Introduction
The board of trustee of El Camino Community College formulated some strategic plans for year 2004-2007. They came up with various aspects that constitute the school such as the college vision, mission, values guiding principles and philosophy and the goals of the college. In addition to all these aspects, they came up with several policies to be implemented by the administration during learning process. These policies were meant for both the learners and the administrators as well as the teaching and non-teaching staff.
Among these policies included, catalog policy, independent study policy, academic policy and the board policy number 4225 concerning repetition of a course among other policies. As a common belief to many, policies, rules and regulations do not reflect a holistic representation of a particular target group, some learners feel that some policies used in the institution do not favor them accordingly. One such policy is the board policy 4225 which when generalized stipulates that students with high grades such as A,B,C or CR are not allowed to repeat the course. Learners who receive W at the end of the course are permitted to re-enroll for the same course for a maximum number of two times totaling to three enrollments. Again, those learners who attain grade D,F or NC are legible to repeat the same course and upon successful completion the learner’s transcript should be amended to reflect the current grades. The board of trustee of El Camino College who came up with these policies and in particular policy number 4225 overlooked and did not address certain issues that needed to be addressed before implementing this policy especially in relation to the target group which is the students. A student may fail or pass in a certain courses due to various issues in and out of his control. This particular policy brings about certain arguments and debates for and against it, thus need to be changed or be re-addressed to reflect more sensitive issues related to the learners.
Content
One of the administrative policy procedure of 4225 is that, learners with low grades such as D,F or NC can be permitted to repeat the same course only one time. Enrolling for the third time will be permitted to learners who within the course of learning experienced unusual circumstances and must be upon a written permission from the relevant dean. These unavoidable circumstances are illnesses, accidents and those beyond the control of the learner and must be verified to establish the truth for example a student claiming to be sick must give evidence of a recommendation from a doctor. After a successful completion,the new grades replace the previous ones. A student may also complete an equivalent course from a credited institution may place a petition to have his/her previous grades disregarded in computing his/her grade point average (GPA). Learners with high grades like A,B,C or CR are permitted to repeat the same course but under certain circumstances such as, extenuating circumstances like accidents or illness contributed to the current results if the learner did not meet his goals and as long as the learner can continue to pay for the course or volunteer employment in that institution.
This policy need to be changed because they are not holistic in nature. The board of trustees overlooked certain issues that need to be addressed that may not be directly related to the learner but all in all affects the learner’s grades. In case where a learner may not be aware of particular policy that exist in the institution for example being absent in a particular class for a given number of hours may lead to discontinuation or poor performance of that course. The leaner may decline to attend lectures and this may lead to poor performance thus repeat the same course and this time his/her parents die and is unable to perform well in school. The learner is affected by these circumstances thus ending up getting substandard grades. The learner is not to blame for the occurrence of the death of the parents in as much as he can be blamed for the naivety of not being aware of the college policies.
The students cannot be allowed to repeat the same course due to the current administrative policies of the institution. Who is to blame for this? The learner cannot be blamed but the board of trustee for not putting into considerations circumstances that may affect the performance of the learner but are not related directly to the learner. I passed my cultural anthropology class because of the “good relationship” I had with my tutor. The tutor loved me so I knew that I would definitely pass in this course. I never used to attend classes or do assignment, after all he was the one to mark for me the final paper. In the very same class a friend of mine was hated by the same tutor following disagreements between my friend’s mother and the teacher. The end result, my friend received grade F and when he repeated he still got the same grade. In the two circumstances, what appropriate administrative procedures can be used to by the institution to determine whether I should be told to repeat the course since the grade were not genuine or my friend who was failed by the teacher? Thus there is the need to address such issues before permitting or dismissing a student’s performance and policy of repeating a course. This and other policies need to be changed in order to have holistic approach.
However, in as much as there is need to change those policies, the learners should appreciate and understand that the school policies are developed and implemented considering the whole students fraternity and not individual based policies. It would be tedious to come up with policies dealing with individual cases. The stated policies reflect the majority students cases. It is in the right of the learner to understand that the exceptional cases like accidents and illness only happens very few students at a time. Despite these fact that these policies were developed for the betterment of the whole school community,this does not mean that these changes should not be implemented There is need incorporate more sensitive issues that affect the learner in the policies.
In a general conclusion, the board of trustee of El Camino College, should come up with policies that are holistic in nature and reflect the interest of the target group. There is need to amend the existing policies and incorporate more and diverse issues that affect learners. The current policies especially those of administrative procedures concerning course repetition should be more elaborative to suit the learner’s needs. They need to look at effects of performance per students and analyzing the underlying cause of each students performance.