How Do You Handle Late Papers?

I have used an idea I read on this listserv [the NCTE-talk online discussion group] this year with success. I gave each student two late tickets. They may staple a late ticket to any work and turn it in as late as they want for full credit. A handful of kids used their late tickets on the first two assignments. The rest are hoarding them, saving them for a rainy day. This system works for me -- they can turn in late assignments with no questions asked, and I don't hear excuses.

Kelly Gleason

I agree with Kelly that giving kids a couple of "late tickets" is a great idea. By giving only a limited number of late tickets, we are not encouraging habitual procrastination but merely acknowledging that life is unpredictable.

I also make a distinction with my students between "due dates" and "deadlines." Things turned in after the "due date" suffer a late-penalty (unless they use a ticket). However, nothing can be turned in after a "deadline." The deadline defines the cutoff for late work.

I know our personal philosophies about how to teach kids responsibility vary with our personalities and teaching styles. I am a firm believer, however, in being reasonable while at the same time trying to teach good work habits.

If a home printer breaks down at a critical moment, I don't want a student to have to go to Kinko's in the middle of the night, and then sleep through my class the next day. It's not that big a deal if a student turns the assignment in a day or two late as long as this is not habitual behavior.

Lind Williams

I established that no late paper could receive a grade higher than a C, and, after several, I stopped talking about it. I let the system provide the cutoff. Thus, zeros were reserved for those who did not submit a paper within the quarter. This proved to be a very effective strategy.

Ben Welsh

When students hand me late papers, as they are standing there, I write LATE on the top of it, and the date received. Then when I grade it, I write on it the grade it would have received had it been on time. I circle that grade with a diagonal line through it (international NO symbol) and then put the lowered-because-late grade beside it, with no other comment. This way the students see what they have done to themselves by turning the paper in late.

Lisa Talcott

I do accept late work, but with a hefty penalty. Our department policy is 10 points as Freshlings and Sophs, 20 points Junior, 30 points Senior, on major grades with decided due dates. Students learn early on that if they come to me quietly, with a valid reason for lateness, that I sometimes hedge on the due date. But I have to admit that I'm "big" on making them learn to manage their time and their stress.

Edna Earney

I'm not the world's fastest paper-returner, and I often get behinder than it's decent to be. Were you to ask me for reasons, I could give you pretty good ones. That doesn't change the fact that the turnaround on kids' papers is too slow.

Now, were I able to keep up and meet "deadlines" well, I'd feel justified in demanding the same of my kids. But, circumstances being as they are, I don't feel like I can do that. Consequently, I don't have rigid standards about meeting deadlines unless kids have abused the work time I've given them in class. I document that well, so there's very little argument when I do penalize their lateness.

Dorothy Sprenkel

Dorothy, thank you for reminding me that I'm not the only one who gets "behinder-than-it's-decent-to-be" with returning papers. I always thought I'd get better at this, but with over 20 years in the classroom, I'm finding that I still fall behind. Life continues to get more complicated. Something that helps me keep track of documenting student lateness is a date-stamper which I keep on my desk. It's easy to grab it and date stamp things as they come in, and I do it right in front of them so we're both witnesses to the date it arrived.

Jan Bowman

I worried about losing students' late assignments until I started using my late folder. I have a large yellow plastic envelope-style folder. Inside I keep a neon pink sheet called Late Assignments. When someone has work to turn it, I take out the folder and they sign in the date, their name, the assignment, and the original due date. I stamp the date at the top and put the assignment in the envelope. Since I started doing this, I've never had a student say, "But I turned that assignment in. Did you lose it?"

Mary-Sue Gardetto

My students and I together set the paper due dates to allow everyone a feeling of ownership. If the in-class checkpoints of the process indicate confusion, then we revise the schedule. On the final due date, the students hand me their papers personally and sign a paper indicating that they have turned them in. (I don't do this sign-in procedure for anything but the research paper.)

Cindy Adams

I just finished reading an article in March, 1999 Teacher Magazine titled "The Dog Ate My . . ." in the comment section by Coleen Armstrong. She explains how in her senior English classes she has eliminated due dates for papers. Her premise is that when a "teacher gets rid of deadlines, students run out of excuses and do their work" -- a provocative "solution" perhaps for this problem. I liked the shift away from teacher to the student as responsible worker.

Dianne Klein

I have to tell you, Diane, that if you use that approach, you will probably be seeing papers in June that you assigned in January. Eight years ago (and three principals), we bought into the Mastery Learning and OBE philosophies that all children can learn and that there are no real deadlines. Students receive many chances to rewrite/retest, and until they satisfactorily completed the assigned item/test, they would have a No Credit.

This resulted in some of the hardest work I have ever done. To make a long story short, teachers were up until midnight every night, and on weekends; one whole day was often spent working on those papers. No matter what we did, we still had many No Credits.

Then . . . the killer. This policy allowed the student to repeat the course the next semester to replace that NC. Follow this to its logical conclusion and you had burnt-out teachers and many students who dreaded writing. You also had seniors who were repeating freshman English. We valiantly tried this approach because we were mandated to do so, but we sure killed a lot of kids on writing. Things have changed now that we are all older and wiser. A deadline is important not only for your students but for you as well.

Marcialyn Carter

Two problems with eliminating due dates and consequences for missing them are:

1. Students NEED due dates or even the best fall behind. Last year one class convinced me to consider them mature enough to do their notes and writing of their final research papers without due dates. Not only did this plan fail (many students did not produce the kind of work they could have if they had been forced to stick to a schedule), in their final evaluations the students themselves all wrote that they needed due dates, even the driven self-starters. I need due dates as well, and young people need them even more.

2. More importantly, if one has planned a course that builds, that assumes that one skill is mastered before moving on to the next, then allowing kids to turn in late work slows the progress of the entire class. When we do this, we promote the idea that learning is "turning in assignments." Students never get the impression that we are moving toward a goal. I think enforcing due dates is the much kinder and more helpful approach to teaching, and the one students most appreciate in the end.

Kathy Henderson

Not only is enforcing due dates a kinder and more helpful approach, but to allow the idea that this is NOT good training for the real world is to promote a lie to students. There are a million-and-one ways that adults must learn to adhere to due dates in their lives. If school is a training ground for the real world, then we do students a great disservice by not expecting them to try to function according to reasonable due dates.

Peggy Smith

The problem with deadlines for school assignments as training for the real world is that school assignments are arbitrary, dictated at best by an arbitrary semester schedule. Deadlines in the real world are dictated by need for action. Miss deadlines and something important will be messed up: a grant lost, a sale lost, a project lost. Others will not be able to do their work. There are real consequences that are intimately woven into the work itself, the mission of the work.

Miss a deadline in school and the only thing at stake may be a grade, and if you don't care about that, there's nothing left to compel compliance. Even if you do care about grades, that's a poor reason to meet a deadline since it's detached from the purpose of the task. Hard and fast arbitrary deadlines are a weird way to teach kids responsibility, from my perspective.

Eric Crump

Late papers don't exist in my classroom. Why? I don't have drop-dead deadlines. And, no, I don't think I'm nurturing irresponsibility. And, no, I don't think I'm creating lazy students. Heck, some of them were lazy when they got to me, and drop-dead deadlines aren't going to cure them.

My goal is to get my students more literate than when they came into my room. The work we do in my class is all designed to achieve that very broad goal. If I let kids off the hook by not accepting late papers, then I'd be shooting my goal in its metaphorical foot. If I gave students reduced credit, then I would be reinforcing a message that they may not be able to become more literate. In other words, I'd be giving them another excuse. I will accept late papers and I will give students full credit. It's the learning that is important.

Nancy G. Patterson

The main reason that I persist in giving due dates is to help kids manage their own workloads. My own human tendency is to procrastinate and let work pile up. I know that lots of kids are this way as well. By posting due dates, it helps kids spread out their work in a reasonable fashion.

However, I don't want to ever let a kid off the hook from doing the work and being rewarded for their effort, so the passing of a due date never closes off the possibility of turning in the work. I allow a certain number of penalty-free late assignments per term. Beyond that, they still get full credit for their late work, but for each late assignment beyond the penalty-free ones they lose "preparation points" from a separate grade for the term.

This way the grade I give for preparation and time-management is a completely separate issue unrelated to their academic score on the assignment. At the end of the term, a kid may have A's for all of their writing, but an F for their preparation grade if everything was turned in late. The preparation grade is just one score in the book added together to the other scores, roughly equivalent to one major assignment, but this score would represent less than 10% of the total grade for the term.

Accepting late work does mean an uneven workload and a few heavy nights at the end of the term, but it's worth it to me. Punctuality may be important, but it's not as important as literacy.

Lind Williams

I must say (as a secondary ed student) I find this late paper debate rather interesting. Although I have read many responses that included concerns for student accountability and the development of responsibility as well as fairness to the teacher who has to read all of the papers, I have seen no mention of fairness to the students who work hard to turn in the assignments on time.

As a student who takes deadlines seriously, I have watched with dismay as fellow students turned in papers days and weeks late, only to receive the same grade as students (like myself!) who were responsible. What kind of message does such leniency send to the students who made sacrifices in order to buckle down and get the assignment done as requested?

Caroline Sobczak

I tell my students that papers are due when they are due. If they come in on time, they will receive full credit. That full credit is just that: credit for turning it in on time. Each day after that loses points -- 10, 5, 3, depending on the value of the assignment. At 50% (which is an F) I no longer subtract points. In other words, they can turn it in until the end of the semester and they will still get 50% credit -- if it is done correctly and appropriately -- loose terms I have for rejecting work that is scribbled on a piece of paper before class.

I tell them that they can turn the assignment in as late as they want because I want them to do the work. I work exclusively in points with no grades and don't put a letter grade on writing until the end of the quarter when they choose what will be graded. So this system works well.

Markie Johnson Uloth

On the other side of the coin, I had a student compliment me today because I keep deadlines -- not because his work was due on a particular day, but that since I was so organized, he could count on me to have his grades up-to-date and to grade and return papers in a timely manner. He said that he appreciated that and that it was easier for students because they knew exactly where they stood.

Pam Craig

To make it fair for students who turn in papers on time, I deduct 5% for each day the paper is late. After 10 days, the paper can be turned in for a full month for half credit -- still an F but better than a zero. I write both the grade the paper would have received had it come in on time and the late grade.

Kelley Paystrup

Each of us has our own style. It seems to me we need to recognize this in ourselves as well as in our students and be willing to be flexible. Why should those teachers who prefer due dates be the only ones to compromise? Some students thrive on due dates and would find a class with none to be very disconcerting. Such a student might actually have trouble achieving in such a classroom.

Shouldn't teachers who don't give due dates take such students into consideration? It strikes me that a sensible policy would be any policy which has an element of flexibility and compromise in it. Above all, the expectations should be clear and consistent. Students can adjust to an awful lot if they know what to expect from any given teacher.

Cindy Hoffman