How Tests Are Graded

Undergraduate students fiercely scribbling in their bluebooks
midquarter may be surprised to learn many of their exams are graded
by graduate students who didn’t even attend the lectures on
which students are being tested.

Readers, students hired to assist professors with grading
undergraduate papers, exams and homework, provide a necessary
service to the university, but many faculty members agree using
readers for this purpose is not ideal.

Some professors think employing graduate students as teaching
assistants is the best way to enhance undergraduate education at a
large research institution. Financial restraints, however, require
academic departments to use readers in many large classes
instead.

“In the best of possible worlds we wouldn’t have
readers, but in the best of worlds we would have small
classes,” said English Professor Lynn Batten, who added
readers are a necessary aide for grading large stacks of papers
each quarter.

In the social sciences and humanities, readers are usually
graduate students conducting research in the relevant field. In
other departments with classes that assign problem sets for
homework, professors also may hire undergraduate students who have
passed the course already, usually with a minimum grade of an A or
a B.

The fundamental difference between readers and TAs is that
readers follow specific grading guidelines the professor sets,
whereas TAs have more freedom and contact with students, said Mark
Pollard, a third-year graduate student, current TA and former
reader in the history department.

Professors find readers through a few different ways: from
colleague recommendations, responses to graduate adviser e-mail
requests, or by using past students.

“The ideal way of having a reader is someone who has taken
your class and knows the way you teach,” Batten said.

Professors said the main reason they use readers is the large
amounts of work they must grade in a short period of time. To grade
all the papers in an upper division seminar with 70 to 90 students
without readers, Batten said he would have to assign papers too
early in the quarter for the students to have a firm grasp of the
material yet.

Each department has different policies on how much a professor
ultimately grades as well. In the English department where readers
are used for classes with 32 students or more, professors grade 30
percent of the papers, while in the history department where
classes are upwards of 100 students, a professor grades the first
40 papers and readers grade the rest.

Though each professor only grades 40 papers, “in
principle” he or she reviews each one when it is entered into
the gradebook, said history department Chairman Teofilo Ruiz, who
is currently teaching a lecture with 398 students. Additionally,
professors often make themselves available to students who want to
go over their paper even if it was graded by a reader.

“Students always come to me if they have some issue with
grading,” Ruiz said.

Lack of funding is another big factor for using readers instead
of TAs, Ruiz said.

“We use TAs in all lower division course and some upper
division courses; we would like to use more, but are limited by
financial constraints,” Ruiz said, though he added that
“the quality of our readers is superb.”

Readers are not required to attend classes, he said, though they
are all provided with the class textbooks and “know the
material fairly well.” It is ultimately up to individual
professors to decide whether a reader attends class, he added.

Pollard said that in his experience he has always been
encouraged to sit in on classes and do the readings, and he enjoys
it.

Less than a year ago, a number of readers in the history
department were upset when they were asked to attend lectures
without pay, said Dave Eason, a representative for the Student
Association of Graduate Employees, the union that represents TAs,
readers and tutors at UCLA.

Readers and professors were unclear on the requirements of the
job ““ including whether readers were paid to attend lectures
““ so the union met with department officials and determined
readers would be paid for the extra time commitment.

Policies on reader class attendance vary from department to
department. Though most don’t require it, funding is
generally available to professors who request that their readers
attend lectures.

About 50 percent of the English department’s readers
attend lectures, said Gail Furham, English Department Manager. Many
who don’t go to lecture have attended the specific class at
some point before, she said.

Graduate students said they become readers for a number of
reasons; benefits include hourly pay, fee remission and valuable
grading experience.

“Hardly anyone does it just for the money because
it’s not a lot,” Pollard said, though he finds the
grading experience valuable in preparing him to be a professor.

Ben Marshke, a fourth-year graduate student and history
department teaching fellow, said he doesn’t normally like to
be a reader, but he’s doing it this quarter as a favor to his
adviser.

“Grading sucks, and you can quote me on that,”
Marshke said, explaining that most professors hire readers because
grading is the most mundane aspect of teaching.

Other readers have a different take on their job.

Piruz Motamedinia, a fourth-year physiological sciences student,
said he likes his two-year job grading for lower division physics
classes very much.

“It’s very convenient. You can do it all at once or
spread it out through the week,” he said.

Even though some professors find readers indispensable, Furham
said others prefer to forgo their opportunity to hire a grading
assistant and do all their own grading or at least comprehensively
review the grading done by readers, assigning the final grade
themselves.

She added, “You lose control as soon as someone else
grades papers for you.”