Fair Grades, Fair Deal: Assessing the Impact of CR, GD, and Reweighting

Like everyone, we have been hearing a lot of concerns from students, faculty members, and department heads about all the unknowns related to grading decisions, final marks, and student transcripts. This post reflects the collaborative effort of MANY faculty members. It is a long post; if you prefer to read (and circulate!) a pdf, you can find one here. Please share this post with your students.

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Marking in many courses across the university is at a standstill, and the administration continues to resist returning to negotiations. As uncertainty grows and conflicting information proliferates, students and faculty want to know what will happen to grades – and graduation – if the strike continues past the grade submission deadline of May 7^th. It is definitely not business as usual for students or those who teach them.

In a March 24th message to students, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, Bob Lemieux, explained the plan in FAS as follows:

With respect to Arts and Science courses taught by Teaching Fellows, grades will be assigned to students in as many Teaching Fellow-taught courses as possible. If a grade cannot be assigned, credit standing may be applied with approval from the Dean’s Office.

Not only does the syntax of the Dean’s statement avoid indicating how and by whom such grading would be assigned, the problem of determining final grades is not only an issue in courses taught by Teaching Fellows. The Dean made no mention of the plan for courses taught by faculty members where there remains a high percentage of outstanding grading (we are hearing about courses where 80% of student work remains ungraded), that is, in courses where marking ground to a halt when TAs walked off the job.

In a boilerplate response to concerned students, Associate Dean (Academic) Jenn Stephenson elaborates on FAS’s plan and its consequences:

…If, due to extended job action, the course is determined to be no longer viable (that is if assigning letter grades is not possible), the Head can ask the Faculty Office to assign CR (Credit Standing) to all eligible students in the course. A CR grade will have no impact on your GPA. It will also not impact your graduate school acceptances…

Many questions remain, however, as the following list shows.

What will happen if credit standing (CR) is broadly applied?

Administrative questions

• Academic regulations already permit a non-evaluative grade designation in instances where a student has submitted all their work but an administrative delay has prevented timely marking: GD (Grade Deferred). A final “grade” of CR would ignore the work students have done to complete their assignments and meet the learning outcomes in a course; it would devalue students’ learning. The use of CR standing would also show blatant disregard for the value of TA/TF labour that goes into assessing students’ work and producing final grades.
• As per regulation 10.3.2, a CR grade is to be reserved for those students who have completed all their coursework, including final exams or papers, but have received a low mark because of extenuating circumstances. Can the Deans assign CR standing in courses where some work remains unmarked, when regulations clearly state that all work must be completed, and a passing grade is a prerequisite for a CR? What if a student has only completed 90% of the work? Or 75% of the work? Would both cases still lead to a CR on the student’s transcript?
• We have been told that students will not be able to petition the assignment of CR standing. Yet, the ‘normal’ process for receiving CR standing starts with a student petition (request). Can Deans or Heads assign a CR grade when a student has not requested one? 

Plan selection and first-year students

• For first-year students in 100-level courses, CR standing will lead to confusion about what plan(s) they are eligible to select during plan selection at the end of May. Usually, students know they are eligible to select their desired major if they meet the department’s minimum thresholds, e.g., they achieve a C- or higher in the introductory 100-level course and meet the minimum cumulative GPA. If most or all students in a 100-level course have a CR, who gets into the plan and who doesn’t? If the threshold is based on cumulative GPA alone, wouldn’t that GPA be skewed for first-year students with multiple CRs on their transcripts?
• Transcripts that have CRs rather than letter grades for 100-level courses will create additional work for undergraduate assistants, chairs, and department heads in terms of deciding which students meet the thresholds for acceptance into their plans.
• If CR grades are assigned to students in courses deemed “not viable,” is it possible that a first-year student could have all CRs at the end of the year and thus no GPA at all?

Students with disabilities and extenuating circumstances

• Students with disabilities will be particularly disadvantaged by the use of CRs. They could have more work outstanding than other students and therefore could miss whatever threshold would be needed for a CR to be assigned. What grade would they get instead? Could they receive an F? If they cannot petition for a CR grade on their transcript, they will be disadvantaged further.
• Students are limited to 36.0 units of CR or AG ‘grades’ (i.e., 12 courses at 3.0 units) during their degree. Students who already have multiple CRs on their transcripts because of past extenuating circumstances, like illness or family emergencies, may not be able to afford any more CR grades on their transcripts. Similarly, some students are going to experience life circumstances next year or the year after that will lead them to want to petition for CR standing, and they will be prevented from doing so because they will have already maxed out their CR limit.

Exchange students

• How will CR standing affect students who are at Queen’s on exchange? Exchange students are usually required by their home university to meet a certain minimum grade. Could there be consequences for not having an evaluative grade?

Applications and admissions to graduate or professional school

• CR marks could affect students who have been accepted to graduate school but with a conditional offer tied to grades or GPA.
• Upper year students who are hoping to improve their grades for graduate school applications will be disadvantaged with CRs on their transcripts.
• Graduate programs prefer to see evaluative marks, that is, conventional grades that allow them to assess a student’s achievement in a subject. A CR grade could disadvantage the student if the description on the transcript remains as is and suggests the CR is in place of a low grade. As one faculty member wrote in a message to QCAA: “law schools see it as a red flag.” This faculty member also notes that “if the administration insists on ‘CR’, this will force instructors who refuse to do TA grading to harm their students and damage their relationships with those students as a result (and add insult to injury), making it much more difficult to exercise that right [to refuse to do TA work].”

QCAA agrees with this assessment. Blanket assignment of CR standing is bad for students and bad for solidarity.

What about the GD (Grade Deferred) option?

As per regulation 10.3.3, faculty members are expected to enter a GD when marking has not been completed by the institutional deadline because there has been an “administrative/grading delay.” The GD grade is changed when marking is complete and the faculty member submits a “Change of Grade” form with the student’s final letter grade. There are no deadlines or limitations associated with how long a GD can stand on a transcript, as long as a grade is submitted by the time the student graduates. However, if a student wants to be considered for the Dean’s Honour List, the change of grade would need to be submitted by Aug. 31st, the final date for determination of an academic year GPA.

GD (rather than CR) is the appropriate grade to enter for students with unmarked work. A GD is a commitment to students that their submitted work would be graded when the strike ends. For this to happen, the administration must recognize the need for students to have their assignments evaluated. Compensation for TAs and TFs to complete this work must be negotiated as part of a return-to-work protocol.

A GD assignment would be more advantageous than a CR for most students. But, administrative questions remain about whether Deans can (and should) override a GD with a CR, and about the risks of GD grades for graduating students hoping to start their programs in the spring.

Administrative questions

• Even if instructors give GDs, communication from the administration suggests they might try to override this designation and replace them with CRs. If that’s the case, all the disadvantages of CRs would apply. There are also potential threats to faculty members’ academic freedom.
• In classes led by TFs, there are course components (midterms, labs, tutorials etc.) that were designated to be marked but were cancelled because of the strike, meaning that the original evaluation scheme for the course may have to be adjusted – in some cases quite significantly. For example, if a Teaching Fellow had planned an exam but is still on strike when the deadline arrives for the delivery of exams to the Exams Office, there will be no way to hold an exam in that course. In this case, a GD could be assigned by the head. With a GD in place, the Teaching Fellow would have the opportunity to reweight the course components (thus preserving academic freedom), rather than having the reweighting decision made by the department head (which violates academic freedom), which is what the administration is suggesting.

Plan selection and first-year students

• Similar questions remain with a GD about who gets into a plan and who doesn’t, and the skewing of  GPAs. However, a GD would give more time to settle negotiations and devise a return-to-work agreement so that grades can be entered in time for plan selection.

Students with disabilities and extenuating circumstances

• A GD would give students with disabilities or students experiencing extenuating circumstances the opportunity to make up missed work, because a final grade could be entered once a student has completed the outstanding work.

Exchange students

• A GD would eventually be turned into a letter grade so that it would not impact exchange students seeking credit at their home institutions for work completed at Queen’s.

Graduating students and admissions to graduate or professional school

• The place where a GD could pose a problem is for those students planning to graduate in the spring and those hoping to start graduate or professional school in the fall. Students with a GD on their transcript cannot graduate. However, a GD would allow for another couple of weeks in May for negotiations to conclude and a return-to-work agreement to be signed. At that point students’ final grades could be entered in time for graduation. The last day for grade changes for graduating students is May 15. The final deadline for grade changes for a student to be a late addition to the degree list is May 23.
• A GD could pose problems for students hoping to start their graduate or professional programs this spring – for example, teacher’s college at Queen’s starts on May 7th. This scenario should absolutely increase the pressure on the administration to settle the strike as soon as possible. (One presumes that the designation of CR is the default.)

Can’t grades just be reweighted?

There are two problems with reweighting grade components:

Problems for undergraduate students

• Reweighting grade components will inflate the importance of smaller grade components for students’ final grades. For example, assignments originally worth 25% of a grade may suddenly be worth 70%. Students hoping to improve their standing in a course would also be robbed of an opportunity to improve their marks with the final exam or assignment. Reweighting will disadvantage many students in a course, violating Academic Regulation 7.2.1. which stipulates that once “distributed to students, the syllabus statement regarding the types and timing of the class elements that will contribute to the final grade may not be adjusted if the changes will disadvantage any student in the class.”
• QCAA has received messages from students about problematic reweighting. They are concerned about final exams once worth 30% now being worth 80%, alongside shifts from mixed format exams to multiple choice. In other instances, students have been told that the final assignment is no longer going to be graded by the instructor or TAs and that undergraduate students registered in the class will be responsible for completing self-evaluations or peer evaluations of each other’s final assignments. As one correspondent notes about peer-grading, “This change feels like an undermining of both the quality/reputation of the education delivered by X faculty as well as a direct undermining of the ongoing strike.” Students want to know if department heads are approving these changes and responsible for them, if the administration agrees that students in situations like this have completed sufficient coursework to receive full credits, and if Queen’s finds it reasonable that the very students enrolled in a course have the experience and knowledge to mark their peers’ work or self-evaluate their own performance.
• It is unclear if reweighting is an option in courses with a significant number of outstanding assignments. For example, could courses with 70% of work still outstanding be reweighted at all? That is, would it be possible to inflate 30% of completed work to a passing grade?

Problems for graduate student workers

• Reweighting grade components is scabbing; it substitutes a bureaucratic procedure for the work that was written into TA contracts. This is an enormous problem for graduate students currently on strike because it undermines their ability to mount pressure on the administration to get back to the bargaining table with a viable proposal.

The best way forward for everyone: Negotiate now!

In suggesting that a head should assign grades in a TF course, Dean Bob Lemieux is advocating for faculty to scab. ​​PSAC has called on professors to avoid scabbing. In addition to violating the academic freedom of teaching fellows, the Dean’s suggestion is a moral violation that no one should be pressured to follow.

Associate Dean Jenn Stephenson has been assuring students that CR marks will not impact graduate school acceptances when we know they often do. As we point out above, there are myriad other problems with CR marks that the administration is refusing to acknowledge. They are failing in their duty to students. QCAA advocates for an immediate return to the bargaining table so that TAs and TFs can get back to work and translate GD marks into accurate assessments of our students’ academic performance.

It is clear that the administration would rather harm thousands of undergraduate students than provide graduate students with an adequate funding package. They could immediately stop the stress and frustration being experienced by undergrad students by returning to the table with a viable offer. Fair grades and a fair deal now!