On the merits of reviewing late papers

I was facing a C at the end of composition class this semester, because I had been absent on three days where class work was both assigned and collected by the end of the class. Although everything I had turned in had scored above 90, my grades seemed hopeless once the instructor mentioned that he would not accept late work. Thus, I picked the topic of reviewing late papers as the subject for a persuasive paper assigned.

Dear Professor,

Having given me the chance to write a convincing paper on a topic of my own choosing, I have picked such to be the review of late papers. Your criteria was to absolutely abstain from any talk of getting a higher grade, and I wanted to bluntly state that this has nothing to do with it. Rather, I wanted to explore the ethical and academic implications of a professor’s decision of whether to admit or reject late papers and revisions for grading.

In a 2003 issue of Brigham Young University’s Education and Law Journal, Prof. Gary Chartier explored this topic in an article titled “Truth-Telling, Incommensurability, and the Ethics of Grading.” While the article itself is not available online, a member of the Reynolds School of Journalism faculty summarized Prof. Chartier’s views as follows:

“The author’s thesis is that a grade should accurately reflect a student’s “subject matter competency.” This means that someone who receives a grade of A in a class should have mastered the subject matter and someone who receives a D should be judged as not having a mastery of the subject material. To avoid deception, teachers must be careful that grades reflect competency in subject matter and nothing else.

“Therefore, other factors that measure non-academic traits, such as the student’s ability to show respect, responsibility, or persistent effort, should not be used to help determine grades. Factors such as attendance or meeting deadlines are not measures of subject matter competence. Giving extra credit for attendance at particular events is not based on any evaluation of subject matter. Instructors who use these factors to influence grades are being deceptive, because they are not an accurate indication of how much a student knows about a particular subject: “Encouraging student responsibility or punishing student irresponsibility does not warrant inaccurate grading.”

“A student who demonstrates excellent mastery of a subject but has poor attendance and misses deadlines in our school is likely to receive a lower grade than someone who has middling competence but excellent work habits and attendance. Someone who has good mastery of a subject but copies work on an assignment without attributing it will fail a course, thus indicating zero mastery of the subject. According to this author, we can only grade in this way if in good conscience we know that everyone who looked at a student’s grades understands that we are evaluating two different things when we assign grades: academic performance and moral character.

“The author believes that assessing subject material and assessing personal characteristics are incommensurable factors and cannot be mixed. He advocates notations on transcripts that provide personal information, as opposed to conflating the messages of grades. How does this argument stand up to examination as we evaluate our own grading schemes?”

As a student occasionally faced with the problems stemming from an inability to attend every single class of a semester, and thus from being able to turn in, or sometimes even find out about, required classwork, I should be the first to agree.

An unbiased examination, however, concludes that this proposition does not take into practical account the tendency of a percentage of students to turn in late papers, and the administrative effect this can have when the professor is overwhelmed with ungraded work just prior to the end of the semester. More importantly, deadlines are often very serious affairs outside the academic world, and a lack of personal discipline on the part of a student during post-secondary education, if not remedied, can translate to lack of success in later life.

Generally, in an attempt to best instruct each individual in his class with the necessary rigor to ensure understanding, yet without bias or prejudice, the instructor himself can find that the decision of whether or not to accept revisions and late work is not cut-and-dry but rather very many shades of gray. One solution, in the words of an anonymous professor on a teacher’s blog, “I use a zero tolerance policy on late work. I tell my students better never than late. I print the due date and the no late papers policy on each assignment in 18 point font. I also have the policy in my syllabus. I do have contingencies … but it has to be on time. If there is a problem, they may ask for an extension, but they cannot ask for one on the day the assignment is due, unless they can provide documentation, such as medical or court papers.” This can, however, be taken too far. Professor S.J. Ratcliff of Middlebury College, for example, has gone on to justify no-tolerance on late papers by suggesting that the injury and mortality rate of the student’s relatives is lessened (if they can survive the first three weeks of the course, that is) when a very strict no-late-work policy is implemented.

I believe that a uniform criteria is required in order to protect the student from the injustice of a grade which does not reflect his true level of competence, as well as to protect the instructor’s sanity and hours of sleep, and above all ensure enough academic intensity still exists so that the student is challenged and spurred to new achievements and levels of ability in the subject matter of study. This criteria, at the very minimum, would protect the student from the irreparable assignment of a completely null score, while at the same time discouraging late work, or at least ensuring a student cannot pass the class with the highest marks despite having turned in a large portion of his work after the semester’s due dates.

Assignments and due dates should be consistently published and available in advance, a revision and late grading policy should be published to the class as part of the syllabus, and instructors should look at grading attendance, participation and student dedication separately from the quality of the work being turned in. Implemented thus, a sane system of grading would eliminate contention, obviating any need for the instructor to turn judge and arbitrate on individual cases of whether or not a late paper should be accepted.