College teachers, junior college instructors, et al.: do you look up your students' grade records?

It never occurred to me to do that when I was teaching. I don’t think it is allowed; if it is, I never knew how to do it. I assume that federal privacy laws would apply. Those laws forbid the releasing a student’s records without his/her consent.

There were a few times when I asked a student how s/he had done in a specific prior class, but that was usually in the context of advising them about future course choices.

I’ve never had access to a grade I didn’t give.

Oh, goody, my teacher has broken the law.

Ok, then, thanks! Can they see your GPA? Can they see a general history, like what semesters you have attended? Can they see when you dropped out or withdrew?

I am wondering whether an instructor’s attitude toward students is affected by an expectation not only based on grade history (I guess not) but also based on overall performance and evidence of past difficulty.

@Jeruba I don’t know what she can see – just that after a student took her English class, she looked up her grades and other pieces of writing years later.
I would imagine that not many professors look it up before they grade students – if you have 30 students for 5 classes, how much of a pain in the tush is it going to be to look up grades for 150 people you don’t even know and have nothing to associate it with yet? However, maybe if a student seems really bright, always comes to class, takes lots of notes, participates, always does assignments, but then hands in really poor work they might look it up?
We need a Fluther just for teachers and students, really.

Like @nikipedia, I’ve never had access to a grade that I didn’t give. At least, not as far as I know. Maybe I just haven’t tried hard enough. That said, I wouldn’t look at a student’s grades even if I could.

First, the only thing that matters for my evaluation is how well a student does in my class. One of my majors in college was music. I was surrounded by people who were extremely talented, but who were often less successful in more academic subjects like history or mathematics. I would hate to think what would happen if their evaluation in one area depended on their evaluation in another, and I rather think that our academic successes and failures are ours to share at our discretion.

Second, I am quite aware of the fact that how well a student has done so far in my class can affect how I evaluate a piece of work that is in front of me. The effect is not severe: I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to students who have been performing well more often than to students who have not been performing well. But a strong student can slip, and a weak student can shine. I’d rather not have anything get in the way of my recognizing those instances, and knowledge of past grades is exactly the sort of thing that might do so.