An economics professor was fired by a historically black college after complaining about college officials changing his students’ grades without his knowledge. Kendrick Morales lost his job at Spelman College after the spring semester because he he raised concerns about changing grades.
Morales worked for two years as an assistant professor at Spelman, which was historically a college for black women in Georgia, according to Inside Higher Ed.
“I was planning to teach in the fall, which was like a couple weeks later,” Morales told the news outlet. “They didn’t give me any kind of warning.”
The Academic Freedom Alliance has urged Spelman to reinstate Morales. “Spelman College’s actions in this matter involve important issues at the heart of the academic and scholarly enterprise,” Chair Keith Whittington said. “Members of the faculty must have the freedom to honestly assess the quality of the academic work of students and their mastery of course materials and concepts.”
As The College Fix notes,
One of the college’s complaints was how he graded upper-level students in the fall of 2021, his first semester at Spelman. Morales said he taught two upper-level courses in which several juniors and seniors received failing grades – even after he gave significant curves.
In one class, he gave a 28-point grade bump based on the advice of his department chair, he wrote in a column at The Free Press last month.
“I had assumed that the students would feel relieved—even grateful—to see the improvement in their grades. But I was wrong,” Morales wrote. “When the students saw how low their original grades were—and that the raw average was a failing grade—they turned against me.”
Inside Higher Ed says:
The students all began attending virtually instead of in person, and most stopped doing the coursework. Many complained to the chair about their grades the Friday before the final, he wrote.
He wrote that their scores on the final exams were even worse, and he knew the chair would insist on raising them—so he “pre-emptively” raised them 36 points, making a 57 an A.
After his own scaling up of grades, 44 percent of that class would still fail it, according to the calculations Morales provided Inside Higher Ed.
Later, Morales heard from the dean of undergraduate studies, Desiree Pedescleaux, that she had raised the students’ grades again – and without his knowledge.
Then, on July 26 as he was getting ready to teach fall classes, Morales was informed by college administrators that his contract would not be renewed, effectively firing him.
