Enforced attendance policies, such as deducting grades for absence or giving unannounced pop quizzes, distort grades in a negative manner. Grades should be an indicator of a student’s knowledge or expertise in a subject or activity. In most cases, such knowledge is not necessarily dependent on attendance.
Furthermore, lowering grades regardless of a student’s demonstrated understanding disheartens students because such tainted grades are clearly unfair. Because they are not being graded fairly, some students will not put forth effort to learn the material.
When dealing with apathetic students-the kind most likely to miss class-attendance policies are ineffective. Even if the policy somehow motivates them to show up for class, they will likely remain apathetic within the classroom and may disrupt class.
Even students who wish to learn the material may have reason to miss class. While medical, family and school-related absences are generally accepted as legitimate reasons to miss class, other reasons may exist.
Students should be considered rational adults able to make their own judgments and set their own priorities about class attendance. Holding grades hostage to bring students to class merely prevents them from learning prioritization and self-motivation skills necessary after college.
Also, the school is paid for providing education as a service. As the students are recipients and customers of this service, they should have considerable flexibility in how they choose to receive it. For students using loans and scholarships, other means-such as minimum GPA caps-encourage attendance.
Finally, syllabuses with negatively enforced attendance policies often mention the statistical correlation between attendance in grades. They use this statistic to justify lowering grades of students who don’t attend. In doing so, they ignore three important facts.
First, correlation does not mean cause. Statistically, there is a correlation between sex and majors. The vast majority of aerospace engineers are (sadly) male, while most elementary education majors are female. Choosing engineering or education as majors does not cause the students to be male or female. Requiring students who do well regardless to attend class because of a statistical correlation is like requiring a sex change operation to major in aerospace.
Second, people should be treated as individuals, not as statistics. As much as possible, class policy should be tailored to individual learning style to provide the best education. Large class sizes and high faculty workloads make this difficult, but harming anyone’s grade because it may help the many or the few attend class is wrong.
Lastly, a negatively enforced attendance policy creates the statistical relationship between attendance and grades. In such classes, lower attendance always means lower grades because the syllabus dictates it, not because the students understand less. Justifying negatively enforced attendance policies that make grades a function of attendance because grades are a function of attendance is ludicrous and an example of circular logic.
Admittedly, some classes do require class participation and therefore attendance. Fortunately, there are positive alternatives to pop quizzes and grade deductions.
For example, replacing a test grade with the final’s score is often contingent upon attendance. While this does not affect those who miss class, it rewards a student for both good attendance and increased understanding as demonstrated on the final.
Grades do not have to be involved as the motivator. A good example is this university’s Pathfinder program. This program works to build freshmen’s self-motivation and self-discipline during the first six weeks of school. Orientation leaders, faculty, parents and even residence hall staff all work together under this program to advise and aid students in attending class.
Students should be treated as adults free to make their own choices about attendance. When problems arise, students should be helped-through programs like Pathfinder-not harmed by the grade deductions of negatively enforced attendance policies.
Nathan Alday is a senior aerospace engineering major. He can be reached at [email protected].