Lfr Letter

May, 2007 Dean Anderson, Dean Edwards and Professor Burton: We are taking the LFR exam administered by Professor Angela Burton under protest of her teaching, testing, and grading processes. In addition, we contest the grade appeal process at CUNY Law School due to the glaring inadequacies in challenging legitimate discrepancies in grading. Our inability to challenge arbitrary grades has severe consequences, especially in light of the current academic standing policy. Our concerns regarding Professor Burton’s teaching methods in this class include numerous changes in the course content and syllabus over the semester, late changes in grade percentage allocation, and the fact that a majority of the doctrine did not come from her lectures but were distributed through incomprehensible and at times inaccurate handouts on TWEN. It is disconcerting that such low grades were received on a take home midterm, for which students had all of the information. The day before our first in-class final, and 4 days before the LFR final, scores with no indication of a curve were posted, and we learned that 47% of individual grades were below 70 percent. There was extreme confusion surrounding the administration of the exam. Numerous modifications were sent out after the test was distributed, a number of which were sent out close to the deadline, penalizing students who had completed the exam ahead of time. Additionally, the class sentiment is that there were unclear expectations concerning both the content and the format of the test. For example, despite an e-mail stating the format expected was Rule, Application, Conclusion, exams were graded against a CRRAC formula. This is one of several examples demonstrating a conflict between exam instructions and grading rubric. After looking over numerous graded midterms it appears as though some errors were accounted for more than once and certain points simply overlooked. We are aware that these are not the first concerns students have raised in relation to this professor regarding questionable pedagogy and teaching practices. We hereby demand a meeting with the three of you to discuss these inconsistencies and concerns. We expect accountability from administration and faculty for excellence in the classroom, clear expectations, and consistent grading. We call for the recognition of our concern with the quality of our education at this school and our power as both students and consumers. We want to be proud of the institution as a public interest law school that welcomes students committed to pursuing a career in family law. We are in a position where challenging individual grades will prove fruitless. We therefore respectfully request information on how to collectively appeal the grades allocated in this class. Sincerely, Professor Burton’s 2007 LFR class (signatures to be collected)