I am a senior applying to schools on both Common and Coalition applications. My Spanish teacher decided to try something new and start the year off by giving all her students an F. Her philosophy is for us to work our ways up to an A. For that reason (sigh), I had a C- in IB Spanish HL on my first progress report! Yes it’s Spanish, but I sure as heck don’t want that being sent to colleges.
TL;DR Do Common App and Coalition require counselors to send progress reports from senior year?
You need to start be defining “progress report.” If it’s one of those unofficial mid-semester things that is only meant for internal use and does not appear on the transcript, then no, colleges won’t see.If you mean Q1 grades, then potentially, yes, a college will see.
Having said that, ED colleges may (and usually do) ask for Q1 grades. RD colleges may (and usually do) ask for a midyear report. Even if the college does not ask, the GC may send anyway. Additionally, an AO may contact a GC at anytime to get an update, and if your GC has access to this progress report, that might be problematic.
If it were me, I would raise this issue rationally with the Spanish teacher and GC. Aside from the college implications, it’s not a great motivator from an educational perspective. So if you get resistance from the teacher, I would go up the chain of command to the dept chair, asst. principal, etc., and get your parents involved as needed. Because as a “philosophy” it sucks.
I agree with @skieurope. Progress report is informal so it won’t matter but if you’re applying ED they may well want to see your 1st quarter grades. And certainly semester grades in Jan/Feb.
Advocate for yourself (and your classmates) respectfully. If your teacher won’t change, talk to your guidance counselor first who couldexplain to the teacher why this system hurts seniors applying to college. He/she might quickly change course just based on that input, otherwise escalate by going to the assistant principal or principal. Keep your parents in the loop so they can step in if they need to.
Good luck!
@skieurope my school uses semesters, and we get progress reports every three weeks. What are Q1 grades? My progress report grades do not show up on the transcripts. What is a midyear report? I am not applying ED or EA to any schools. I will try to ask my teacher about it. Thank you!
@AlmostThere2018 We have semesters, not quarters at my school. So what are these first quarter grades? I will talk to fellow students and my teacher as well and see how it goes. Thank you!
Some high schools issue grade reports 4 times per year.In those cases, Q1 is the first grade report of the year. If yours only issues grade reports twice a year, then you don’t have a first quarter report.
Something your GC sends in to those colleges that request. Here’s the Common App form:
https://www.redlands.edu/globalassets/depts/cas-admissions/midyear-report.pdf
“My Spanish teacher decided to try something new and start the year off by giving all her students an F. Her philosophy is for us to work our ways up to an A.”
Would the teacher feel okay with starting each school year on employee probation and have to teach her way back into her pension and tenure?
That would never have flown in DD’s HS. The principal’s office would have gotten flooded with parent calls on Day #2. There would be pitchforks flying on Curriculum Night and “standing room only” at the school board meeting. I can’t believe it was accepted for even a few weeks at your school. You definitely should get your parents involved in this fight.
Indeed @Groundwork2022
My fav line I’ve read in a while on CC was @skieurope saying “Because as a “philosophy” it sucks.” Serious truth there. Keep us posted OP and I hope this gets fixed soon!
Excellent point. I could just imagine a proposal in the teachers’ contract negotiations: “Our new philosophy is to have all teachers’ evaluations at the start of the year be ‘unsatisfactory;’ and then they work up from there.” Now imagine how quickly AFT president Randi Weingarten gets herself booked on C-Span. =))
@skieurope @AlmostThere2018 @Groundwork2022 I, my parents, and fellow classmates totally agree with you guys! This teacher has been reported many times by other parents. Maybe the office is being slow, but they definitely got a lot of complaints. I and two of my friends talked to her at school today and she said we shouldn’t be complaining. She’s happy to see our “intrinsic motivation” and we’ll have As by no time. So my problem isn’t the colleges seeing the C- (because they won’t) but the fact that she she’s being a bit…stubborn, to say the least. I’ve gotten As in Spanish since ninth grade because I love learning the language, and the teacher isn’t a bad teacher, it’s just her policies and instructions change all the time. It’s hard getting used to, but if her “F to A” philosophy doesn’t end up changing, I’m happy this is my last year at this high school! 
The names and emails of your school board members should be on your school or district web site. Write an email, show up at a meeting… do something and everything to get that unfair “policy” nixed and your grades recalculated. I really wish you luck. Please let us know how it turns out.
My daughter’s IB English teacher had sort of a similar philosophy…she was getting a 3 or 4 (out of 7) in teh first quarter and he said “she hasn’t learned the level of a 5 yet”…
Keep going up the food chain…start with Head of Dept, Principal and then School Board.