Managing Late Work

There are three major camps about late work and the grades that should be assigned to it.  

•  No credit.  Teachers who fall in this category can have a different reasons.  Some of them believe that if a student doesn't give an assignment the attention it deserves when assigned, then it isn't worth doing.  Sometimes this is true, given the actual assignment, but if there isn't merit in doing most of your assignments late, I would question their merit overall.  There is also a percentage of teachers who won't accept late work due to respect.  These teachers see late work as an insult to their course (or even themselves personally).  Basically, if the student isn't respectfully enough to do the work when asked, then the teachers won't accept it.  Other teachers give no credit for late work purely as a motivator.  These teachers, often veterans tired of dealing with late work, have discovered that if they give no credit for late work, a much higher percentage of kids do the work on time.  Students make this work a priority because it can't be made up later.  Its a double edged sword, though.  Those kids who don't get the assignments done, now have no motivation to go back and do them, thus depriving them of practice and both of you of feedback opportunities. 
• Slide scale.  In my experience, most teachers fall into this category.  The later the assignment, the less credit it gets until it gets half or no credit.  I used this grading method for four years.  It did motivate students to do the late work, but not to do it well.  Why bust your butt if the highest you can expect is not what your effort deserves?  Usually students with missing work are frequent offenders, so it was not unusual to have one student turn in five assignments the last week of the quarter.  Mathematically, turning all the zeroes into even 50's can make a huge impact on a student's quarter grade, but are students fulfilling the purposes of those assignments?  Usually, no.  The practice is now out of context, and the big assessments can not guide instruction that has already occurred!  Not to mention, all those late assignments at the end of the quarter make an already busy time more chaotic for teachers.  If you do use this method, make sure it is very clear: One day late is not the same as one class late if you have a rotating schedule. 
• Full credit.  For teachers who give full credit for late work, the primary concern is if students are meeting the curriculum goals, not if they are doing so on a specific time table.  If the goal of a unit is to learn X, Y, and Z, then does when the student proves he has learned X, Y, and Z really matter?  Often teachers with this belief also believe in giving students many opportunities to meet a goal, such as offering retakes on tests. 

By the end of my fifth year of teaching, I moved from believing in a slide scale of credit to giving full credit.  What changed my mind was standards based grading.  When I saw that a student had met goals, it was hard to then slash the grade for lateness.  If my grade was meant to represent what the student had learned, then reducing it for lateness would be a false representation.  So, I started to give assignments their full credit.  But, this didn't seem fully fair.  Allowing late work made my job more difficult and isn't a realistic representation of a real world work place or of most higher education courses.  Part of me still believed that the student who did work on the correct time schedule deserved a higher grade than the one who turned in everything late.  I know this is my own schooling nagging me, as well as me picturing my students' fairness detectors alarming, but I'm sticking with it anyway, at least for now.  The way I work it out is that on my quarter grade rubric, I have a standard which is basically class citizenship.  It covers items like attendance and staying on task.  It is here that I included turning work in on time.  I designed it so that meeting the standard was having a couple assignments a little late.  This worked well with the grading system used at my school; we did not have a standards based report card or effort / conduct grades. 

So, if you are going to accept that late work, how to you manage it all? 

First of all, you have to have a system so that you don't misplace any assignments.  Ever.  By my third year of teaching, I felt confident telling students that I don't lose work.  If I didn't have it, then there was another reason than "the teacher lost it."  Having this reputation made my life easier.  If you ask students, a huge complaint they have about teachers is when a teacher loses their work, blames them for not doing it, and then makes them redo it.  Here is how I only misplaced one assignment in five years. 

• When you collect work, have a designated place you put it.  For me, that was color coded folders for each class.  I liked these because they were portable and the groupings matched my gradebook.  
• If an item comes in after you have handed the on-times items back, put it in a late work folder, or in a folder with your next assignment to correct.  
• File all papers immediately!  Don't let them sit around on your desk!  The wind could blow it on the floor and then it could wind up in the trash.  It could be accidentally picked up with other papers on your desk.  Stop what you are doing and put it where it belongs.  If you really can't do that, paperclip it inside your gradebook.  
• Mark in your gradebook who has and hasn't turned in a big assignemnt.  
• Write the date at the top of assignments when turned in.  For big groups of assignments, I'll use a date stamper and do a whole stack at once.  When the late ones trickle in, I'll jot the date on the top before filing it. 

Some of you might be thinking this advise is becoming dated.  The year I left teaching, all the students at my school recieved laptops.  Suddenly, turning everything in on paper is a lot less necessary.  I currently don't have much advise for dealing with late work electronically.  What did I used to do?  Print it out and then treat is as usual.   Most assignments students emailed me were essays, and I needed to print them to make specific comments on the writing.  But, small assignments where such feedback is not necessary, I would recommend simply replying with your comments.  To keep the message from getting lost in your email inbox I have two suggests: Mark the message unread and make specific email notation in your gradebook reminding you to look for it again.  Oh, and by the way, the one assignment I lost was an electronic one.  When I printed it, it got lost in a stack of parent emails.  I found it a couple of months later. 

If you want the late work to come in, make it easier for the kids to get it to you.  I allowed students to turn in work at the main office for the secretary to put in my mail box.  I also put a folder on my door so that students could place work in there and not interrupt my class. 

For a couple years, I used what I called Homework Club to required students to stay after to make up work.  It works well if you assign a lot of homework that builds upon itself, but it is very time consuming.  I'll be posting about just Homework Club soon.  When I do, I'll add a link directly to that post.  For now, the basic premise is that you set a couple afternoons a week to hold Homework Club.  When an assignment is missing, the student has until the next Homework Club to turn it in, or he is required to stay for Homework Club to complete the assignment.  If the student doesn't show up, you follow up with the office for a formal detention and with the parents.