Law Schools

Law School Professor Screws Up Crim Law Grades -- Twice -- In Grading Debacle

Check out the law school's official statement on the matter.

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If you have any friends in higher education, I’m sure that come the end of each semester, your social media feed is filled with complaints and memes about grading. It is a rather grueling aspect of teaching and I don’t want to undermine that as I prepare to skewer this professor, because, wow — this ish is nuts.

Apparently at the John Marshall Law School one professor is having a tough time with her grades from last semester. Professor Kim Chanbonpin taught criminal law in the Spring semester, but used an incorrect formula while calculating the students’ final grade. That’s bad, but last Friday, the Vice Dean emailed students in that section to let them know their final grades were, at last, ready.

Except they weren’t.

This week, the unlucky students got an email from Dean Darby Dickerson letting them know that, once again, Professor Chanbonpin had incorrectly calculated the grades and those “final grades” from last week were wrong. Again… yikes. The Dean even hired an outside psychometrician to assist the professor in this apparently exceedingly difficult calculation.

The school is at least stepping up on the issue, offering appropriate words of apology and honoring students’ scholarships for this semester that they may have lost based on the revised grade:

I am incredibly sorry for this matter, as I can only imagine the stress this may be causing some of you. I also understand that other matters, such as class rank, probation/mandate status, scholarship retention, honors program eligibility, and more rides on accurate grade calculation. On behalf of the Law School, I apologize.

Perhaps the appropriate spin on this is teachers screw up, just like us, but I imagine that’s cold comfort to students who’ve been waiting for five months to see how they did in crim law.

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UPDATE: The law school provided the following statement to Above the Law:

The law school became aware of grading calculation errors in Professor Chanbonpin’s class in August 2018. As outlined in the law school’s policies, the Vice Dean interviewed affected students and the professor to establish accuracy of the complaints and that the grades in question were not the result of adjustment due to the law school’s mandatory curve. Finding the appeals to be meritorious, the law school engaged an outside psychometrician in September to investigate the calculations with the professor. Though no irregularities were found in student data, an error was found in one of three calculations affecting student final grades. The findings were presented to the law school’s Faculty Executive Committee for evaluation and recommended solutions, recognizing the impact to student scholarships, class rankings, academic probation, honors program eligibility, and student dismissals. Once final grades had been recalculated, the Vice Dean notified students on Friday, October 12, and after doing so, the Vice Dean was notified again that recalculation had resulted in further errors not first caught by the outside consultant. Noting the second error and further impact on students, the Dean personally notified students and apologized for the ongoing frustrations. The law school is working expeditiously to review all data and calculations to fully reflect and honor the achievements of all students who have been affected by this frustrating event. The law school is looking to permanently resolve these issues in the next few days.

(You can read the full email from the Dean on the next page.)

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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