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Atypical grade system makes Univ. lonely

Faculty and administration say plus/minus grading is partly about keeping up with the Joneses, but the University’s system puts Bulldogs in lonely company.

“You have to have a good reason for being in the distinct minority,” said Jere Morehead, vice president for instruction, in a meeting with The Red & Black. “It influenced the Task Force on General Education and Student Learning that the overwhelming trend was in favor of the plus/minus grading system.”

In fact, its lack of an A+, D+ and D- makes the University’s grading system more an exception than a rule, so much so that only one comparable institution can relate.

Before learning whose students live and die by the same letters we do, let’s pause for a lesson in plus/minus history.

The Task Force on General Education and Student Learning, co-chaired by Morehead and former vice president for instruction Del Dunn, recommended in an August 2005 report the Board of Regents approve a University Council proposal to move to a plus/minus grading system.

Twice before, the Council endorsed a plus/minus system, but on neither occasion were its requests acted upon. In spring 2006, however, the BOR did.

“We finally got (plus/minus) approved,” Morehead said, “but (the BOR) wanted us to pilot the program for three years and evaluate whether or not we wanted to make it permanent.”

Two years later, and the fate of plus-minus hangs in the balance.

Provost Arnett Mace will request to the BOR, probably next spring, that the University either continue the pilot program or revert to the traditional A-F system.

In the meantime, Morehead is crunching numbers, polling faculty and hosting forums to gauge the system’s success.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Only six people showed up to a faculty forum on Jan. 31, a fact Morehead said he interpreted as a positive sign that the system is working.

“My own anecdotal evidence from discussions I’ve had with faculty is that most of them are satisfied with the plus-minus,” he said. “They think it’s fairer than not having the plus or minus.”

At the forum, Steven Lewis, an associate professor for physics and astronomy, expressed concern that the plus/minus system means more grade cutoffs and more borderline students. After hearing arguments that a majority of schools are on the plus/minus system, he then acquiesced.

“Maybe this is a case where keeping up with the Joneses is the right thing to do,” Lewis said. “If you’re going to take a stand in opposition to what the trend is among peer institutions, it should be on something that’s a good deal more important than this.”

“Most of our peer and aspirational institutions are under the plus/minus grading system,” Morehead said at the forum. “I have to confess this probably impacted a lot of the [Task Force's] thinking.”

By the numbers

The BOR defines two groups of schools to be used as comparators for the University.

“Depending on the task at hand,” reads the Office of Institutional Research’s Web site, “peers can serve as benchmarks to evaluate current numbers or percentages, or perhaps can be used for aspirational analyses as we plan for the future.”

So-called “peer institutions,” including Kansas, NC State and Virginia Tech, are for the here and now, and “aspirational institutions,” Michigan, North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Texas among them, represent what the University hopes to become.

Hours of Internet research and a series of interviews conducted with registrars and academic officials at peer, aspirational, SEC and Ivy League institutions reveal a catch-22.

The University may now be in the majority with its adoption of a plus/minus grading system, but its lack of an A+, D+ and D- place Bulldogs in a distinct minority.

 Fourteen out of 15 peer institutions use some form of plus/minus, and nine have an A+ (four with A+=4.33 and five with A+=4.0). Of those 14 that use plus/minus, all but two (Arizona State and Michigan State) have the D+ and D-.

 Twelve out of 14 aspirational institutions use some form of plus/minus, and seven have the A+ (one with A+=4.33 [Cornell] and six with A+=4.0). Of those 12 that use plus/minus, seven have both the D+ and D- and two more (UNC and Minnesota) have only the D+ but not the D-.

 Three out of the other 11 SEC schools use some form of plus/minus (Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Alabama), three use a plus-only system (Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee) and five still use traditional A-through-F grading. Of those three that use plus/minus, only one (Alabama) has an A+ (worth 4.33), and all three have the D+ and D-.

 Throw in the seven Ivy League schools not already in the mix (Cornell is an aspirational institution), and six of the seven use some form of plus/minus (only Brown does not). Of those six, three have an A+ (two with A+= 4.33 and one with A+= 4.0), three have both the D+ and D- and one more (Penn ) has the D+ but not the D-. Dartmouth even has a Non-Recording Option, whereby a student can choose the lowest possible grade he or she is willing to receive and then have an NR recorded if he or she earns below that.

 In sum, 35 out of 47 peer, aspirational, SEC and Ivy League schools use some form of plus/minus, nine use traditional A-through-F grading and three use a plus-only system. Of those 35 that use plus/minus, the majority, 20, have an A+ (eight with A+=4.33 and 12 with A+=4.0). Likewise, 25 out of 35 have both the D+ and D- and three more have only the D+ but not the D-.

Cats and Dogs

Only one of the 47 schools uses the same version of plus/minus grading as the University – Northwestern.

Like the Bulldogs, the Wildcats lack an A+, D+ and D- in a system adopted more than 25 years ago.

Northwestern registrar Patrick Martin said his institution switched to plus/minus to allow for more differentiation and less guesswork in its grading process.

“What is created by using the plus/minus is a greater degree of accuracy and a lessening of fudging,” he said. “It provides to the faculty member more choices upon which to base an unbiased numeric evaluation.”

Bob Smith, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas, said his school debated a plus/minus system in 2003 but decided against the change, a decision with which he did not agree.

“The reason people typically articulate for the system is the notice of differentiation,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to acknowledge a student who has a high B versus a low B.”

Morehead added student engagement to the reasons why differentiation is critical to a successful grading system.

“What influenced the Task Force more (than keeping up with the Joneses),” he explained, “was the view that if you gave students a greater differentiation in the grading system, they would have more motivation to study and stay engaged through the end of the term because of the possibility that their effort or lack of effort was going to either positively or adversely impact their grades.”

Though the A+, D+ and D- would provide further differentiation to Northwestern’s system, Martin said such distinctions are counterintuitive and redundant.

“An A is an A is an A, and if an A is not necessarily perfection but it’s as high as you can get, how can you get higher than the best?” he reasoned. “[And the D+ and D-] are the same argument. You can’t do worse than failing, and how can you kind of fail?”

Morehead likewise pointed to the philosophy of perfection as the rationale behind the University’s unique grading system.

“The Task Force didn’t favor the A+ because it felt like A was the perfect grade,” he said. “It started from the viewpoint that A is the best and everything below A is less than perfection.”

As for the D+ and D-, Morehead said the Educational Affairs Committee was wary of differing shades of such a low grade.

“It felt like a D is a below-average performance grade, and it was not comfortable with having a D+ on the transcript,” he explained.

“The focus of the faculty was wanting to motivate students to work harder, so therefore giving variations among the category of D was of less concern to the Committee because they really don’t want to see a proliferation of Ds and Fs. They want more students to be working to avoid those grades.”

Beating a dead horse?

With names ranging from “The Plus Minus System at UGA Gets a F” to “Students against the injustices of the plus/minus system,” five Facebook groups exist for critics of the University’s grading policies to vent, but neither the wall nor the discussion board of any of these groups has seen activity in almost a year.

Connor McCarthy, SGA’s academic affairs chairman and the only student representative on the Education Affairs Committee of University Council, said he hopes to balance the University’s grading system by adding the A+ and removing the C-.

As presidential candidate for the Office Party, McCarthy said one of his platform’s five “first priority issues” is plus/minus reform.

“A C- is not a passing grade in major courses,” he said. “It really concerns me that students are going to have to retake those courses. They’re going to have to change majors because they can’t take that hit to their major.”

According to a report by the Office of Institutional Research, only 1.76 percent of faculty assigned a C- in Fall 2007.

McCarthy said he believes dropping the C- to be the most likely change but that the Office Party will push as hard as possible for the A+.

“If you have a 97, 98 or 99, why don’t you deserve that extra score? That’s what the rationale behind the B+ is originally because there’s a huge difference between an 87 and an 82,” he said. “There’s also a huge difference between a 93 and a 98.”

Such an A+ would be worth 4.33, he explained, but a student’s cumulative GPA would be capped at a 4.0.

University of Alabama registrar Michael George said his school employs just such a system.

However, Mel Francis, assistant registrar at Columbia University, said his school does not cap at a 4.0.

“An A+ is a 4.33, so if a student is scoring in that level, then he or she could potentially graduate with as high as a 4.33,” he said. “If a student deserves it, he or she gets it.”

George also said his former employer, the University of Texas, is in the process of switching to plus/minus for Fall 2009. Its system will have a D+ and D-. A C-will be a passing grade and an A+ is pending.

Morehead said both faculty and students have expressed some concern about the University’s C- and lack of A+ but that changes would not be made overnight.

“I don’t think the administration would just simply announce we’re going to have an A+,” he said.

“That would need to be vetted through the faculty governance process,” a process that begins with the Educational Affairs Committee and moves to the general body of the University Council and then to the desk of University President Michael Adams before arriving at the BOR.

Morehead will host another plus/minus forum, this time for students to provide feedback, Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. in room 348 of the Student Learning Center.

Whether more than six students show up is another story for another day.