The REAL Impact Of Student Evaluations

Ah, yes. Student evaluations and grade inflation make for strange bedfellows, but such in life in the groves of academe. As a laborer in that vineyard, I faced the biennial insidious ritual of callow freshmen and sophomores evaluating my work. Was I a nice guy? No. Did I understand student problems (lack of attendance or poor performance)? No. Read "understand" in the last query to mean did I give students a pass because they had to work or had children? Again, the answer is No. Suffice it to say that I was ripped every two years in the last two decades of my sentence of hard labor at the Collegium Excellens. My response to this horror show was to drive all of the slackers and laggards to drop the course. They retired with honor under a grade of Withdrawn (W). That grade was non-punitive and did no harm to a student's GPA. My colleagues (not a very collegial bunch) dispensed failing grades (F) to all of the slackers and laggards who stopped attending their classes. This F-by-default strategy lowered the class GPAs for all teachers except me. Throughout this nightmarish era, I led the way in class GPA. Was I Professor Goodgrade? No, I taught the remnant without Ws how to succeed in a college course and sent them on their way. Why, then, did I receive the lowest evaluation results in the department? I didn't allow excessive absence — school-sponsored travel counted as an absence — with a generous dispensation of a allowing a week's absence without penalty. I didn't forbear the undergraduate predilection for gimme caps; no hats in class. I forbade active cell phones. The list of my pet peeves went to some length. All of the above were indicators that I didn't "understand" student problems. If this is (fair & balanced) misanthropy, so be it.

[x CHE]
Professor Goodgrade: Or how I learned to stop worrying and give lots of A's
By Louise Churchill

This fall I gave my students grades for the first time. Of course, my students have received grades from me before, but I was always of the philosophy that those grades should be the ones they had earned.

This semester, that changed. I began giving A's like gifts. Why? I need to get tenure.

At my midtenure review, I performed excellently in all areas but one—the computerized scores calculated from student evaluations of my teaching. Despite my solid scholarship, a wide range of academic service, great rapport with colleagues, and, most significantly, many strong written testimonials from students praising my teaching, I was warned that my computer scores needed to rise significantly in order for me to be sure of tenure at my small college.

On the written evaluations, students attest that my high standards, impressive expertise, and challenging assignments mean that they learn a great deal in my class. Many students express gratitude for that.

I admit there's always a bit of discontent from students who don't respond to my teaching style or, perhaps, find me cranky. For years I have felt that comments like "She grades too hard!" or "Does anyone ever get an A in this class?" were badges of honor.

I've abandoned that dubious source of pride. I need to get tenure.

I'm not terribly ambitious. I could die happy without ever publishing a book. Producing an occasional article or essay suits me fine, and is enough to meet the standards for tenure at my small teaching institution. I teach four courses a semester, including some of the first-year composition courses.

I was more than happy to land my job after many frustrating years on the market, interviewing at research universities, trade schools, community colleges, you name it. I love teaching. And I am good at it. I have evidence of student progress at the end of every semester in the form of their papers (and believe me, I included samples in my midtenure file). But the computerized evaluations seem to trump all that.

Back in graduate school, I taught at least one course every semester. My mentors then paid little attention to the computerized evaluations we were obliged to have students complete, and focused instead on visiting my classroom, and evaluating my written assignments and the student work that resulted from them, as well as the students' written feedback on my teaching. I had some up and down semesters then and didn't always know how to respond to unmotivated or otherwise problematic students. I occasionally let aggressive students intimidate me, but over the years I have gained confidence and a sense of humor, which I guess translates into an ease with my authority that I did not have as a graduate student.

At my first academic job, a temporary position, my advisers and colleagues were instrumental in helping me hone my grading skills. We met in small teaching groups to talk about assessment, and I felt more and more confident that the standards I was applying conformed with theirs. Here, too, my advisers put little credence in computerized evaluations, and I got the impression that my scores were high enough to satisfy the powers that be.

Not anymore. The head of the department where I now teach was the first of my mentors to pay close attention to my teaching scores (perhaps due to pressure from above). She has been very supportive of my career and is someone I truly admire, but in my first few years on the job, she would pore over my numbers and look puzzled during our end-of-the-year reviews. She had observed me in the classroom and had heard praise about my teaching from students, so she had trouble meshing all of that with my scores, which are generally slightly below our institutional average.

I have found it disconcerting when she methodically reviews my scores and notes areas for improvement. It all seems rather abstract.

As always, I have turned to the written evaluations for clues. What has turned up over and over are comments from students accusing me of what I will characterize as crankiness (I could have chosen another word that begins with a b, though no student has actually written that word on my evaluations), and complaints about my high standards for grading.

So I've made a concerted effort to be nicer, smile more, and connect with students personally. As a somewhat introverted person with up to 100 students a semester, that has been a bit challenging but rewarding. I've always liked getting to know students, but in my previous work at large universities there was little chance of knowing them for more than a semester. Here, I can develop relationships that last several years, and often have students from my first-year writing courses show up in my literature electives, many times by choice. (Note to self: Make a point of that in my future tenure file.)

The buck stops with the academic dean, an affable fellow whom no one I know can quite read. He, too, was very supportive at my midtenure review but expressed the same concerns about my evaluation scores and made clear that he wanted to see them improve by the time of my tenure review.

OK, now I suppose it's time to address the crankiness issue. When students don't do their work, I get impatient. When they disrupt class, I sometimes speak sharply to them and have been known to say things like, "This isn't high school." I am also a feminist, although I don't advertise that or hide it. I have read the articles about how student evaluations are skewed toward men and attractive people; I was cuter and thinner in graduate school than I am now (and I'm still female).

I subscribe to the theory that, for most people, outspokenness in a woman makes her a bitch, while that same quality makes a man a leader, and I am outspoken. Should I tone that down? Start wearing makeup? Smile even more?

Well, I have toned it down, a little, but I'm holding out on the makeup. I am older and mellower, and I am also a mother, which makes me perpetually tired and also more forgiving of errant behavior. When my father died recently, my department head urged me to share the news with my students. I hesitated but let them know one class at a time, as a way of explaining a certain distraction I was feeling that seemed to be affecting my teaching. They were sweet and sympathetic. They generally are.

After all of those efforts, my evaluation scores went up only a smidgen. The softer, cuddlier me wasn't enough. I had to do something drastic.

When I got the first batch of papers from a literature class I taught last fall, I was dismayed at the poor writing. In my composition courses, I require rough drafts and comment heavily on them so that students are able to make significant and, hopefully, productive revisions before receiving a grade on their final drafts. I have no such luxury in the literature surveys I teach because I need to cover a wide range of material in a single semester. So, what to do with a pile of papers full of shallow thinking and spattered with grammatical errors?

As I write this, I hear a nagging voice telling me I should have prepared them better for the paper. That is probably true, but I had had a particularly rough time with the class. It consisted primarily of nonmajors, students fulfilling their literature requirement who proudly say they don't enjoy reading. My other literature class and my two composition courses were going well, but I felt strongly the need to do well in all of my classes—that is, to perform well on the computerized evaluations.

I approached the pile of papers with a new attitude. I was only going to give A's and B's, except in extreme cases.

I gave a lot of B's on papers that should really have received some form of a C. I gave A's where in the past I would probably have given an A- or even a B+. I felt a little polluted, but I also felt the need to receive better marks myself on those cursed computerized forms. I need these students on my side. I need them to like me.

After I returned that set of papers, the class dynamic didn't seem to change, as it had in other years when I had handed back a slew of C's. It even seemed to improve, as if the whole class had breathed a collective sigh of relief. I took pains to apologize, in a humorous, self-deprecating way, for a cranky outburst I let escape on a day of numerous class disruptions. I empathized with their stress during midterms and in the weeks leading up to finals. And I padded their grades. I need to get tenure.

Will it work? I will know in a few months, when I receive those dreaded forms from the large corporation that tabulates them and nets over $30,000 a year from our small college alone.

Public educators bemoan having to teach to the test in order to prepare students for the ever-growing rash of standardized tests required by state and federal authorities. I feel I am teaching to the evaluation.

I do worry a bit that if my evaluation scores go up, someone may notice that the number of A's and B's I'm giving at semester's end has also gone up, but I don't think that will happen. I hear from students and other faculty members that grading standards are quite lax among a significant number of my colleagues, most of whom already have tenure. There are a lot of easy A's out there.

So why do I find it so hard to join in on this A fest?

I've lowered my standards. I still teach with the same rigor and enthusiasm and I still enjoy the material, but I don't hold students as accountable as I used to.

I need to get tenure.

Louise Churchill is the pseudonym of an assistant professor of English at a small college with an emphasis on preprofessional programs.

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google at Google Reader. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.