Are you a teacher (grade school, high school, college)? Have you ever failed a student? Did you feel guilty? Did you feel it was justified, but it still saddened you? Did you feel it was justified and it was what it was?

When you were a student, did you ever fail a class? or come close to failing it? How did it feel failing the class? Did you feel you deserved it? Did you feel it was unjust?

Failing, especially officially, is a tough pill to swallow. Be it in academics, sports, business, romance, etc., failing can feel like a loss of life in some way — a death of sorts, if you will.

In our modern society and in most parts of the world, we have an organized education system that is generally unified in each nation and with broad similarities across all nations. This allows for a common (academic) language and is, to some (large) extent, an initial workplace filter. The filtering comes via grades. Good grades mean “better” (read: more prestigious) opportunities. Bad grades often mean fewer opportunities.

So herein lies a question: if the teacher is the judge, jury, and executioner, if you will, when it comes to deciding who passes and who doesn’t what are the ethics of failing a student? If a student fails a class, is there an ethical concern? Answering this question is a book unto itself and I can’t hope to give a full treatment here, but I will try to touch on a few broad points. I am purposefully leaving some topics open and giving my less than typically verbose commentary.

This blog post was motivated by a Twitter conversation that started like this:

@daveguymon I guess I might respond with, is there an ethical / moral dilemma in failing a class? #edchat

— Manan Shah (@shahlock) June 22, 2015

with a follow up from Jim Windisch

@TeacherWithTuba @shahlock it was a very intriguing question. Has had me thinking about teacher responsibility vs student agency ever since.

— Dave Guymon (@DaveGuymon) June 22, 2015

After which I offered to blog about to continue the discussion. And so here we are.

The following are things that if present, should warrant a closer look at the evaluation ethics. Some cases are clear ethics issues, while others may be contested.

• Subjective vs Prescriptive Grading — Some teachers grade assessments as a whole, while other grade to a rigid standard. How Would You Grade This? is an example of, what I think is, overly prescriptive grading, even if consistent. Is that an ethics matter? That is, is setting a standard of perfection ethically bad?

  On the other hand, if how a student is measured is unclear and is inconsistent among students, what then are the problems if one or more students fail? Did they fail because they misunderstood the grading criteria? Would they have failed regardless? I remember taking woodshop back in the day and we asked our shop teacher what an A should look like (I don’t remember what we were making). She pointed to her own work and said, “This is an A.” That’s great! A model! However, about 20 minutes later, as a joke, we showed her her own work and asked her what she thought and she said it was a C pointing out all the flaws. $#!@ Now suppose one of us failed shop, is there an ethics issue? Heck, is there an issue if one of us got a C and another got a B, regardless of bureaucratic consequence?

• Moving Goal Posts — I think it’s safe to say that if the expectations change wildly throughout the course, we’ve got some problems in assigning out grades. Expectations have to upfront, clear, and fairly static throughout the course.
• Fixed Goal Posts — Uh oh, isn’t this the exact opposite of the previous point? So how can having a fixed goal post ever be an ethics issue? Well, for starters, the goal needs to be attainable. Requiring everyone to kick a minimum 70 yard field goal (a near impossibility in live game conditions for (American) football) is unreasonable. On the other hand, knowingly setting the minimum bar so that everyone passes also doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t the course material be some type of challenge? If there’s no challenge, then it’s just a bureaucratic process and while, perhaps there is no ethical qualm in pushing paper, it poses a macro level ethical problem. Namely, University A and B offer the same degree program, but University A’s program is much easier. This is why I don’t care about graduation rates as a metric of anything.
• Individualized Goal Posts — While this sounds all sales-y and feel good-sy new age and modern and caring, we, again, have a dilemma. Why is Jimmy held to an easier standard then Jenny? Maybe they have to be. Maybe Jimmy’s going to get beaten at home if he doesn’t get good grades, an unfortunate, but nonetheless, real scenario. There’s a difference between pity and empathy. There’s also the necessity to recognize that the many dimensions of life don’t fit perfectly over a several month period that has to get churned down to one number. Favoritism, however, is the wrong type of individualization.
• High Variance Grading — Even if the expectations are made upfront, held reasonably static, with minimal bias in assessment, we can still have an ethical issue when we have one assessment yielding one grade weighted at 100%. Are retakes allowed? What allowance is there for just having a ‘bad day’? Some criticize standardized tests for being ‘high stakes’ — they can be pass or fail with no built-in catch up mechanism.
• Low Variance Grading — This is another contradictory point to the one directly above! But yes, there are two “unethical ways to die” — a cannonball to the face (high variance grading) or death by a million points. Grading every task, no matter how trivial, in the name of “more data” is probably just as bad as having too few data points. Why? See the next bullet point.
• Time Independent Grading — Jimmy gets a 60, 60, 80, and a 100 on Exam 1, Exam 2, Exam 3, and the cumulative final, respectively. It is doubtful that Jimmy will get an A in the class under most ‘standard’ grading schemes. Jimmy won’t fail the class, but that single grade reported at the end, which is supposed to be a snapshot for how much Jimmy learned won’t adequately reflect how much Jimmy actually learned. Unless, we are willing to acknowledge that that snapshot is also supposed to capture a student’s ability to keep pace. This is probably the biggest accepted and encouraged crime in evaluation. For most classes, content knowledge builds on previous content knowledge. Averaging, of practically any sort, makes no sense. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. Everyone’s done it.
• Classroom Environment — Cramped space? Overfilled classroom? Forced participation? Forced collaboration / group work? Speed drills for a grade? Non-staggered deadlines for work submission? Hmm, these can all be categorized into some form of ethical issue. The cramped space and overfilled classroom are more an ethics matter at an institutional level than at the teacher level.
• Technology And Resources — Is it fair to penalize a student who doesn’t have / can’t afford / doesn’t want to purchase the latest in gadgetry? It’s one thing if the course requirements make that known upfront, but it’s another thing to say during the course (even in the first class period) that high-end devices or materials will be required. It’s a meta-ethical issue even if the course requirements were made upfront because now educational opportunity is tied directly to financial access. We really have to be careful here as we want to introduce more technology in the classroom. I have heard of professional development sessions where the facilitator didn’t account for the fact that not everyone had a smart phone or a tablet. Not only is it unacceptable to require gadgets or materials that may be out of students’ reach (to within reason and that gets dicey) but it is also unacceptable to default to, “If you don’t have the gadget, you can just sit this lesson out.” even if it doesn’t affect grade. Again, this is debatable because we may end up with a “lowest common denominator” type of classroom which may not serve anyone’s needs — a different ethical concern. Somewhere in there is a balance. The key though is to not ostracize.

I’m sure there’s more that we can toss into the list, and please feel free to do so in the comments.

But what the heck isn’t an ethics issue? It’s a damned if you, damned if you don’t kind of situation. I’d say, to be as clean as possible, do the following (heck, I hope I can!):

• Set upfront expectations that are appropriate for the course — some courses may very well require zero tolerance on failure — can’t be too forgiving to the point that the evaluation is worthless and penalizes students who actually put forth a real effort and do learn, but at the same time can’t be militant.
• Recognize and try to account for those low frequency, high impact events in a student’s life — a death in the family, a car accident, changes to home environment, etc.
• Create a classroom atmosphere of acceptance.
• If you’re a holistic grader, then try to give yourself some rules for consistency’s sake. If you’re a (or have to be a) rubric-based grader, allow for some flexibility.
• Err in favor of the student, rather than against.
• Account for the fact that people learn over time, not necessarily “on time”.
• It should be abundantly clear why a student has failed.

Maybe grades are an ethics matter unto themselves. But what’s an alternative that works both for the individual and for society’s need / want to filter labor potential based on education?