Headline at CNN.com:
Megan Fox voted worst – but sexiest – actress of 2009

It’s time again for the year-in-review lists, and here is my fave of faves, Husband’s 2009 Best of Alternative Music list (iTunes link–should take you to the Canadian store*). I’ve mentioned before that Husband is a long-time list maker, and this was a good year for this genre.

I was also going to point out how much more awesometastic the Canadian list is than the American one (which is usually more boringly mainstream), but then I found out that the US store doesn’t even have a Best of Alternative list! It’s a tragedy for all the Rob Gordons of the world, who would be dying to spend 100+ hours to make such a list and donate it to Apple just for the love of music. And lists.

*To get to the Canadian store, click the little flag circle at the bottomest right on your iTunes main page.

I hate to post another ask a scatterbrain so soon after Andrew’s rather solid example, but I have a related issue. When my students prepare for their final exams I often tabulate how well each would have to do on the final in order to get an A, B, C, or D for the course as a whole. Normally this is a fairly uncontroversial process for me and students often appreciate the concrete knowledge. This semester, though, I have a student who will have to earn a grade on the final that is several letter grades higher than s/he has ever achieved on a test in order to pass the course at all. This student has also not asked me to tell them about their situation. Now, I am certainly hoping that the student manages to pass, but I’ve started wondering: if you have a student who can’t pass even if they get a perfect score on the final, is it appropriate to tell them not to bother taking it? On the one hand it seems like you’d be doing them a favor by telling them, if only so that they can devote more energy to other classes. On the other hand, it just seems wrong somehow. Again, my student does have a chance so I think s/he should take the final, but I’m curious whether anyone has ever tackled a situation like this before.

Feeling grumpy this morning…. a student came to me after the final exam to complain that s/he hadn’t received a B- for his/her work, which was generally pretty poor. Apparently s/he and “a lot of others in the class” were confused by the following language in my syllabus:

Completing these requirements adequately will earn you a B- in the course. Completing them exceptionally well will earn you a B, B+, A-, or A, depending on the quality of work.

The student said s/he had taken the class as an elective and “didn’t need it,” indeed “would have dropped it” if s/he had understood the policy correctly. In fact, s/he went so far as to say “I don’t even understand the concepts of the course. I stayed in it because of the contract,” by which was meant the excerpt above.

We had a conversation about it this morning. Apparently “adequate” was interpreted as “to my ability,” i.e., whatever is turned in should receive no less than a B- since its very presence is prima facie evidence of adequacy. I offered this page in response. Am I just becoming a grumpy old man? Am I one already? Should I rewrite the syllabus language?

My spouse spotted the NYT obit for Dennis DeLeon, an old friend from high school we have not seen since our wedding reception in 1970. Our last communication from him was a note saying he’d get our wedding present to us later. It’s a common name so we wouldn’t know it was him without the picture (which looks just like we remember him) and corroborating biographical details. He was an important part of the speech/debate team, the small circle we spent most of our time with in high school in California, and was my spouse’s debate partner in their senior year. We wondered over the years what had happened to him. Now we know. He was a prominent human rights activist  in New York who announced that he had AIDS in a 1993 NYT op ed . His activism is not a shock, as he was already a student leader in high school and at Occidental College. Nor is his sexual orientation, although it wasn’t anything we were aware of at the time. We were a nerdy crowd and people were not dating much anyway. I sure wish we’d known where he was — it would have been great to see him.

I’ve written before (here, here, here, and more)  on how we think about public opinion and where (and what) the “public” is in all this.

Recently the best-respected North Carolina polling firm, Public Policy Polling, conducted a poll asking Americans if they thought President Obama should be impeached for what he’s done thus far. 20% said yes, including 35% of Republicans. The comment:

I’m not clear exactly what ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ they are using to justify that position but there may be a certain segment of voters on both the right and the left these days that simply think the President doing things they don’t agree with is grounds for removal from office. I don’t think Obama has a lot to worry about on that front.

Well, duh! My guess is that two things are going on here. One is that impeachment has become less extreme to call for (if not to do) in part because of Clinton’s impeachment, which is widely viewed as essentially political antics, and in part because of the polarization of opinion communities. The other is that, when people are asked questions about which they have no opinion, they manufacture one on the spot. The modern individual is an opining subject; ask it a question and it will give you an answer. Particularly on a poll that uses Interactive Voice Response (IVR), where you’re supposed to push one button or another.

My undergrad social theory class is organized around a modernity => postmodernity schema, with modern social theory merging to postmodern social theory. I like to show a movie or two to demonstrate elements of these themes; in the past I’ve used Star Trek for high modern theory and Blade Runner for postmodernism (pace David Harvey). Warning: some danger of spoilers after the break on Bee Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

This year, though, I decided to use Bee Movie for the modern social theory movie. Without trying to be a spoiler, there’s a strongly modernist theme in which big systems work well, playing one’s part is a good thing, and identity politics backfires in favor of organic cooperation instead. I considered using Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the postmodern movie, but ended up back on Blade Runner partially because I’ve done it before and partially because Cloudy isn’t out on DVD yet! But Blade Runner is pretty alienating to the students, and somewhat dated. So here are some thoughts on postmodernism in Cloudy:

• the old-fashioned social ostracism of the smart guy followed by his getting the girl is here, with the twist that the ditzy girl is also smart and is putting on an act
• science “bites back” in a big way, suggesting a kind of paranoia over the lack of control over our technological trajectory.
• Portrayal of genius is interesting in terms of the inborn vs. enacted question.
• The most genius-like character (the boy) is also portrayed as not quite in control. This is a sort of postmodern paranoid stance toward science as juggernaut. See for example the “dangometer” which meters something (“Danger”) but we don’t know what; the idea of “overmutation” or something like that;
• treatment of human desire as insatiable and as driving the frankenstein of science
• Wertrationalität in that the hero works partially to gain emotional payback, e.g.,  approval from the town, love of his father, attention of the girl
• original reason for the transformation is the industrial decline of a sardine-dependent island as the world moves  on, but because of taste: they discover that “sardines are really gross,” as a newspaper is shown declaring early in the movie.
• The mayor tries to  repackage the island as a sardine-themed tourist destination, with obvious results, before  the hero saves the day. The hero’s dad is the last holdout for the old way of life
• “Dad, I don’t understand fishing metaphors.” (recurring phrase)

I’ve also used examples from The Simpsons before. One concern I have with all of these is that many contemporary students already don’t have a strong idea of the distinction between fiction and nonfiction–do these illustrations just make that worse?

I chair UNC’s Educational Policy Committee, and we are in the process of seeking some new policy initiatives to address grading. A reporter for the Daily Tar Heel asked me a while ago why I am such a grading “hawk”, meaning that I worry about grading problems (more on the identification of these problems below the break). The reason for his question is that I am a relatively humanities-oriented scholar in a department and discipline not exactly known for rigorous grading policies. Below the break I’ll discuss what I see as the problems, possible solutions, UNC’s current status with regard to these solutions, and why I care so much about them. Warning: this is a long and somewhat rambling post.

First, some definitions. I will refer to grade inflation as the general rise in grades over time, even though this leaves open the question of whether the “product” (quality of student work) is getting better, in which case the inflation metaphor is inexact at best. Grade compression, on the other hand, is a result of the combination of grade inflation raising the floor and the nature of the grading scale including a ceiling, such that all variation in student achievement must be represented in a narrowing window (since we don’t, as of yet, have AA, AAA, etc. grades). Finally, systematic grading inequality refers to the fact that grades received by students vary in far-from-random fashion across disciplines and (crucially) instructors within disciplines. Each of these is a distinct problem, even though they’re of course closely interrelated. Each raises a different set of thorny issues. And each is amenable to a different set of policy interventions, though again, there is much overlap.

What are the harms?

Lots of people agree that grades are rising, are unequal across departments and instructors, and are becoming more compressed, but ask who is harmed. After all, just about everyone is getting higher grades; professors are getting fewer complaints; graduate instructors and TAs have less grading hassles to worry about. It’s a win-win solution, right?

Wrong. Here’s a list of reasons to care about this set of problems:

1. Accuracy. We have a responsibility to provide accurate information to
   students and the public we serve
2. Reduction in value. An A at Carolina (or wherever) means less if it is the most common grade
3. Incentives. It is very difficult to recognize and reward outstanding
   performance
4. Perverse incentives. Inappropriate incentives to select some courses or majors
5. Unfairness. Cross-department comparisons and rankings are invalid and
   unfair.

The pervasive use of GPA as a mode of cross-class comparison and student ranking is a case of reactivity: students have altered behavior, in some cases radically, in the service of gaining or maintaining a GPA that reflects their aspirations. That means, ceteris paribus, that students are selecting into courses and potentially even majors that are not the best intellectual homes for them because of a statistical artifact.

At UNC, since 1995 the proportion of students eligible for the Dean’s List has climbed from 25% to 40%. The likelihood is that it will climb further soon, except that my committee has been asked to review the situation. We will be approaching the Faculty Council with the problem and a set of proposals for handling the Dean’s List in specific, but this is clearly a symptom that will not really be fixed unless and until we handle grades in general. Consider, for example, if we were to set 25% as a goal and just set GPA targets based on that goal (one of the proposals). This serves to magnify inequality based on instructor and department and, in turn, increase perverse incentives on students and faculty alike, to the extent that Dean’s List is a motivating distinction.

What to do?

But I digress. Here’s a (fairly) comprehensive list of possible policy responses to the problems:

• Separate evaluation of student performance from teaching (e.g., Swarthmore’s honors program). Professors concentrate on teaching; a distinct mechanism is devised to assess achievement. If done right, this is an intellectually attractive but financially disastrous plan. If done wrong, it is financially feasible but intellectually disastrous (think No Child Left Behind at the college level).
• Limit instructor and/or department grades through rationing (e.g., Princeton) or defined  averaging (e.g., Wellesley). Recognize that grades are in some sense zero-sum, so treat them as scarce goods on the “front end.” This is appealing in that it aims actually to fix the ontological assessment problem instead of simply fiddling around. But it has serious implications vis-a-vis intellectual freedom and teaching philosophy that ought to be a major concern philosophically. Here at UNC, it was clear at my presentation this fall that this class of options was unacceptable among the Faculty Council.
• Report context information for each grade on the transcript (e.g., Indiana, Cornell). Thus prospective employers, graduate schools, etc., could evaluate the relative difficulty involved in achieving each grade on the transcript. However, aggregate comparisons among students would remain invalid.
• Provide an adjusted measure of accomplishment for use in reporting relative performance and rankings. This is what we tried to do a few years ago with the Achievement Index, which still leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of some around UNC. Ironically, though, it was probably the most popular option during the Faculty Council discussion in which I outlined these options. Essentially this would involve pulling in information about the relative difficulty of achieving a student’s grade mix to develop a valid aggregate comparison of student achievement for use in Dean’s List, Distinction, and other comparative tasks. (GPA would probably remain alongside it for comparability, even though it is essentially meaningless as a measure of overall performance.)
• Prohibit comparison of students’ accomplishment across departments and instructors. Since we know unequivocally that grades without any adjustment are an invalid way of comparing students’ achievement, the University could choose to acknowledge this by simply saying we have no way of evaluating our students’ overall achievement. While of course we cannot keep third-party consumers from doing what they want with reported grades, we could abolish Dean’s List, Distinction, etc.; prohibit all University units from using grades to compare student achievement for fellowships, honors, etc.; and prohibit the Registrar from reporting any aggregate information such as GPA.
• Ongoing, University-wide discussion and deliberation process on grading meaning and philosophy (e.g., Seton Hall). Hey, everybody likes the idea of ongoing deliberation. But we would need to do much, much more to establish a kind of Durkheimian moral order in which the grade is a sacred instrument not to be messed with.
• Watch and wait (do nothing now). Always a popular one. The big question: if not now, when? What would constitute a crisis sufficient to warrant intervention if the situation we now find ourselves in isn’t it?

An additional concern is that this is a national trend, not a single university’s problem. Furthermore, our graduates will find themselves in competition for graduate school admissions and jobs with graduates of other universities who are not, or may not be, changing practices. To mitigate this concern, the Faculty Council has asked us to build bridges with faculty senates at other universities interested in addressing these issues. While I agree in principle that this is a good idea, I am less concerned with students’ prospects because I think UNC making any bold move on this issue will make enough headlines that grade “consumers” will know what we’ve done.

UNC’s Status and Next Steps

At the January meeting of the Faculty Council, we have been asked to present the Dean’s List problem and possible solutions. The options we plan to present will be:

1. Each spring, set a GPA “bar” for the following academic year targeted at making roughly 25% of students eligible for Dean’s List.
2. Reduce the bar to a 2.0 GPA and publicize that fact, thereby emphasizing that the Dean’s List is meaningless; such a low GPA bar will also reduce the perverse incentives to instructors and students.
3. Abolish the Dean’s List altogether.

In April we have been asked to present a comprehensive policy proposal on grading to Faculty Council. That will be the real “zinger.” I hope we can present a proposal for some sort of valid comparison statistic that will begin to reduce the inequality problems at least!

Why do I care so much?

Sociology is too often seen as an “Easy A” discipline; I’ve had far too many students tell me to my face that they’re taking my class in order to get an easy A. Two students asked me this semester if I would sign special forms to allow them to drop my class after the final exam because they didn’t like the grade they expected to get. I feel that the current grading regime is bad for the intellectual quality of the education we can offer our students. It’s bad for the “good” students because they can’t be rewarded for outstanding work; it’s bad for “bad” students because they aren’t motivated to do better. While this comes across as being a conservative hard-ass, and I’m the first to admit that I hate having to talk to students who are disappointed by their grades, I think it’s our responsibility as serious scholars and educators to maintain and increase the quality of our education–which includes seriously, carefully, and judiciously evaluating students’ real achievement in our classes.

For those who may find it useful for teaching or awareness, I have posted a longish memo when you are called racist over on my own blog.  I sent it to my students after a class discussion. In it I sketch two alternative world views, the minority/Black person who is sensitive to discrimination and racism and the majority/White person who believes that the r-word is hurtful. I end by suggesting strategies for dealing with the situation. If you have comments or reactions, I’d appreciate them.

One of the posts I’ve been meaning to write for a while is on using cartoons in teaching social theory, specifically a couple I’ve used this semester. But I haven’t had time to write it up. Meanwhile, though, a friend and colleague in UNC’s med school put together this analysis of the Grinch:

I thought this was interesting for its straddling of the fiction/nonfiction boundary as well as for its combination of biological, social, and experiential factors.