Can administration force an educator to change a grade?

by Jim Smith, ISEA associate executive director for advocacy services

As another school year is drawing to a close, there are a couple of issues relating to exams and grades that merit some discussion. Every year the Advocacy Services Department is asked whether or not an educator can be forced by the administration to change a student's grade. Additionally, educators frequently want to know what sort of non-academic factors, if any, should play a role in determining a student's grade.

Even though the leading case concerning the issues of a student's grade change occurred at the university level, the rationale and decision are equally applicable in the K-12 setting. In the university case, the professor had been directed by the administration to change the grade of one of his students. The professor then brought an action in court alleging that such a directive was violative of his First Amendment Right of Academic Freedom. In that case, the court chose to analyze the right of the professor from a communicative perspective, rather than establishing any per se constitutional right of Academic Freedom. The Court stated that the act of assigning a letter grade to a student is a "communication" intended by a professor to send a specific message to a student. Thus, the act of sending that message was viewed by the Court as worthy of some free speech protection under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

By way of explanation, the Court indicated that "the individual professor may not be compelled, by university officials, to change a grade that the professor previously assigned to the student. Because the individual professor's assignment of a letter grade is protected speech, the university officials' action to compel the professor to alter that grade would severely burden a protected activity…even as a non-tenured professor, he retains the right to review each of his students' work and communicate, according to his own professional judgment, academic evaluations, and traditional letter grades…however, he has no constitutional interest in the grades which his students ultimately receive…" In other words, the Court indicated that the university may not interfere with the initial act of the instructor assigning the grade. However, this does not mean that the grade cannot later be changed. Thus, while the Court found a constitutional right to assign a grade to a student, that right extends no further than the assignment of the grade. What the Court found offensive in this case was not the fact that the administration might later change a student's grade, but rather that the administration would attempt to order the professor to change the grade.

Thus, it would appear that while educators cannot be forced by the administration to change a particular student's grade, educators also cannot block the administration from making such a change.
Additionally, while the setting of a school district's policy rests with its Board of Directors, our members would be wise to question anything that might authorize the reduction of a student's grade as discipline for certain kinds of conduct. While there does not appear to be any specific law or regulation encouraging or proscribing the reduction of a student's grade for certain types of ill-advised behavior by a student, the weight of authority clearly encourages school boards and administrators to refrain from utilizing grade reduction as a means of discipline for non-academic behavior by a student. Judicial and administrative authority clearly appears to encourage other types of disciplinary measures be utilized for misbehaviors that do not involve academic achievement. Typical examples of behaviors that should not implicate a grade reduction would be smoking, consumption of alcohol, or aggressive physical behavior. On the other hand, misbehaviors that clearly implicate academic performance, and that would certainly justify a grade reduction, include such things as cheating and plagiarism.

Things get a bit murkier when one attempts to apply "absenteeism" to these general rules. One might look at absenteeism as nothing more than "truancy," a clear misbehavior punishable under state law. As such, it would seem consistent with the above-stated rules that grade reduction should not be used to punish truancy. However, another school of thought is that "absenteeism" is closely associated with academic performance because the failure to be in the classroom could, in and of itself, clearly impact a student's academic performance. It would appear that the "jury is still out" on this issue because absence from class, in and of itself, is not a behavior that can be readily characterized as warranting, or not warranting, reduction of a student's grade.

Educators would be well-advised to determine what sorts of Board policies, if any, exist regarding these issues. Perhaps a meeting with the administration concerning the existence and meaning of such policies would be in order.