
What are you gonna do, break your kid’s heart when they get into their dream school - after they’ve gotten great grades, stayed out of trouble, and done everything you asked of them?
Total racket.
I don’t think I read Out of the Crisis. An old documentary tv piece about his work in Japan was the first time I heard of him. I then read The Deming Management Method, which is not by him. Less dry than it sounds. That’s cool about your dad.
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