Teacher did not round an 89.913 to a 90

<p>No one said life is fair.</p>

<p>When I was in high school, the school district changed the numbers which determined an A from 90 - 100 to 89.5 - 100 so there wouldn’t be rounding quarrels come the end of the semester. Of course, now you have those fighting for a 89.437 to be bumped up to a 89.5. ;:wink: </p>

<p>An 89.9 is not a 90. Different professors have different policies on this. If you round then you have to decide when you are going to round and what’s too much. Are you going to round an 89.5? What then of the 89.49 who comes to plead with you in your office?</p>

<p>Generally speaking, I’m of the mind that you get the grade that you earned. So if you earned an 89.913, you earned a B+, not an A-. And personally, I would not round unless I had a really good reason to (e.g., student was sick but showed tremendous effort; student was a single mom commuting 1 hour each way, etc.) 89.9 < 90. It’s like @snarlatron said - an A is because you did excellent work; you were close, but no cigar, and almost doesn’t count. Considering students individually might be feasible in a 15-person class but a hassle in a 200-person class.</p>

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<p>You can be flexible, see each student as an individual, and still have a no-rounding policy. And if you want to know the reason that course syllabi have come to be written that way, hang out on the Chronicle of Higher Education forums and check out the “In the Classroom” ones. Students are routinely going over professors’ heads and complaining to their chairs and deans, and even getting their parents to call the professors to plead for higher grades when the students simply don’t deserve it. And with faculty jobs being as competitive and limited as they are, a lot of contingent/non-tenured faculty have their eye on their evaluations so they can keep their jobs. So yes, they do try to cover every conceivable scenario just so one of their students can’t say they “didn’t know” they weren’t allowed to skip 4 weeks of class and not make up the midterm.</p>

<p>Most students are great, but sometimes the slackers ruin it for everyone (and I am not referring to OP’s child in this case of course!)</p>

<p>89.913 should have been rounded to 90. The teacher just used his power not to do it to teach your child a lesson. Very unfortunate. There is a big difference between 80% and 89.913%</p>

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<p>There is also a big difference between a B- and a B+</p>

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<p>Or the teacher is following the rules they laid out in the beginning of a semester.</p>

<p>If a 89.913 should be a 90, is there really that much difference between a 89.913 and a 89.499? Or a 89.1? of a 88.99? </p>

<p>^^ Not much difference with a 87.00, the lowest B+. The B+ range is 87.00 to 89.99. To get the A-, one needs to be at or above, 90.00. Add as many decimals as needed, but it does not change anything; using two decimals, the range does not start at 89.51 for the A-. </p>

<p>If that is the teacher’s discretion, that is final … as well as mathematically logical. ;)</p>

<p>The math teacher should follow math rounding rules.89.499 is 89. 89.913 is 90.</p>

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<p>Why?
They can also follow math truncation rules. 89.913=89</p>

<p>Or they can follow neither rounding or truncation rules and note that 89.913 < 90.000</p>

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<p>And the fact there are plenty of K-12 teachers who take this to petty extremes is one of the reasons why grade inflation in K-12 has become a serious perceived issue among some adcoms/college educators. </p>

<p>It is also why many people pleasers who get rewarded higher grades on the basis of their likeability in K-12 end up being disappointed with their first college grade reports when they find many more college Profs aren’t as amenable to the application of charm and what some of my HS classmates termed “Social BS artistry”. </p>

<p>Conversely, others who were graded low in K-12 because they weren’t as proficient in those areas, regarded it as being too fake/phony, or felt doing so was degrading to one’s sense of integrity and honesty found their college grades were raised because the Profs they encountered were more able and willing to evaluate them on their academic merits and separate that from whether they were likeable social charmers or not. </p>

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How does having a One-size-fits-all policy allow for wisdom and judgement in grading fuzzy things or evaluating the overall effort of an individual student? Methinks thou art not a professor, fluffy.</p>

<p>cobrat - my kids would be viewed as “people pleasers” even in college, and their grades often get bumped up. They are “people pleasers” because they go to classes, participate in discussions, and more importantly, they go to office hours. Professors are just people. If they like your attitude they tend to think better of you. No different than in the real world - rarely are people evaluated just based on merits.</p>

<p>Oldfort:" My kids . . . are “people pleasers” because they go to classes, participate in discussions, and more importantly, they go to office hours. Professors are just people. If they like your attitude they tend to think better of you. No different than in the real world - rarely are people evaluated just based on merits."</p>

<p>As a professor, I would say that there are academic merits for going to classes, participating in discussions, acne more. If part of a college course is to demonstrate problem-solving ability with diverse approaches, engagement in the material (as in the ability to manipulate the ideas quickly), and understanding of what you know and don’t know to the point that you can identify when you need help and get it, then these activities are part of demonstrating academic excellence and commitment. The smart kid who gets an 89 from cramming the textbook has not demonstrated any ability to go beyond the textbook and, given the pace of know change, may be at a disadvantage in the future. </p>

<p>I do round up, but I also have a participatory part of all my final grades (attendance, group work, speaking in class) because if the student can’t manipulate the material in ways that benefit those around him/her, then they haven’t really mastered the material in ways that would benefit them on the job or in society. . . </p>

<p>juillet raised the issue of considering students individually in a 200-person class. I have not done that, but I have used the grade cut-off method that I suggested earlier in classes with 100-150 students. I make it a goal to be able to identify each student by the time I am returning the first midterm exam. This is what I do:</p>

<p>My (university) grading policy is to set score cut-offs for each grade. A student who meets the cut-off is guaranteed the grade. Then I look at the overall pattern of student scores, to see whether to shift any cut-offs down. I never shift them up. I tend to look for natural breaks in the scoring, so if a student has an average slightly below the announced cut-off, but there is a significant gap between that student’s score and the next higher score, I will almost always bump up the grade of the student who scored just below the cut-off.</p>

<p>The real issue is that small quantitative differences ought not to be converted into qualitative differences, when it can be avoided.</p>

<p>Also, I would like to raise the issue of significant figures again, as well as summation of series. 89.999999… and continuing actually is equal to 90, mathematically. If the syllabus requires 90.0 for an A-, then 89.99 meets that requirement, when the number of significant figures is taken into account. If the syllabus requires 90, then the 90 might be regarded as an integer, which has an infinite number of significant figures. So 89.99 would not make the (strict) cut-off in that case. In terms of GPA cut-offs, 3.5 has two significant figures. Therefore, technically speaking, any average above 3.45 would meet the cut-off. 3.50 has three significant figures. Any average above 3.495 meets that cut-off. Personally, I wouldn’t push this; but as a scientist, I take significant figures seriously.</p>

<p>Here’s another reason to have a set rounding rule: for teachers to use their own approach to rounding in order to punish or reward individual students makes them seem petty. The teachers should want a set rule to avoid this very problem. If they want wiggle room for rewarding and punishing, they should assign work that includes subjective evaluations.</p>

<p>I will let the computer software to decide the grade:</p>

<p>if (gpa >= 90) then letterGrade=“A” else…</p>

<p>I do not have any problem when a professor has announced that they would round up in response to class participation and active engagement with the subject matter. I do balk when one of mine is marked down from an A for subjectively judged “class participation” that can count for up to 20% of a grade. </p>

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<p>Did you not read the third sentence I wrote (that you quoted?)</p>

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<p>That makes no sense.
How does attendance have anything to do with whether or not the person mastered the material and can communicate it?<br>
Someone who misses 3 classes is not necessarily worse at that than someone who misses no classes.</p>

<p>Since when is grading based on whether or not what you learned can benefit them on the job or in society? Are you teaching in trade school? </p>

<p>^^ I think the point is the student has to participate in class and that student has to be present to do so. I imagine the best student would be one who attends, speaks up in class either asking or answering questions and is a positive and valued contributor in group work, the next best would be a student who attends but maybe not participate so fully and again, is a positive and value contributor. What @mamalion does not seem to want to reward is someone who knows the material but doesn’t go to class.</p>

<p>I can see the point. My daughter tells me she learns and “studies” best by tutoring and helping others. It forces her to reconsider concepts in alternate ways to make them clear to a person with a different perspective.</p>

<p>Fluffy, I teach at a AAU university. I teach graduate students and international scholars.</p>

<p>Missing three classes isn’t a problem, but what about the kid who doesn’t come to 10 classes or who sits in the back surfing the web. AND I didn’t say participation was only attendance. Complex material requires a lot of manipulation in a variety of formats including oral. If someone can 'tutor" someone in group work, quickly try a really novel solution that isn’t quite perfect, or connect two ideas in generative ways, that student needs recognition beyond some reporting of textbook facts or reiteration of textbook problems. Anyway, my tests don’t let someone succeed without participation in the learning process and the problem-solving process.</p>

<p>Elite schools, unlike trade schools, do not value test scores in simple ways (this is why SATs are not the end all and be all that high school students imagine).</p>