Ethical Dilemmas in Accommodating Students

Today, we got pretty deep into a very perplexing and complicated dilemma of public schooling teaching: How far and to what degree do you accommodate the needs, behaviors and preferences of your students? 

I left class totally excited about that conversation and the degree of depth we achieved in it.

On the one hand, we can say something like: Rules are rules. No excuses, no exceptions. If the rules, criteria and expectations are clear and transparent from the start, then the facts are what they are. A democratic society depends upon a set of predictable and consistently enforced rules and procedures in order to ensure that fairness reigns and justice prevails.

On the other hand, we can say: Context matter. Not everyone starts the race from the same place. So it’s not so much about where each individual starts as where we collectively end up. Equality of opportunity means nothing absent equality of resources and means. A democratic society depends upon sharing resources in order to ensure that opportunity is truly equalized.

And so it goes . . . 

Here are some dilemmas.

• Do we accommodate a student who is tardy to our class because she overslept, due to being up late studying?
• Do we accommodate a student who requests to re-take an exam because he was feeling ill on the day of the test?
• Do we accommodate a student whose parents request she be excused from watching Schindler’s List because the family believes that the movie overstates the extent and depth of the Holocaust’s brutality?

In the above examples, I’ve tried to point out the range of accommodation requests that come at us as teachers.  I want you to see that they are all, more or less, ethical dilemmas.

I also tried to write dilemmas that would push me, as a teacher, in different directions. I would probably not accommodate the first, I probably would accommodate the second, and I would have a very hard time accommodating the third--though, if pushed, I would probably view it as an exercise in free speech that I would be hesitant to deny.

My point? I am not “all for” or “all against” accommodation. It really does depends.

But what does it depend on?

I have two pieces of advice here. 

First, know what matters to you. Pick your battles. Things like talking while I was talking, putting your head down in class, or coming in tardy--these were all things that felt disrespectful to me and made the classroom chaotic or uninviting for other learners. I had a very low tolerance for any of these behaviors and was pretty inflexible with them all. 

But, when it came to student work, I felt differently. If I was going to take the time to grade it, I wanted it to be good. Since I couldn’t get to all my student’s work in one or two days, what difference would it make if it came in one or two days late? As long as students took initiative to request an extension, I was usually ok giving it.

This leads me to a second piece of advice. Last week I linked to an article about reliability in grading that mentioned the work of  Douglas Reeves. I think last week’s article made some important points. 

Increasingly, it appears, grades will come to be tied to specific standards. This is already how a lot of elementary schools work, and I think middle schools and high schools might head in that direction as well. Doing so gives us a lot more helpful and accurate information than a single grade that represents a mixture of ability, achievement, effort, attendance and compliance.

When I give a student two extra days to do their best work, am I increasingly or decreasing the reliability of grades as indicators of student learning? When I give a zero for not doing their homework, am I increasing or decreasing the reliability of grades as indicators of student learning?

I’ll return to my sunny optimism and assert that each child is gifted to enrich the world in ways we can only begin to imagine. As teachers, I think we want to act in ways that bring out these gifts, rather than stifling them.

Perhaps, when viewed in this light, the question of accommodation becomes not so hard after all . . .