Has anyone ever done a grade challenge? My extremely hard-working straight A student was blindsided 2 weeks before school was out when a teacher, who was going though a heinous divorce, suddenly put in a bunch of papers he hadn’t graded, and they brought her high A down to a B+. (By 1 or 2 points) We asked him nicely without mentioning his lack of doing his job, but he was mean and nasty. He made her do an extra credit assignment, gave a mediocre grade on it, so it didn’t even help at all. I was told to do a formal grade challenge, but ???Any advice. We want to be nice…but this is a kid’s future and transcripts are so important. Any advice. We are at a very large public school, and not many kids go to Ivies or similar.He is not the most sophisticated teacher…I don’t know if I should write and beg him one last time.
Asked him what? To change the grade?
How does one make someone do an extra credit assignment?
What is the actual basis for a dispute?
Btw, one B+ has absolutely no bearing on the kid’s future.
So, the student’s work fell short and the teacher allowed extra credit, but that didn’t go so well, and now you want to appeal for an ‘A’?
“suddenly put in a bunch of papers he hadn’t graded, and they brought her high A down to a B+”
What does that mean? Did the student do a lot of work that wasn’t graded? Did you ask why?
So the student thought he/she could slack off at the end of the marking period and misjudge how much to slack off? Unless everyone in the class had their grades lowered suddenly I don’t think you have a leg to stand on. And are we talking about disputing grades from last June?
One B+ won’t make any difference at all. Not one iota. My advice: drop it.
Lesson learned for your daughter: Not every teacher, professor, interviewer, and boss will be fair.
Pull the helicopter back a little. As others have stated one B+ doesn’t tank your child’s transcript.
I agree that the papers should have been graded in a more timely manner.
But that doesn’t change the quality of the work that was graded. I’m assuming that since your “extremely hard working straight A student” had an A up to that point, he/she was happy with the way the teacher graded all year. That grading mentality didn’t change merely because the papers were graded late .And “sophistication” or lack thereof, has nothing to do with teaching ability.
Personally, I’m not a fan of extra credit. You get what you get for the work I’ve assigned. I teach, and test, what’s in the syllabus. That’s the work you’re responsible for, and that’s what you get credit for.
I honestly don’t understand the basis for your complaint, other than the fact that the “heinous divorce” interfered with the teacher’s ability to get work back in a timely manner.
Please don’t “write or beg one last time.” Grades should be awarded on the basis of merit, not to stop a parent from nagging 2 months after grades went out
I’m confused. If up to the last month, younDD had an A average, then the last few papers received a B or B+, was this the trend? Did the other A students slip? If this happened to many students, then, yes, perhaps worth pursuing. If this was just your DD, and she had a chance to do extra credit project, but it wasn’t terrific, then I’d let the whole thing go.
If the B+ is a quarter grade, then the semester grade should still be an A. I did challenge an unfair grading practice once, something the administration could see by examining the school’s electronic grade book, and admitted had occurred and was unfair. However, the teacher (tenured) refused to change the grade or the practice when the administration took it up with her, and my daughter’s grade stood for that quarter. Later that school year though, the teacher did retire.
Drop it.
the lesson learned is that you aren’t going to get all As all the time. I don’t even see where the unfairness is here. The lateness of the grading might be annoying but that doesn’t mean the grade isn’t fair.
If there was some sort of sudden drop in grades for the class as a whole I might go to administration about it. We did that once when a similar slew of late graded science lab reports ( last 6 weeks of reports all graded on last day…prior to that grades back weekly) were graded 15 point or more under the previous grades. The kids kept asking for grades on reports during that 6 weeks and were rebuffed. My daughter talked to other kids and then to administration don’t know what happened but they sent a letter saying things were being regraded by another teacher. Grade was then changed.
The degree of delay is not really described in the OP. It’s said that the papers were graded 2 weeks before the end of the semester, but were these papers submitted 3-4 weeks before the end of the semester or 9 weeks? Was it just one paper per kid or a bunch?
In any case, having the parent as the prime agent, (at least the one posting to CC), and trying to deal with this ~2-3 months after the semester ended both argue against this being something you should press on…
While it would be nice if teachers graded things as they are received, there is nothing that says they have to. As to the teacher’s state of mind, teachers are human beings, and have good days and bad days like the rest of us. As others have stated, not all teachers or situations in life are fair.
This past year, my S had an AP stats teacher who was pregnant and left for maternity just before xmas. She was competent as a teacher but had a lot of absences/subs due to her pregnancy. While there was a long-term sub lined up, she couldn’t start until after winter break. So this other sub (who was not trained in stats) came in and taught an entire chapter just before break. She was no help with any questions, she just went through the textbook by rote. Over half the class failed the quiz on that chapter right before break. When they returned, the L/T sub was there, and as it turns out, she was also pregnant. She was extremely strict and moody. The semester pretty much sucked until the original teacher came back a few weeks before the AP test. Was it fair? No, not at all. Would complaining help? Probably not. It was life.
I can’t count how many things are wrong with this. What is your child’s reaction to your over-involvement?
I don’t know you or your daughter, but will make a prediction: if your daughter is not accepted to the school of her choice, it won’t be for this B+.
Who told you to do a formal grade challenge? You risk turning your child into that kid.
OP, I’ll give you the story of how DS responded to what he felt was an unfair grade. He was takIng APUSH and got a concussion playing hockey. His APUSH teacher pressured him to take the midterm, against the neurologist’s instructions and because of a profound misunderstanding of how long a concussion can last. Long story short, DS got an A- in the course. He was angry and thought it was unfair, so in addition to taking the AP test (5), he also took the SAT Subject Test (780), which he hadn’t intended to do since he was really a STEMish kid, but he thought that was the best way to prove that he knew the material.
I had no involvement in any part of this. It was my son’s battle.
I’m trying to understand how a high A for the year could be brought to a B+. If you have 3 quarters of high A, even if it was an entire quarter of work that was graded at the last minute, those grades must all have been very low. Did this happen to the entire class? Or was your student turning in sub-par work? You’ve said a lot about your disapproval of the teacher’s behavior but nothing at all about the quality of the work in question. Have you read these papers?
Grading in English is subjective to begin with. Not sure how you can dispute the teacher’s opinion of these papers.
I’d take a step back and be grateful that at your school, teachers assign papers. Ours don’t assign anything beyond the almighty 5 paragraph essay, because they aren’t willing to grade them. Even so, we’ve had assignments taking all quarter to be graded.
I would not do anything at all.
First, breathe. A B+ is not the kiss of death. Second, let your daughter handle the situation. She is about to be on her own and needs to learn how to fight her own battles and how to discern if it is a battle worth fighting. Third, if she thinks there was an error in grading she should provide evidence to support her claim to the teacher. Otherwise, this is considered “grade grubbing.” If this is simply subjective and the teacher wasn’t open to discussion then this is a lesson about fairness in life, accepting what you cannot control, and moving on without catastrophizing.
PS - Congrats to your daughter for maintaining such good grades! Her hard work will pay off. Hopefully she hears that message louder than than the message that she always needs or deserves perfect grades.
I can sympathize a little based on something that happened to one of my children in 10th grade. He had a half-year long Art class. He was not, and never had been, talented in art, or anything involving small muscle motor skills. But he was diligent about schoolwork, and all semester long he had been bringing home art projects on which he had gotten A- or B+ grades. When his report card came, however, he had gotten a C for the course – at the time, that was the first grade lower than an A he had received in high school. We asked him about it, and he said that the teacher believed someone in the class had stolen his grade book before he had a chance to enter grades in the school’s computer system, and since he no longer had a record of how he had graded each student’s projects and (as he saw it) the class had refused to give up the offender, he gave the entire class Cs.
Our son was very bitter about it, but was inclined not to do anything because at the time the Art grade was not factored into the weighted GPA the school used to determine class rank and reported to colleges. (He and his similarly ambitious classmates were very conscious of stuff like that – much more than his parents were at the time.) We told him we thought the teacher’s actions were pretty unacceptable, and urged him to talk to the teacher, bring in whatever graded projects he hadn’t thrown out, and possibly talk to one of the school’s administrators. He went to talk to the teacher, and the teacher just shut him down, and he decided not to pursue it further.
I wasn’t satisfied, though. I had a good relationship with the school’s administration from some other things, and I decided that they ought to be alerted to an outrageous situation. I called, and when I explained why I was calling, one of the assistant principals said, “Oh, yes, we know all about that. If a parent calls to complain, we are automatically changing the grade to a B.” Not for student complaints, mind you; only parent complaints.
Needless to say, I thought that was two wrongs that didn’t exactly make a right. Especially since the school’s culture was that students were responsible for their own business, something made necessary by the fact that many parents were barely able to communicate in or understand English. But that’s what they did. And to add minor insult to injury, a year later they decided that they had to count all grades in GPA, so his B in Art did, in fact, cost him a couple of slots in class rank vs. what he would have had if his final grade had been an A- (something he may or may not have achieved on the basis of his work). Which, in all likelihood, made no difference whatsoever in his life.
The appropriate lesson my son took from this was that stuff happens, and life isn’t always fair.