Students Fail — and Professor Loses Job

He refused to say that blacks were qualified when they were not

Who is to blame when students fail? If many students fail — a majority even — does that demonstrate faculty incompetence, or could it point to a problem with standards? These are the questions at the center of a dispute that cost Steven D. Aird his job teaching biology at Norfolk State University. Today is his last day of work, but on his way out, he has started to tell his story — one that he suggests points to large educational problems at the university and in society. The university isn’t talking publicly about his case, but because Aird has released numerous documents prepared by the university about his performance — including the key negative tenure decisions by administrators — it is clear that he was denied tenure for one reason: failing too many students. The university documents portray Aird as unwilling to compromise to pass more students.

A subtext of the discussion is that Norfolk State is a historically black university with a mission that includes educating many students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The university suggests that Aird — who is white — has failed to embrace the mission of educating those who aren’t well prepared. But Aird — who had backing from his department and has some very loyal students as well — maintains that the university is hurting the very students it says it wants to help. Aird believes most of his students could succeed, but have no incentive to work as hard as they need to when the administration makes clear they can pass regardless.

“Show me how lowering the bar has ever helped anyone,” Aird said in an interview. Continuing the metaphor, he said that officials at Norfolk State have the attitude of “a track coach who tells the team ‘I really want to win this season but I really like you guys, so you can decide whether to come to practice and when.’ ” Such a team wouldn’t win, Aird said, and a university based on such a principle would not be helping its students.

Sharon R. Hoggard, a spokeswoman for Norfolk State, said that she could not comment at all on Aird’s case. But she did say this, generally, on the issues raised by Aird: “Something is wrong when you cannot impart your knowledge onto students. We are a university of opportunity, so we take students who are underprepared, but we have a history of whipping them into shape. That’s our niche.”

The question raised by Aird and his defenders is whether Norfolk State is succeeding and whether policies about who passes and who fails have an impact. According to U.S. Education Department data, only 12 percent of Norfolk State students graduate in four years, and only 30 percent graduate in six years.

Aird points to a Catch-22 that he said hinders professors’ ability to help students. Because so many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and never received a good high school education, they are already behind, he said, and attendance is essential. Norfolk State would appear to endorse this point of view, and official university policy states that a student who doesn’t attend at least 80 percent of class sessions may be failed. The problem, Aird said, is that very few Norfolk State students meet even that standard. In the classes for which he was criticized by the dean for his grading — classes in which he awarded D’s or F’s to about 90 percent of students — Aird has attendance records indicating that the average student attended class only 66 percent of the time. Based on such a figure, he said, “the expected mean grade would have been an F,” and yet he was denied tenure for giving such grades.

Other professors at Norfolk State, generally requesting anonymity, confirmed that following the 80 percent attendance rule would result frequently in failing a substantial share — in many cases a majority — of their students. Professors said attendance rates are considerably lower than at many institutions — although most institutions serve students with better preparation.

One reason that this does not happen (outside Aird’s classes) is that many professors at Norfolk State say that there is a clear expectation from administrators — in particular from Dean Sandra J. DeLoatch, the dean whose recommendation turned the tide against Aird’s tenure bid — that 70 percent of students should pass. Aird said that figure was repeatedly made clear to him and he resisted it. Others back his claim privately. For the record, Joseph C. Hall, a chemistry professor at president of the Faculty Senate, said that DeLoatch “encouraged” professors to pass at least 70 percent of students in each course, regardless of performance. Hall said that there is never a direct order given, but that one isn’t really needed. “When you are in a meeting and an administrator says our goal is to try to get above 70 percent, then that indirectly says that’s what you are going to try to do,” he said. (Hoggard, the university spokeswoman, said that it was untrue that there was any quota for passing students.)

Hall agreed that both attendance and preparation are problems for many students at Norfolk State. He said that he generally fails between 20 and 35 percent of students, and has not been criticized by his dean. But Hall has tenure and the highest failure rate he can remember in one of his classes was 45 percent.

Dean DeLoatch’s report on Aird’s tenure bid may be the best source of information on how the administration views the pass rate issue. The report from the dean said that Aird met the standards for tenure in service and research, and noted that he took teaching seriously, using his own student evaluations on top of the university’s. The detailed evaluations Aird does for his courses, turned over in summary form for this article, suggest a professor who is seen as a tough grader (too tough by some), but who wins fairly universal praise for his excitement about science, for being willing to meet students after class to help them, and providing extra help.

DeLoatch’s review finds similarly. Of Aird, she wrote, based on student reviews: “He is respectful and fair to students, adhered to the syllabus, demonstrated that he found the material interesting, was available to students outside of class, etc.” What she faulted him for, entirely, was failing students. The review listed various courses, with remarks such as: “At the end of Spring 2004, 22 students remained in Dr. Aird’s CHM 100 class. One student earned a grade of ‘B’ and all others, approximately 95 percent, earned grades between ‘D’ and ‘F.’” Or: “At the end of Fall 2005, 38 students remained in Dr. Aird’s BIO 100 class. Four students earned a grade of ‘C-’ or better and 34, approximately 89 percent, received D’s and F’s.”

These class records resulted in the reason cited for tenure denial: “the core problem of the overwhelming failure of the vast majority of the students he teaches, especially since the students who enroll in the classes of Dr. Aird’s supporters achieve a greater level of success than Dr. Aird’s students.”

DeLoatch also rejected the relevance of 16 letters in Aird’s portfolio from students who praised him as a teacher. The students, some of whom are now in medical or graduate school or who have gone on to win research awards, talked about his extra efforts on their behalf, how he had been a mentor, and so forth. DeLoatch named each student in the review, and noted their high grade point averages and various successes. Some of the students writing on his behalf received grades as low as C, although others received higher grades.

But although DeLoatch held Aird responsible for his failures, she wrote that he did not deserve any credit for his success stories and these students, by virtue of their strong academic performance, shouldn’t influence the tenure decision. “With the exception of one of these students, it appears that all have either excelled or are presently performing well at NSU. Given their records, it is likely that that would be the case no matter who their advisors or teachers were.”

Aird stressed that he does not believe Norfolk State should try to become an elite college. He said he believes that only about 20 percent of the students who enroll truly can’t do the work. He believes another 20 percent are ready from the start. Of the middle 60 percent, he said that when the university tells them that substandard work and frequent class skipping are OK, these students are doomed to fail his courses (and not to learn what they need from other professors). “I think most of the students have the intellectual capacity to succeed, but they have been so poorly trained, and given all the wrong messages by the university,” he said.

The problem at Norfolk State, he said, isn’t his low grades, but the way the university lowers expectations. He noted that in the dean’s negative review of his tenure bid, nowhere did she cite specific students who should have received higher grades, or subject matter that shouldn’t have been in his courses or on his tests. The emphasis is simply on passing students, he said.......

Jonathan Knight, who handles academic freedom issues for the American Association of University Professors, said that he has no problem per se with administrators asking questions about such a high failure rate. “It is not improper for an administration to be concerned about it,” he said. But he cautioned against automatic assumptions. He said the questions to be asked are why so many students are failing, what is being done to help students succeed, what is taking place in the classroom, and so forth. While Knight did not see academic freedom issues related to asking such questions, he said he would be concerned about orders to pass certain percentages of students. “Professors obviously should have the right to determine what grades the students should have,” he said.

Aird — who is applying for teaching jobs — acted on such a belief and stuck to it. While administrators have noted that they urged him to change his ways, his defenders note that he was always clear with his students about his belief in high standards. In a letter he sent to students at the beginning of last January’s semester, he wrote: “You can only develop skills and self-confidence when your professors maintain appropriately rigorous standards in the classroom and insist that you attain appropriate competencies. You cannot genuinely succeed if your professors pander to you. You will simply fail at the next stage in life, where the cost of failure is much greater.” Today, Steve Aird is packing up his office.

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CU seeks right-wing prof

How liberal is the University of Colorado at Boulder? The campus hot-dog stand sells tofu wieners. A recent pro-marijuana rally drew a crowd of 10,000, roughly a third the size of the student body. And according to one professor's analysis of voter registration, the 800-strong faculty includes just 32 Republicans.

Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson surveys this landscape with unease. A college that champions diversity, he believes, must think beyond courses in gay literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. "We should also talk about intellectual diversity," he says. So over the next year, Mr. Peterson plans to raise $9 million to create an endowed chair for what is thought to be the nation's first Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy.

Mr. Peterson's quest has been greeted with protests from some faculty and students, who say the move is too - well, radical. "Why set aside money specifically for a conservative?" asks Curtis Bell, a teaching assistant in political science. "I'd rather see a quality academic than someone paid to have a particular perspective."

Even some conservatives who have long pushed for balance in academia voice qualms. Among them is David Horowitz, a conservative agitator whose book "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" includes two Boulder faculty members: an associate professor of ethnic studies who writes about the intersection of Chicano and lesbian issues, and a philosophy professor focused on feminist politics and "global gender justice."

While he approves of efforts to bolster a conservative presence on campus, Mr. Horowitz fears that setting up a token right-winger as The Conservative at Boulder will brand the person as a curiosity, like "an animal in the zoo." We "fully expect this person to be integrated into the fabric of life on campus," replies Todd Gleeson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Boulder is far from the only campus to recognize a leftward tilt to the ivory tower. National surveys have repeatedly shown that liberals dominate faculties at most four-year colleges. And conservative activists have grown more aggressive in demanding balance. A group called the Leadership Institute now sends field workers to scores of campuses each fall to train right-wing students to speak up. College administrators are beginning to respond.

Academics studying the trend cite Georgetown University's recent hiring of former Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet. And Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., kicked off a conservative lecture series with a talk by the now-deceased William F. Buckley Jr.

At Boulder, long known for its lefty politics, the notion of a chair in conservative thought had kicked around campus for a decade. Then, in 2005, the college was thrust into a polarizing debate over an essay by ethnic-studies professor Ward Churchill, who argued that the bankers killed in the Twin Towers on Sept. 11 were legitimate military targets because they were "little Eichmanns" who "formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire."

Fox News television host Bill O'Reilly seized on those comments, and Mr. Churchill swiftly became a national symbol of political extremists running amok on campuses. The university opened an investigation into his scholarship, and Mr. Churchill was fired last summer for what the school described as plagiarism and academic fraud that was unrelated to the Eichmann essay. Mr. Churchill didn't respond to a request seeking comment. Within days, the university launched an effort to woo back donors infuriated by the affair.

Several months later, fund raising began for the chair in conservative thought. Administrators say the move had nothing to do with Mr. Churchill, but was part of an ongoing effort to address weaknesses in the curriculum - for instance, by adding language classes in Farsi and Indonesian. "That's what a good university does - look for an area where they don't have depth or diversity and start investing," Mr. Gleeson says.

Mr. Peterson - a Republican who took over as chancellor two years ago - says he would like to bring a new luminary to campus every year or two to fill the chair, for an annual salary of about $200,000. No candidates have been approached, but faculty and administrators have floated big names like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, columnist George Will and Philip Zelikow, who chaired the 9/11 Commission. "Like Margaret Mead among the Samoans, they're planning to study conservatives. That's hilarious," says Mr. Will, dryly adding that "I don't think it would be a good fit." Ms. Rice didn't respond to a request seeking comment, and Mr. Zelikow declined to comment.

On campus, the chancellor's fund-raising efforts set off a prickly debate. Faculty members demanded to know whether donors would control the appointment. (They won't.) They asked for a chance to vote on the endowment. (They didn't get it.) "We don't ask the faculty if it's OK if we create a chair in thermodynamics," Mr. Peterson says - so why give them veto power over conservative thought? After all, he says, "It's an intellectual pursuit."

Ken Bickers, who chairs the political science department, says that while he supports the concept of intellectual diversity, he has reservations about the university's strategy. He worries students will get the impression that the "conservative thought" professor speaks for all conservatives. And he resents the implication that ordinary professors don't air conservative ideas in class. Registered as unaffiliated with any party, Mr. Bickers says he makes a point of discussing all perspectives, but because he doesn't stick a political label on each lecture, students "don't realize, 'Oooh, that was conservative.'"

Mr. Peterson agrees that most professors try to be fair. He adds, "I don't know that it always happens." Indeed, on the lush campus, lined with flowering trees, professors tack articles slamming the Bush administration outside their offices. A humor piece posted in the philosophy department mocks the Bible. Job boards feature internships with left-wing groups and Democratic candidates.

Jack Roldan, vice chair of the College Republicans, has felt the lopsided politics keenly during his four years studying international affairs. He longed for a conservative mentor, and says he graduated last week with many questions left unanswered: When is military intervention necessary? Why does the GOP focus so much on economic policy? And what's up with the neo-cons? "There's a lot more about what I'm about that I'd like to know," Mr. Roldan says.

Other students don't have much sympathy. They love Boulder precisely because of its liberal swagger. Sophomore Marissa Malouff sees the campus as a sort of re-education camp. Sheltered rich kids from out-of-state might come for the snowboarding, but while they're here they get dunked in a simmering pot of left-wing idealism. And that, in her view, is how it should be. "They need to learn about social problems and poverty and the type of things liberal professors are likely to talk about," says Ms. Malouff, a Democrat.

Chancellor Peterson's response: Not to worry. He's not trying to change the essential nature of CU-Boulder. In fact, Mr. Peterson said it's not imperative that the new professor of conservative thought be an actual conservative. "We hire lots of scholars of the French language," he says, "and they aren't necessarily French."

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