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| An Open Letter to the LaGuardia College Community I gave the following pre-test to twenty-six Calculus I students the first day of my Calculus I class. It is the simplest precalculus test I could conceive of. For those not familiar with precalculus, it is roughly the equivalent of an arithmetic test consisting of questions like 1 + 1 = ? CALCULUS I PRE-TEST 1. Combine into a single logarithm: lnx - lny + lnz 2. Evaluate: 4^(3/2) 3. Add: 1/x + 2/y 4. Solve for x: x^2 + 3x + 2 = 0 5. Find cos 0 6. Solve for x: 3(1 + 2x) = 9 7. One side of a right triangle is 2 and the hypotenuse is 5. Find the other side. 8. f(x) = 3x / (x - 1). Find f(2). 9. Find the slope of the line y = 3x + 2 10. Solve for x and y: 2x + y = 5, x – y = 1 There are ten students in the class who received the grade of either A or B (seven A’s, three B’s) in precalculus and who took precalculus within the past year at LaGuardia. This information has been verified by official LaGuardia records. The average grade received by these ten students on the above pre-test was 49%! The ten grades ranged from 20% to 80%. Only two grades were higher than 60%. Partial credit was given on each question, and photocopies of the graded tests are available in my office. It is quite clear that the great majority of the class has no hope of passing my Calculus I course despite my best efforts and those of the peer tutor assigned to the class. The cause of recurring disasters such as this is, of course, rampant grade inflation in the Mathematics Department (as well as in most other departments at LaGuardia). The primary motivators of grade inflation are the need to cover up instructor incompetence and the fear of countermeasures such as non-retention, non-tenure and non-promotion from a corrupt and vindictive administration against professors who grade honestly. If you do not find these results appalling, I suggest that your sense of academic integrity may be seriously flawed. The College community is aware that widespread grade inflation reduces LaGuardia to a grotesque caricature of a college, yet it is sanctioned by the corrupt administration and condoned by a silent, intimidated faculty. I have called your attention to this problem repeatedly over the years, always to no avail. Although I doubt it, perhaps what will prompt the College to deal with the problem is an occurrence of grade inflation even more extreme than the one I have described. I will supply a more extreme example of grade inflation at the end of the current semester. I have a total of about 100 math students in all my classes, each of whom I will give the grade of A. My prediction of what the College’s response will be: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Very truly yours, Prof. M. Millman Dept. of Mathematics LaGuardia Community College cc: Chancellor Goldstein, CUNY Board of Trustees, all CUNY College Presidents, all CUNY Math Chairpersons, Mayor Bloomberg, NY Times, Post, Daily News, Fox TV News. |
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