Hey y’all,
For my math class (I take regular trig) our finals season was just over and I remained unscathed with straight A’s, except in math. I’ve been trying to accept it these past few days but I’m just so mad at myself. I worked so hard to recover from a terrible freshman year and it just went to waste, and I’m just so angry. Overall the tests were easy and I had a solid A, but I completely wrecked the final and it brought me down to a B+. The final was overall extremely difficult and I did not know how to do so many questions. I worked so hard in the class throughout it, and the final was nothing like the review or the stuff we went over throughout the days before the final.
I was talking to my friend in the honors class, and she also said the final was extremely difficult and it brought her grade down from a 93 to an 88 because she got a C on it. We started a petition for our teacher to curve the final, but I don’t really know what to do. We currently have 18 supporters, and the grading period was supposed to end yesterday, but I think some teachers are still putting grades in. No one I know personally got higher than a C on it. Does anyone think that it is at all possible to convince my teacher to curve it?
You can try, and objectively it sounds like you should have a case. However, in my experience, teachers are usually unwilling to accommodate such requests because it often times seems like students are simply complaining after a poor performance.
I would set up a time to meet with the teacher and review your exam, after which you can discuss with your teacher (hopefully the grade submission deadline isn’t super strict). Try to probe your teacher for info about how the class did etc and try to gauge whether or not they would be open to curving the test (but more in an understanding way, NOT confrontational); if they seem pretty set on their reasoning, it’s probably a lost cause.
I agree with previous poster. However, I am not sure whether your teacher would curve even if she wanted to… what is the school policy on the same class taught by multiple teachers? Do both teachers need to grade everything the same?
@MPC6789 The school’s policy is very lenient with curving, teachers decide to do how they want it, based on the head of the subject department. I know the history department likes to do it by the averages of the scores, the language arts department also does that. The foreign language department is a mess, and rarely curves. The math department and science department also rarely curves; however, for the science department, my teacher ‘curved’ the final by adding 10 ec points to everyone’s final because the highest score was a 90.
@dblazer thank you so much for your response! I’ll definitely try that! However, my teacher hasn’t been responding to his email, as my friend sent him one with a link to the petition, so I am somewhat worried about setting an appointment, but I’ll definitely try! Our district’s grading deadline isn’t too strict, however, I will have to work fast if we want to change it in time.
@hermionepotter99 I think it might have been a bit aggressive to lead with the petition, which is why your friend may not have received a response yet. I would anticipate that your request to review your exam won’t be ignored in the same way
Best of luck to you - I’d be interested to hear how things turn out
Yes. Wouldn’t a conversation with the teacher have been the logical first step? The use of a petition seems odd here – are the responders to the petition being asked if they want a higher grade? Who wouldn’t respond yes to that? Or will the “curve” lead to some people having their grades lowered?
@dblazer hi there! This is a bit of a late response! Should I ask him to see my final at the beginning of next year, and possibly try to talk to him to gauge the averages of the final? I know it’s a little late, but many of my teachers in my school make grade changes easily, and you’re right, having a face to face would be a lot better. Even if I didn’t get a grade change, I’d like to see my final anyways. My friends emailed about the petition, but I emailed him just asking if I could see my final, and he didn’t respond. I did talk with him after my final about possibly curving it, because the difficulty level made me nervous, and he said he would think about it. Im not sure he remembered many students’ request for the curve, because 30+ students I know got a C or lower, and considering in my class there are about ~70 people, the people in my classes who got a C on the final had a grade range of a B+ - A; however, the overall majority grade of my classes was C (he showed us on the projector). I’m assuming many didn’t do well. He has a reputation for forgetting things, so I kind of want to approach him about the possibility. It never hurts to try, right?
@CheddarcheeseMN Hi there! The curve would ((hopefully)) be based on averages of the entire final. Many of my teachers curves go by averages, and the math department has curved for my class before. My teacher teachers half the precalc/trig classes, and another teacher does the other half. Many tests we have had always had a few “cushion” or 3-5 points extra, because a question was worded weirdly, and was a question most frequently missed by people, even though the other class usually scores 20% higher than we do. Many of my friends were hoping he would do something like that for this final, or hopefully do it by averages.
I know it’s pretty late, and I’m kind of being unrealistic, but I still think we might have a chance.
https://www.change.org/p/our-math-teacher-to-our-math-teacher-please-curve-our-math-final
here’s our petition, if you want to see what we wrote. Hopefully it doesn’t come off as rude, we were just being honest.