DATE: Sunday, July 6, 1997                  TAG: 9707030004

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   47 lines

NEW ODU GRADE POLICY AN INCENTIVE TO LEARN

This fall, the Old Dominion University administration will implement a more forgiving grade policy intended to encourage low-achieving students to try courses again and perhaps still again.

Currently, an ODU student may repeatedly retake a course that he or she has flunked, but all grades in the course - say an F, another F and finally a B - count toward the student's grade-point average.

Under an administration policy to take effect this fall, only the last grade a student obtains in a course will count towards the student's grade average, though earlier grades in the course still will appear on the student's transcript.

Under the new policy, a course can be retaken to eliminate a previous grade from grade-point calculations if that grade was a C-minus or worse.

``In the past,'' said ODU Provost Jo Ann Gora, ``grading was all about penalizing students for nonperformance, which is fine; but what we ought to be doing is encouraging students to learn.''

Obviously the new grading policy would make raising an anemic grade-point average easier, and thus might encourage a student to make the effort. Many ODU students surely have grade averages that need raising. Last year, 39 percent of ODU freshmen were placed on academic probation for failing to keep a C average.

Last April, the Faculty Senate endorsed a similar but more restrictive grading policy. It would have forgiven bad grades on only three courses, and each of those could be retaken only once. If more courses were retaken, the initial bad grades still would apply to the grade-point average.

Staff writer Philip Walzer wrote of the new policy, ``Some professors said it would dilute standards and send students a message that it's OK to fail.''

But Gora noted that a student repeating a course still has to pay money, spend time in class and study. The student, she said, must learn the material to get a better grade. The new grade policy, she argued, better reflects what the student has learned than the old one did. She's right.

Repeat-chance grades will not count toward making honors or deans' lists. Many students still will flunk out.

But because many students need second chances, and in some courses perhaps even third chances, the new policy makes sense. It doesn't really dumb down higher education, since the material still must be learned.

The state is better served when a student keeps trying than when one gives up.

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