A Day Late and A Dollar Short Leaves Students' Academic Grades Short-Changed

If you go to purchase an item and it is no longer on sale, do you find yourself digging deeper in your pocket to pay additional dollars for an item you wanted to purchase when it was on sale? Or do you often turn your pocket inside out (perhaps shaking it a bit), choosing not to purchase the item you thought you could afford when it was on sale? Either way, it feels as though you’ve been short-changed?


Does having to assume a “price increase” decrease the quality of the item you purchased? Does it change the value of the item? What influence does a designer label have on your perceptions and your willingness to throw money around?

What about the flip side of the coin. When we find an item on sale, does the item become a “have to have” indicating it is more valued on sale then when it was regularly priced? How has your perception of the quality of the item changed? Do you often find yourself rationalizing, ‘What a great deal I got!’ or do you often find yourself questioning, ‘What’s wrong with this that it was so cheap?’

Perhaps it was just your lucky day, but this scenario leaves me wondering, ‘What indications does timing have on quality?’ Are students who turn in assignments and get downgraded for late work being short-changed?  What is the definition of quality in education. 

The works of Ken O’Connor, Grant Wiggins, Richard Stiggins, Robert J. Marzano, Carol Ann Tomlinson, and many other widely esteemed educational researchers will tell you students are quite simply being ripped off when they received a diminished or inflated grade based solely on timing. So, if a student turns work in early, do they get extra credit?

I profer this, quality of student work in education equals mastery of content.  Mastery of content facilitates the quality production of knowledge.  Is the quality of student work better because the student turned it in early, or could the quality of the work have been better if the student spent more time on it? When a student turns work in late, is the quality of the work diminished because the student missed a deadline and rushed to get the assignment completed or did the student need extra time to master content in order to produce a quality product?

I’ve had deadlines I met where, in retrospect, I wish I would have missed them, knowing the quality of work would have been better if given an extra day or so. So, who’s really getting short-changed? How are you expending grades to give feedback on quality of work also known as mastery of content? Are your expenditures consistent, or does a “designer label” also known as a family name, influence your perception of what grade a student should receive, regardless of a due date?

Once you have purchased an item, regardless of when, the item is yours to keep. Let’s not short-change our students.