On Grading
One of the most important faculty functions (apart from the education of budding lawyers) is to appraise the abilities of students based upon a single snapshot known as the “final exam” or “final.” The grade ultimately earned by the exam taker reflects the professor’s appraisal of the student based solely on what the student wrote on that exam.
The difficulty with grading is not with the administering of the final exam, but rather how students and faculty perceive the discourse on grades.
The discussions about grades can frequently be confrontational and accusatory. I once had to take a physically defensive stance when an undergraduate student, seeking to get in to business school, became physically threatening over an A-. Another student, at a different law school, called me a name that rhymes with “stick.” These weren’t professional discussions, they were accusations that I was an evil professor who was gravely mistaken about the quality of the exam answer they had put forth.
As someone who has been graded through two graduate programs, I understand the unhappy feeling that grades convey. I heard my fellow students, sometimes in a single breath, proclaim they had “gotten an A” in one class but that a professor “gave them a C”. The difficulty with that sentence is that it presumes that the “A” was earned but the “C” was not.
Grades are high stakes, but students should take care not to put too much weight on them. Jobs, clerkships, coif, reputation and the like are all based in part upon grades. And that external validation and the drive to achieve it can be staggering. But grades themselves are only a tiny snapshot of any particular person. A person receiving a “C” is not stupid, lazy, or somehow inadequate in every way. To me, a C answer is a competent answer. A “B” answer means that the student has seen some connections, and an “A” answer means the student has clearly demonstrated in the exam mastery of the subject matter and all of its nuances. At worst, a C to me means the student had a bad day, there was some miscommunication that took place between the exam and the answer, or something else. But I do not for a minute think that an “A” signals genius while a “C” means someone is not.
What should faculty do?
All of my colleagues, ever single one of us, take great care in grading exams. I for one agonize over them, reading each at least twice before assigning numbers and establishing relative baselines. I like reading the exams, but it is the last part, the assigning of numbers, that always bothers me, for all of the reasons I stated previously.
Of course, practical realities constrain us in grading. The first is the grade cap. Grades must fall usually between a 2.8 and 3.1. Unless we are giving everyone identical grades, a strategy I refuse to employ, every exam is weighed relative to other exams. That means that to some degree a student’s grade is determined by how well he or she does relative to other students.
The second largest constraint is that the professor can only grade on what is in the exam. We really, truly, honestly are usually unable to tell from the writing who the student is, and thus what we presume the student knows (our “preanalytic vision” of how we think the student ought to do) does not enter into the equation.
Students probably have come to suspect that professors do not all grade alike. I believe that is entirely true. But that does not mean the grading is arbitrary. All professors, like your future bosses in law firms and elsewhere, have different experiences and priorities.
Professor ought to communicate to you what we expect on the exam prior to your taking it. Professors should make clear what they expect in an exam answer before the exam takes place. Some like to have issue spotting questions. Others like depth of analysis. Others stick to multiple choice. My chosen exam technique mirrors how my areas of law are practiced We professors are looking for the same things in different ways: That you understand what facts are relevant, what law is relevant, and the policies behind the law. The implementation differs, but our goals are the same.
We also have different views as to how an exam ought to be taken. For example, some of us believe you should spend up to one-fourth of your time on reading and prepping an answer in a time constrained exam, while others believe that writing should take place much more quickly. It should be up to the student to ask the professor about these expectations if the professor is not forthcoming about his or her expectations.
Knowing the professor’s chosen style is not a panacea, but it is important to success on a final exam.
What Should Students Do?
I encourage students generally to look at their exams and to discuss them with me. However, sometimes I have observed this go horribly awry, and why the language of ownership or blame discussed above matters.
In my experience, students with grades lower than they expected are the ones who most likely come to talk about their exams. This should not be the case. An “A” answer is not necessarily a perfect one. And everyone can improve upon answers they have given, particularly on a time-constrained exam.
Students should definitely talk to professors about their exams, with a focus on how to improve the exam. It is a humbling experience to be graded lower than you anticipated, but I caution students to be careful in how this is approached. In the course of such discussions, less careful students have made it clear that the sole purpose of the visit is to accuse faculty of grading wrongdoing, incompetence, and error. In that hostile environment, the student does not ask for his or her exam, does not seek to compare his or her exam with the best answer submitted or a model answer, and thus no learning or improvement can take place. The exam in that setting fails to be what it is supposed to be: A tool for learning.
A better approach is for the student to ask to read his or her exam and the best exam answer given in class, and then compare. The exam questions should be read again as well. It should be done ahead of meeting with the professor. The student should ask at least the following questions: Did I answer all the questions asked? Did I follow instructions? Was my exam addressing the call of the question? Does it have a structure that flows?
Students who reread their exams are often surprised that what they thought they wrote does not match what they actually wrote. Once the student compares the best exam answer with their own, often times the student will see their own errors. But afterward, the professor should discuss the differences. Grading exams is often like watching a golf swing. Some wield the facts, the law, and the policies behind the wall in a way that is equivalent to the way a professional swings a golf club: All of the elements are there in a beautiful, simple, and elegant motion. Others’ exams are more like my golf swing: All the levers of the swing are in play, but it isn’t the same as a golfing professional, even if the golf pro and I are doing roughly the same things.
I write this because I would like the dialogue about grades to be different than the one I’ve been experiencing. I want the focus of the discussion to be where it should be: Namely, I want exam discussions to be about learning.
Note: The views contained herein are my own and do not purport to be those of any other member of the faculty.
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Darren Bush, Ph.D.
