Should I lower course rigor to keep admin happy?
School administrators are directing teachers to reduce course rigor and inflate grades, such as awarding a C just for submitting an off-topic essay. This pressure forces educators to choose between maintaining their grading standards and compromising their rubrics to appease administration and increase student submission rates.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Contemplating transitioning out of the school or education entirelyDid this help you?
- 2Debating whether to comply with administrative demands to lower standardsDid this help you?
- 3giving students a passing grade simply for submitting an assignmentDid this help you?
- 4abandoning departmental rubricsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I was told today that I, as well as other AP teachers, need to lower the rigor for the AP course we teach.”source ↗
“I was told to simply keep admin happy and that it’s ok if pass rates are low.”source ↗
“So my question is… do I? Do I lower the rigor how they want me to and make admin happy?”source ↗
“But what really got to me, and why I'm asking for advice, is that she felt I was grading to hard and I was grading the wrong things.”source ↗
“She thinks I should grade more like another teacher does, where just turning in an essay is worth a C, even if it's on a completely wrong topic.”source ↗
“She wants me to take the weekend to think about how I can rework the essays and grading so that more students turn them in and get better grades on them.”source ↗
Where this came up
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