Partisanship and College Grades
Terry H. Schwadron
March 18, 2024
True or False: A bill nearing passage in the Arizona Legislature is about to create a “grade challenge department” that could force professors in public universities to change students’ marks — because of partisan political bias.
Perhaps you think it’s too silly or absurd to contemplate.
Actually, it’s a trick question. If you choose false, the reader across the table might just appeal your failing grade, especially if you might want to argue that among the legislature’s conservative members, partisan politics has nothing to do with a professor suggesting that facts might matter in student arguments.
Senate Bill 1477, which is only five paragraphs long, says that if this new department concluded there was political bias, it could “require any faculty member of a public university to regrade the student’s assignment or reevaluate the student’s overall class grade.” Students could only allege political bias, not racial, religious, or other possible sources of bias. The bill doesn’t define what political bias means. And yes, the bill has already passed the Arizona Senate and the House Education Committee, with a few members refusing to vote at all.
Students who lose before the department would be allowed to appeal to the Arizona Board of Regents — though no such appeal is offered to the faculty member.
If the full House passes the bill, it will go to Democratic governor Katie Hobbs, who could veto it, requiring a two-thirds vote in each house to overturn the vote that may prove impossible.
The Conservative Rub
Here’s the issue as explained by Republican Sen. Anthony Kern, the sponsor, who told fellow senators, “A lot of students that I met with at [Arizona State University] do not feel they can debate issues according to their politics or according to what they believe because they’re afraid their grades are going to be lowered.”
Beyond the suggestion that it’s perfectly reasonable for student arguments to be based on politically acceptable arguments rather than how well they have mastered, say, history, documents, research or lab results, the rest is confusing.
Just whose academic freedom is at risk here — students identifying as conservative or faculty members adjudging performance in class — is never fully defined, nor are the powers or responsibilities of the Regents, the faculty, or university practices.
The most obvious questions include how any board, elected or volunteer, would judge whether grades were based on political bias. And why any appeal would go to Regents, itself an agency of political appointees.
InsideHigherEd.com says that the provocation for the bill may have been a 2023 event on campus featuring conservative speakers Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Dennis Prager who founded the controversial PragerU video website, and book author Robert Kiyosaki. about “Health, Wealth and Happiness.”
Some students and faculty members objected after Kirk and Prager used the event to attack women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people. Ann Atkinson, former executive director of ASU’s T. W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, wrote in a newspaper op-ed column in June she was being fired and her center was being closed for organizing the panel.
The university said it was closing because its donor pulled out. Atkinson showed up with, a new donor who insisted on a center that taught “traditional” American “values of hard work, personal responsibility, civic duty, faith, family and community service,” but the university balked.
Legislators stepped in with a committee on “Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities.” with Kern as co-chair. In November, Republicans said they wanted to cut ASU’s funding for allegedly discouraging conservative speech, citing the 2023 event and another Kern explanation: “These Marxist professors that teach queer theory and anti-American garbage — they get away with this stuff, because nothing is done to them and it’s under the guise and smoke and mirror of free speech.”
Hmm. Sounds political to me.
What Is This About?
One could assume that a class essay that argued that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot reflected tourists to Washington rather than a directed attempt by Donald Trump supporters might raise an academic eyebrow. This bill would seem to make a failing mark for that essay a matter of a vote by political appointees.
Rachel Jones, a Republican member of the education committee, said in a videoed meeting that “conservative students are feeling very silenced on their campuses,” Jones said, according to a video of the committee meeting. She said that “some of these students, to my understanding, are feeling the need to lie about their political beliefs so that they get good grades.”
The Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees Arizona State University, University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University, opposes the grades department bill as circumventing current practices. Under the proposal, the Regents would staff the department with “volunteers.” A spokesman said he was open to changes to the current process, and to hearing student input, adding that all three universities have grade appeal policies start with a conversation between student and instructor.
The obvious questions include how any board, elected or volunteer, would judge whether grades were based on political bias. And why any appeal would go to Regents, itself an agency of political appointees.
The AAUP has posted a recommended policy in which the “department head” or “the instructor’s immediate administrative superior” can change a student’s grade. But that’s only after the professor is given a say before a committee composed of faculty members in the instructor’s department or closely allied fields, and the committee still recommends changing the grade.
At this point we can hope the governor will fail the proposal as less than fully baked.
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