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[bread_pirate_naan]

Did I miss something?

OP insults DC.  Pile on. OP mentions area of specialization.  DC with same specialization enlightens/bullies OP with allusion to pseudonymity and disciplinary conference interviews.

Irony ensues.

Yes, I got all that.  I meant, did I miss some "facts in evidence" about the OP's age, relative teaching experience, and ABD/job search status?

No, you are clear.  I believe those comments were made based on the OP's feeling that the adjunct position was hanging in the balance.  If the position is lost, being on the market is a fair assumption.

Having no opinion or qualification to comment on the topic, it seems to me the question lies in the initial framing of the interaction with the "Boss" and being "threatened."  DvF's reading gestures towards best practices for aspiring admins in any circumstance.  Helpful post.

[kedves]

"Temporary" sometimes stretches into more than a year, not always by choice (twelve-month contracts, plural, are mentioned in the original post).  This is the OP's full-time contract job.  The contingent nature of it appears to rest on the grade distribution.  I'd find a way to make it work, but maybe that's just me.

[cc_alan]

Anyhow, I've had the odd career of teaching at extremely distinguished and extremely bad universities in 6 countries, and I would honestly say that the quality of my students and the quality of the university are tangentially linked, at best. I have also gotten in trouble for giving too low grades at every institution I've been at, including the most prestigious ones. My current university has a insititutionally mandated curve by which a certain percentage get A's, a certain percentage get B's, etc. It stifles creativity and academic freedom to say the least, but it also makes the grading process much more objective and makes grade inflation impossible. I hated the system at first, but I've grown to love it.

I seem to be missing something.

How is mandating the percentage of students who receive As, Bs, etc. making grade inflation impossible?

Or, is this humor that relates to your moniker and I'm just clueless?

Alan

[conjugate]

Heavens to betsy.  I had thought to comment.  See, I know in College Algebra courses that 50% D/W/F rates are not uncommon nationally and even 60% happen in places.  But College Algebra is not a non-major survey course so much as a gatekeeper course.  I suspect Anthro does not typically fulfill that role at many institutions, as somebody else pointed out.

A few questions: Is Polenta getting these numbers from just one section (which could be a statistical fluke) or from several?  Is it possible that the department chair (as someone pointed out) might be trying to help rather than bully?  Lots more information needed here, including what the other instructors' grade distributions look like.

[womanofproperty]

How is mandating the percentage of students who receive As, Bs, etc. making grade inflation impossible?

It's a real - though not foolproof - strategy for preventing grade compression.  If I understand correctly, you make sure that there is a distribution and that the median grade is a C.  So as it's described, it seems to be a real curve (not just scaling of the grades upward). 

Of course, it's not foolproof because sometimes you do have a class in which almost all the students are doing quality work (I had a wonderful small evening class like this that I still remember fondly).  So I prefer to have a certain standard in mind, and grade based on the standard, without trying to fit students into some arbitrary mold. 

I don't teach "weed-out" courses.  Usually, with the standard, I still get a fairly bell-shaped distribution with about 20% of the students in the D-F range (less selective, state schools), 15% in this range (more selective SLACs).   

[octoprof]

I didn't initially notice that the OP said what the discipline is she or he is teaching. 

In my field in an introductory course, no one would bat an eye at 15% Ds and 15% Fs. That's slightly  high for Fs but probably low for Ds.  My rule of thumb for my field's intro courses is to expect to have about 10% As and Fs, up to about 20% Bs and Ds, about 30% Cs and the other 10% spread out over all the grades. That gives about a mid-C average and if C is meant to indicate "average" then that's about what should be expected.

Of course, I teach in a discipline in which some students notoriously fail intro, so I don't know if this is a useless comparison.

On the other hand, if I were an adjunct and the dept head said to work on my grade distribution, then I would.

[kedves]

OP's discipline can be inferred from her saying earlier in this thread that she knows about PMS and its causal effect on disagreement (by women) because she is a psychological anthropologist, and from her starting a thread about the American Anthropological Association meetings.  It is reasonable to assume that the course in question is an introductory anthropology course, world cultures or similar.

Of course, if she teaches physics, calculus, or some other math or science course, then my name is mud and I can enjoy being sordid again.

[der_gadfly]

I was chatting with some colleagues the other day, and it occurred to me that they expect to have 25% F grades. They teach some gen-ed/required intro courses (depends on the major if they are specifically required or not), and I teach some that 'fulfill gen-ed requirements). Thus far, with about 45% of the course grade determined, I will have a pretty normal curve, but many more Fs than I would like to see: failure to come to class (penalty for too many absences seems to be the main reason thus far).

My students are 'lobbying' me for a curve: I will make no promises, but am not leaning towards it as I project a few scattered As in all my courses. I will wait until I see the final distributions, but right now, would not be in favor of messing with the natural order of things.

[terpsichore]

Yes.  Physics for poets should be set so that a C can be earned by any diligent student in the general population.  However, physics for people who need physics has to have the C set at the minimal competent level that will allow for success in the next course in the sequence.  Often that means a lot of people fail because they refuse to put in the effort required to learn the material outside of class even though most serious science and engineering programs put in place a lot of outside support to help people through the introductory classes.


One of the main purposes of the gate-keeper courses is to indicate the level of effort needed to be successful in the major and the profession.  People who are unwilling or unable to put in that effort when tutoring and help sessions are readily available will be sunk junior year when they have to put together their own study groups for the twenty to thirty hours a week of effort outside of class that they will need to be successful.

This is a very clear explanation of the difference between intro courses designed to fulfill a breadth requirement and those designed as a gatekeeper for entering into a specific major. Thank you.

[categorical]

I agree that the OP has made some missteps, but I'm concerned about the piling-on.  I've seen it in several other threads at certain points, and I don't like it.  I just doesn't look as if it's the way we should be doing things here.

[embitteredhistorian]

Anyhow, I've had the odd career of teaching at extremely distinguished and extremely bad universities in 6 countries, and I would honestly say that the quality of my students and the quality of the university are tangentially linked, at best. I have also gotten in trouble for giving too low grades at every institution I've been at, including the most prestigious ones. My current university has a insititutionally mandated curve by which a certain percentage get A's, a certain percentage get B's, etc. It stifles creativity and academic freedom to say the least, but it also makes the grading process much more objective and makes grade inflation impossible. I hated the system at first, but I've grown to love it.

I seem to be missing something.

How is mandating the percentage of students who receive As, Bs, etc. making grade inflation impossible?

Or, is this humor that relates to your moniker and I'm just clueless?

Alan

The mandates are maximums, so up to 30% can get As, but it can be less.

It makes it impossible because in a class of 30 students I cannot give more than 9 students an A. I'm usually a generous grader, so I want to give more As than that, hence the system makes it impossible for me to inflate the grades. It keeps me honest, I must admit, although I can easily see the system working unfairly to punish some students because their peers are bright and hard working.

[embitteredhistorian]

I agree that the OP has made some missteps, but I'm concerned about the piling-on.  I've seen it in several other threads at certain points, and I don't like it.  I just doesn't look as if it's the way we should be doing things here.

If conscience doth make cowards of us all, the internet doth make jerks of us all...

[bread_pirate_naan]

I agree that the OP has made some missteps, but I'm concerned about the piling-on.  I've seen it in several other threads at certain points, and I don't like it.  I just doesn't look as if it's the way we should be doing things here.

Don't worry about it.  It all balanced out in the end.  Anybody who understands what actually happened on this thread knew well enough to fart in the general direction, but not pile.  If the worst details were pointed out it would be beyond humiliating, so let's just move on.  Nobody liked it.

[wet_blanket]

I agree that the OP has made some missteps, but I'm concerned about the piling-on.  I've seen it in several other threads at certain points, and I don't like it.  I just doesn't look as if it's the way we should be doing things here.

I was singing that song on another thread recently.  Not in this case.  The OP was clearly the provocateur.

[bread_pirate_naan]

I agree that the OP has made some missteps, but I'm concerned about the piling-on.  I've seen it in several other threads at certain points, and I don't like it.  I just doesn't look as if it's the way we should be doing things here.

I was singing that song on another thread recently.  Not in this case.  The OP was clearly the provocateur.

Not really.  The OP agreed it wasn't the hill she wanted to die on and then someone proceeded to tell her:

1. she was a bad fit for her students
2. she should look for another job
3. "I don't want an adjunct ..."
4. "I don't need you"
5. "I think you're a poor teacher"

Mind you, that was after larryc had agreed with the OP.