Exams Graded!
Woohoo! Plus this let me do one of my favorite things, which is to call to congratulate the students who've gotten an A or an A+ (generally 12-15% of the class, under our new grading system).
Note to other professors who call to congratulate students, based on experience gained the hard way: If you don't reach the student, and leave a generic message that doesn't mention the grade (particularly important if it's a shared voice-mail or answering machine), say something like "It's no big deal; nothing to worry about; just call me back please at your convenience." A student who just gets an unadorned "please call your professor" message will FREAK OUT.
Ummm, yes. Yes I would.
Eugene, I think it's kinda classy for you to call to congratulate, especially for the A+s. Good on you.
That said do you have any fear about appearance of impropriety? I can imagine someone especially paranoid construing it as inappropriate to suggest a personal relationship with the top students, and only with them. I obviously don't feel that way, but have you ever heard it or is it so ridiculous it doesn't come up even in academia?
Different personalities, I guess.
Lewis also defends grade inflation, a problem that has brought Harvard national ridicule. The trend matters little, he says, because grades are meant to serve as educational tools, not credentials for prospective employers.
Link to Boston Globe article
te, I don't know how it is at UCLA, but at my school the exams were indeed graded blind. The professor turned in the exam grades and got back a sheet with the names and the exam grades so the professor could "adjust" for "attendance and participation" and other such nonsense. (that's short for there is no such thing as anonymous grading). Presumably that sort of report is what Prof. Volokh is using to make his calls.
I once got a notice from a teacher that I'd gotten one of the few A's in a class. There was even a letter from the Dean. When you're a college kid, that can mean a lot.
Where I came from, the adjustments were done with the first submission (blind exam scores and "boost student X half a grade").
"Yes, you arrogant little twit! Wait until someone tells you you did the second best job at a trial or an appeal, for the fiftieth or so time."
And, professors, don't just say "It's no big deal, call me at your convenience." Say "It's good news, call me at your convenience." "It's no big deal" sounds like a professor way to soften "I lost your exam" or something.
Of course, I could be totally off. And I think it's great for a professor to congratulate students who do well... I would have really thought highly of that prof, if any had for me.
TWAndrews: 12-15% of students getting an A or A+ sounds like a lot? That doesn't sound particularly inflated to me; it's not too far off the percentages that Georgetown gives out (albeit without any A+'s at all). I think just about all of the top law schools (if not all law schools) curve around a B+ or so, so if you do a normal distribution around that with a standard deviation that's not ridiculously low, that's what you wind up with.
Confidential to DaveK: Perhaps there was another reason we were never called by our professors?
(In case you are wondering, I attended a law school that is ranked above UCLA in the USN&WR rankings.)
And please inform Dale Carpenter that, should I manage an A or an A+ in his First Amendment class in the fall, I will now be expecting a phone call.
:-)
Actually, I think most law schools set the median at around a B-/C+.
40 Multiple choice questions, no scantron. Apparently we are graded blind, but I have a really hard time believing that when we she won't allow us to see our tests.
S
(2) Some professors at UCLAs give A+s to very few students in each class; others give them to more. I tend to give 2 to 4 A+s in a typical 50 to 80 person course, though much depends on the raw scores. My sense is that I'm a bit on the high side in the A+s, and also in the below-C grades. (I tend to, on average, give a D every other year and an F every other year -- not a high number, but a bit on the high side compared to my colleagues, I think.)
(3) The grading in lecture classes (as opposed to in seminars and other similar classes) is indeed anonymous, with each exam being identified only by the student's exam number. I got the names of the students to call after I turned in my final grades.
One can give class participation points, using the "here are the grades by exam number and here is a list of names to bump up or down for participation" (I forget whether one can still bump down, but I think one can). But I don't like to do that, because I think blind grading fosters a better relationship between teachers and students. Students feel freer both in disagreeing with the teacher and in agreeing with him (since agreeing won't be as likely to be seen as currying favor). Students feel freer in refusing, accepting, and making invitations to lunch to discuss law teaching, law review, a student article, common legal interests, or what have you. There's less unease when the professor knows a student through other sources (for instance, when the student is a friend or relative of the professor's friend, or when the professor knows the student from before law school, as I knew commenter Arvin before I had him as a student and so on). And there are a whole bunch of other advantages as well (as well as some costs, though ones that I think are exceeded by the advantages).
Since grading is blind, I've wondered what the justification is for informing professors who got what grade in their class even after the scores are submitted. Obviously students who did well can voluntarily approach their profs the next semester to tell them Thanks and That Was Me and all that, but whence the intrinsic Need to Know across the board? Transcripts are transcripts, but what productive use do faculty have for such info?
I do, however, send a congratulatory email to the students who earned the highest grade in each class.
I have to admit, however, grade inflation is a problem, but not so much for the people near the top of the class, but for people that are in the middle of the pack. I do a lot of hiring for my office (US attorney's office), and I see so many cum laude grads from Harvard . .. I treat cum laude as an average Harvard student, but probably above a B student at regional law schools.
I think Cornell has some kind of protocol to protect the integrity of the blind grading process. The exams are anonymous, identified by exam number rather than name, the prof marks those exams, turns the grades into the Admin people, who then match up the exams to the names. Only after that point can the prof adjust for class participation. I'm not sure but I think that's how it works.
First, the school follows a "cooperative education" model. All incoming students in a class year spend the first 9 months taking a common track of the usual subjects. Thereafter, the class is divided into 2 groups, with one group continuing in class for the next three months, beginning their second year class work, while the other group takes on a "coop" job for that same period. The groups alternate class work and coops until graduation at the usual time. By graduation every NULS student has had 4 coop positions in which they gain practical experience about what legal practice is really like in a variety of settings, as well as 21 months of in class education.
Second, NULS does not assign letter grades for classes. Instead, professors prepare written evaluations for each student. Some do a better job of tailoring their comments to the student; others adopt a more generic system of comments. You generally can get a sense about how well you did in the class based on the written evaluation, and even where the comments are more generic, one generally can figure out where in the pecking order you fall, which is no different than the grades assigned by letter.
Finally, most NULS exams (at least when I was a student) were open book, which I thought was a sensible way to measure one's legal knowledge. Having the book doesn't help if you don't already know the basic overview and structure of the material.
I think the competition for and overemphasis on grades interferes with the law school experience. I enjoyed my law school years and felt that my classmates were generally supportive of the group. Based on my conversations with friends who attended more traditional schools, my experience is not universal.
Our law school grades are available electronically, and they trickle in (the deadline for grades from the spring semester, which ended mid-May, is mid-June). They tend to come from the smallest courses first and the biggest courses last, which hopefully means the professors are actually reading and thinking about the answers a little bit. I've got 5 of my 6 grades back, with the biggest class (and busiest professor, since he's an adjunct) still to come.
And if every professor called me when I got an A, I'd be on the phone a lot. ;-) I'd never get my day job done.
Don't bet on it.
I think I could have handled 5 or 6 phone calls a semester.
In terms of grades, I have received so far at UCLA Law:
C+ Property
B- Contracts
B- Civil Procedure
B- Criminal Law
A Constitutional Law
n/a Lawyering Skills
n/a Torts
I worked hard in all my courses. Reading, practice problems/exams, etc. So far I have done well only in Con Law and did in fact receive an email from my con law professor congratulating me. I don't really get it and so I have come to accept it.
Prof,
My comments were following Mikes on whether some As happen by accident. I don’t really know if I would have done better if there was no curve. In going in to meet with my property professor to get feedback on what I could have done better, he pointed out that I never discussed easements in a question. I pointed out to him that I actually did [pointing to one whole section of my answer]. He looked surprised and said there was nothing that he could do after the fact and went on an explanation on the difficulty that there is in distinguishing the B to C+ range. [the easement section would have put me around the B range according to him]
The point that I want to get through is that knowing the material down cold and the ability to communicate it with professors correctly did not materialize in my exam performance. So maybe I could have done better if there was no curve, but that is something that I have come to realize is not that important in a class where everyone is getting curved. What I don’t understand is the abnormality in that Con law grade, but I take what I can get.
I can accept that I got a 17/50: I hated moot court, the volunteer attorney judges hadn't read the questions, and they hamstrung us so much on what we could argue (narrowing it to their chosen issue), but I could not fathom how I could possibly be, at the same time, absolutely perfect, and totally abyssmal. It just did not compute (as it happens, the 35 was around my average score for the entire competition). It still makes me shake my head.