Grading and Reading Student Papers
Consequences of Laxity Affect Academic Outcomes & Student Respect
Mar 17, 2009
There is an old story in education about a professor who assigned paper grades by tossing the stack of papers up his staircase. Papers that landed on the top steps received A’s while those at the bottom received D’s. Wherever the story originated, it illustrates many angry student responses to graded research papers. No matter how tedious a chore, grading and reading student papers is an integral part of any teacher’s job, yet many take shortcuts, cheapening the very nature of the assignment and ultimately doing a gross disservice to their students.
Reasons not to Read and Grade Student Papers and the Consequences
No teacher relishes the prospect of reading through dozens of seven to ten page papers on the “Causes of the French Revolution.” The topic really doesn’t matter: when everyone in the class is given the same prompt or topic, reading each one becomes deadening. Unfortunately, many teachers react similarly when the topics and prompts are more varied, either given by the teacher or left up to the individual students.
Students rapidly discover which teachers are actually reading their papers, making good, constructive comments, and which teachers are not. The non-reading teachers frequently “skim” the papers, assigning grades based on preconceived impressions of their students: John is an honors level student and should get an A; Mary does above average work and answer questions in class. Mary gets a B; Timothy is tardy everyday, interrupts the class, and seldom turns in homework. Timothy rates a D.
When teachers are perceived not to be actually reading papers or essays, students tend to cheat more than the norm. This involves higher instances of plagiarism, of parents, friends or siblings writing the paper, or even buying a finished product from an on-line paper mill. Even if the school uses plagiarism protection such as “Turn-It-In” (an on-line service), infractions are generally not caught: teachers that don’t read papers will not give such programs the necessary attention, and students know this.
Assigning a research paper might be viewed as a necessary evil in some academic disciplines, but this should never absolve a teacher from giving each paper a thorough read, even if it means reading over a hundred papers. In large class scenarios, teachers should ask themselves what primary goals and outcomes relate to the assignment. Can those goals be met in a five page paper rather than a ten page paper?
Paper Grading Extremes
Reading students papers in terms of the rubrics does not necessarily mean “bleeding red” on every page, although some teachers are extremely thorough, noting every misspelling and comma error. The happy medium may be to highlight the most important desired outcomes: is there a clear thesis; has the supporting material discussed the thesis; what types of documentation (sourcing) were used?
Concise comments highlighting both paper weaknesses and strengths are usually appreciated by students that tend to see the time crafting the paper as having been valuable. Proper reading also enables teachers to justify given grades when students stop after class wanting to know why their grade was lower than expected.
Devoting the time to reading and grading all student papers speaks to educator integrity. Every academic class in any given semester can be tailored to a research paper that achieves curricular objectives and student outcomes while meshing with teacher schedules and the ability to read and grade all submissions.
