If one student got an “A”....as cited here...then I think we’ve got a problem....I really don’t want any of the D and F students to be MY DOCTOR.
“high-quality education for an ethnically and culturally diverse student population,”
Sigh. Quotas in grades based upon race and/or ethnicity.
My take, anyhow.
Just damn....
I’m all for a professor who isn’t afraid to flunk a lousy student, but this is ridiculous: “Citing seven classes in which 83 to 95 percent of his students got a D or F...”
He’s not teaching at MIT.
Posted just before this:
“Success Is Built On Work Ethic, Not Grievances (SOWELL)”
Dr. Sowell gets it.
Actually go look at the school work that failed? I doubt it. It's all the teachers fault.
That colleges actually offer remedial math and English AND accept students who need those classes still astounds me.
- JoMa
I feel for the guy, having gone through the same thing when I taught in an inner city public school in Dallas several years ago. The first 6 weeks I first taught ended and I had to prepare my grades—not a single one of my 30 or so students passed! (Bear in mind that many of them were illegal immigrants.)
I went to my mentor who totally freaked out—turns out I was required by DISTRICT POLICY to pass EVERY single student. I was totally shocked!! I was to substitute their real grade if they weren’t passing with a 70, which was passing. This was even for students who came into my classroom (4th graders) with no school supplies (although many had Air Jordan sneakers and lovely Raiders coats) and would stick their feet up on the desk and not do a darn thing the whole day (except for get in trouble) and never turned in a single piece of work—to this day it still galls me that those children were cheated like that. It just reinforced their ‘entitlements’ mindset. :-(
There is something wrong when the majority of students flunk a course. Either the professor stinks, or more stringent prerequisites should be applied so that only students who are likely to pass enroll in the first place, or the material of the course needs to be split up into two or more courses. Or some combination of the above
Links to the course materials:
http://sst.nsu.edu/coursematerials.php
Click on the name of a course to see course requirements.
At the top of each course page are links to Chapters, Syllabus, Objectives, Labs, Practice Area, Lecture Notes, Sample Tests.
For some courses, the links are to extensive material on the textbook’s Web site. Other courses link to the prof’s own materials.
I’m guessing that the students have poor reading comprehension, did not take challenging science courses in high school, and sailed through K-12.
I was willing to consider the possibility that the guy is just too tough on them but the above statement from the university is telling. When they pull this one out, it is ALWAYS a dodge. A cheap and disingenuous way to say, "Shut up and trust us. We're experts."
I am not going to look up Norfolk State (but probably should) however I can probably make an guess as to the adminstration’s motivation.
Norfolk State is probably not in the top 20 of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. One of the killers for lower tier schools is “retention.” That is code for the percentage of first-time, full-time freshman that graduate in six years. My guess is that NSU isn’t close to the 80% or so of top tier schools. You can’t retain students who flunk out.
“Aird thinks the phenomenon is due in part to the evolution of a “consumer culture” in higher education.”
....the attitude is “I am the customer, you must please me”...the kid turns their work in late, cuts class, takes cell phone calls in class, flunks the mid term ect. and then bitches when they get a D....we gotta bring the draft back.
Why - because teachers and professors are almost universally liberal and not working for what they get is a religion to them!
It’s not possible to fully evaluate such student failures without looking at the course materials, exams and assignments, etc. to see if the instructor expectatons seem reasonable for an introductory course in that subject. It does sound like he is facing classrooms full of unprepared and non-performing students, but it is possible to crush just about any group of freshmen in the country if you make the exams hard enough and/or present so much material and such a difficult level that few freshmen anywhere would pass. Still, it doesn’t sound to me like that’s what is happening here — from the administrator comments it sounds to me as though they probably do have an extremely unprepared and ill-performing group of students, and the administration simply wants to keep passing bodies through the mill to keep the $$$ flowing.