[fla-left] [education/news] UC Santa Cruz May Require Grades (fwd)

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Tue Dec 7 09:01:51 PST 1999


forwarded by Michael Hoover


> DECEMBER 02, 19:21 EST
>
> UC Santa Cruz May Require Grades
>
> By MARTHA MENDOZA
> Associated Press Writer
>
> SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) - The University of California, Santa Cruz,
> known as a bastion of liberal education, is considering a radical move:
> required grades.
>
> Since the school was founded in 1965, students have been able to
> request essays evaluating their progress in lieu of traditional A through
> F grades. But last month, 170 faculty members wrote to the Academic
> Senate, asking that the narrative system be dumped.
>
> ``The Narrative Evaluation System has an honorable history, but
> times have changed and a new approach to grading is required,''
> they wrote.
>
> They said that eliminating narrative evaluations will help the
> university attract and retain students with strong academic records
> and make it easier for graduate schools and employers to gauge
> student achievement.
>
> The Academic Senate, made up of 588 tenured Santa Cruz
> professors, is scheduled to vote on the change Friday, following
> a student rally against it.
>
> Peg Miller, president of the American Association for Higher
> Education in Washington, D.C., said UC Santa Cruz was a pioneer
> in alternative education, offering smaller classes and an emphasis
> on undergraduate teaching along with narrative evaluations.
>
> While the university remains a bit outside the mainstream - the
> mascot is the banana slug - the school has in recent years added
> fraternities and sororities, expanded into Silicon Valley with computer
> courses, and replaced several redwood
> groves with new buildings.
>
> ``It's known as a school that tried a set of experiments,'' Miller said.
> ``But in this case, the evaluations seem to make it too hard to pass
> on the information to wherever they are going.''
>
> Assistant biology professor Martha Zuniga said she sits on fellowship
> selection panels and sees the judges struggle as they try to compare
> UC Santa Cruz students' bulky evaluation packets with other candidates'
> traditional grades.
>
> ``I don't understand why the students are so wedded to the evaluations,''
> she said. ``If I were a student, I would rather have a nice shiny A than
> some generic statement.''
>
> But many students said Thursday they didn't come to UC Santa Cruz to
> get grades.
>
> ``All through high school I did really bad on tests but really good on
> papers,''
> said psychology major Sabrina Ciarabella, 19. ``I was a bit scared of facing
> more grades, and I knew that at UC Santa Cruz I would get more pertinent
> information about how I was learning.''
>
> Jesse Locks, a 20-year-old literature major, said she has been disappointed
> with some evaluations that seemed too generic. But in literature courses, she
> said, the evaluations tell her more about her progress than a grade would.
>
> ``The point wasn't to rack up points per se, but to improve student
> learning,''
> said Jacqueline King, director of policy analysis at the American Council on
> Education in Washington D.C. ``But I think the mechanics of it were always
> difficult.''
>
> UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood - who has not taken sides -
> described narrative evaluations as being similar to performance reviews used
> by many businesses.
>
> ``When properly done in a good way, they provide our students with a real
> value
> addition in some of their courses,'' Greenwood said.



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