To: Students in History 111 (via BCC)
Re: Midterm Grades

With regard to "midterm grades," I sent some to the QC administration today. All I did was to send the scores you got on your first two quizzes, told them to add them together and divide by 80 for some very rough number. All of you know this already. But as I thought about this mandatory reporting of grades to the home addresses of students, I began to wonder how this might be affected by what is called FERPA "The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974" (commonly called the Buckley Amendment) which was intended to protect the privacy of student records. So I did a little reading, and what I found led me to thinking about whether this policy at QC might conflict with the intent of FERPA. In the end, I did provide the "grades" (as indicated) but I also prefaced the report to Dean David Stineback with a note. I thought you should know about that. It's the first thing that follows. After that, if you care to, you can see how the law is implemented at a dozen other institutions, and after that two parts of the United States Code (Titles 20 and 26) which constitute the law itself. This is not an assignment of any sort and what you do with it is your own business, but you should (in my view) know what your rights might be. I will leave this online as well, listing it as a link on the page I've been using to post your assignments, under the list of links there.

See you next week.
DWC
To: David Stineback, Dean
School of Liberal Arts

Listed here are raw scores for two sections of Hs 111, in the Fall '97 semester. Each of the two quizzes numbered in all fifty m/c questions generated by the question databank provided by Prentice-Hall for use with their very widely used Kagan text for Western Civilization. So far, therefore, one hundred questions have been asked. Column 5 shows the total number each student answered correctly. Since I drop 20% of the questions, the proper way to get a very rough approximation of what the numbers mean is to use the number in column 5 as the numerator and set the denominator as 80 not 100, as in 68/80 (the highest of all scores shown), which would work out to an 85.

As explained in the syllabus distributed on the first day of classes (available online at https://members.tripod.com/~Patmos/qc.html), the quiz scores constitute the basis for 50% of the final grade. Hence what you see here is only 20% of the total. The math is explained in the syllabus in some considerable detail.

The students all know these numbers. I have always been prompt in giving them their graded IBM sheets as soon as I get them back from the computer center ... sometimes a full week after bringing them in to be scanned. That is something I used to do on my own when I had access to a simple machine over in the Nursing Office. The "improvement" of having them done by someone else at Papale headquarters has made a ten minute task into an odyssey. Despite assertions to the contrary (which I will answer elsewhere), my students are always very well aware of their scores and standing. Giving out raw scores like these serves only wildly to distort what final grades might look like because student writing has not yet been factored. Student writing is also being done online, I might add, but plans to have discussions at NiceNet (http://www.nicenet.org) have had to be abandoned entirely because of the Papale firewall which creates chaos out of what is actually a very nice site - except for students (a minority) who have access to the site without said Papale "Fortress" firewall.

Finally, I spent several hours today researching FERPA ("The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974" [commonly called the Buckley Amendment] Public Law 93-380, Section 438. and what I have read causes me strong reservations about this insistence that scores be sent to their home addresses. The scores belong to the students, the students know them already, so what is the purpose? It appears to me to be little more than an effort to skirt the clear language of the statute, and to provide parents with a peek at something they are not supposed to see (without providing written documentation - like tax returns - that their child is a "dependent" as defined under Title 26 by the IRS). Too, the law requires that all of the students, and all of the parents, be provided every single year with detailed explanations of the Title 20 requirements, their rights under the law, and the way to seek remedy should an institution violate the law, either intentionally or accidently. The intent of the law is to protect student privacy, hence if a student does not want this information sent to his home address in the middle of the semester - even if the address is to the student and not the parents - then it should not be sent. At the very least, students should be asked because it is their right to privacy which may be compromised. That the College Senate did pass this mandatory mid-term for level 100 courses seems to me a not adequate justification. There are students on the Senate, I know, but they are a small minority. Perhaps a better way to get their permission would be to ask them, either individually, or through their own student government, whether they want these reports sent home while they (for the most part) are not at home to get their own mail.

Accordingly, I am providing these scores to you "as is" until there is some clarification of this matter in writing which goes beyond the Broker letter citing the College Senate's 1993 action. From that letter I also gain the impression that the policy was adopted to help just "new students" and yet the notion that all students in 100 level courses are "new students" is wildly off the mark. I know that for a fact. If the purpose is to keep them informed, and to facilitate "academic advising" perhaps a better way to do so would be to mail these "grades" directly to the students themselves - not at home where many of them are not present to see them - but right here at the College via email or the College post office.

These are issues worthy of attention, I think, and so I will send a copy of this note (without the grades/scores) to all of my students along with a good deal of documentation about FERPA, links to the United States Code, Titles 20 and 26, and other links showing how it is observed at a dozen other institutions.

Scores followed here ....

All student records are confidential. Here's where you can read about the mandated annual notification of students and parents about the law and about your rights. The twelve listings that follow show how other places deal with coverage for their students. Finally, there is the US Code itself, parts of title 20 and 26 which deal with it in great detail.

  • Alfred University
  • North Carolina State University
  • Oklahoma State University
  • Stanford University
  • Suffolk University
  • Tulane University
  • The University of Arkansas at Little Rock
  • The University of Georgia
  • The University of Maryland
  • The University of Pittsburgh
  • The University of Southern California
  • Virginia Tech

    • § 1232g. Family educational and privacy rights

    § 152. Dependent defined