Summary:
Teacher of my daughter gave her a C on her final exam (all multiple choice, done on Canvas). My daughter asked only to see her Canvas report, the teacher refused, saying the exam questions and answers are confidential. Sch admin says they “checked”, but they can’t show us the report. What to do now?
Background: my daughter loves science and takes it seriously, and we were surprised when she told us she got a C (after studying for weeks) on her final exam. As the exam was all multiple choice and administered/ graded automatically by Canvas, it should have been straightforward to see the Canvas report.
But when my daughter approached her teacher about her score, the teacher refused to show her the Canvas report, saying that the exam questions and answers are confidential.
My daughter then asked if she could see her Canvas numerical score (not even the whole paper). The teacher also refused.
So after some back and forth, we approached the school admin.
The school admin said they “checked” with the teacher and everything is correct, but they also can’t show us the Canvas report, or even the Canvas numerical score.
What do you reckon is our best course of action right now? Not to put too dark of a picture on this, but my daughter tells me she thinks several of her and her classmates had their scores pushed down, and maybe the school is trying to cover things up, because if they change the score back for her, they probably have to do the same for others as well when the word gets out, and then it’s going to be a messy PR situation.
I’m not sure what their policies are, but in the school system where I teach we are required to show testing materials—-but can limit that sharing to an in person meeting that doesn’t allow for copying of the test, etc.
It seems unlikely that there is a conspiracy between the teacher and the school administration to academically wound your daughter and her classmates by rigging a final exam. I guess nothing is impossible but the most likely scenario (in the 99th percentile) is that your daughter got a C.
Thanks for your inputs, it’s helpful to have a range of perspectives.
Maybe just to provide more context,
I guess as parents our intuitions are very often correct, because we’ve been with our kids for years / have the benefit of long term observation etc. In this case, I trust my daughter when she’s been telling me she really thinks something is not right with the grading. I helped quiz her a few times in the lead-up to the exam, and she got majority of the answers right. So I believe her when she tells me she didn’t think she messed up or if the exam was that difficult (she mentioned it was ok right afterwards)
Even if she did get a C, from my perspective if I were to take an objective look / eg. try to view it as though it’s someone else and their daughter, it’s no problem in the sense that it’s not going to affect her long run goals or anything. If she did get a C and the true Canvas reports show that, then it’ll just mean she needs to do more studying if she wants to improve. But the issue it seems is the teacher is not even letting her view the Canvas score reports.
The situation with her and a few of her classmates I mentioned relates to a few demographic details, in short if they as a group indeed all had their grades pushed down on the multiple choice final exams, and it was discovered that the teacher had indeed done so specifically for that group of students who share the same demographic features, the concern maybe is that the teacher/ school admin would not look great from a PR/ optics standpoint.
I guess there are several possibilities
(a) My daughter got a C, we view the true Canvas report which confirms thus, no problem, knowing my daughter she’d probably just study more to improve next time.
(b) My daughter did not get a C, the true Canvas report shows she got another grade, the teacher made a mistake in reporting the score, with the transparency of grading we fix this. eg. If we don’t do anything, and it happens again it’ll be a continued series of bad grades for no reason
The situation just seems that after the teacher refused to show us my daughter’s Canvas report (even the numerical report), the school admin seems to be trying to sweep things under the rug by just saying they “checked” and there are no issues, perhaps fearing opening the can of worms on the optics situation above. But honestly, if they show us the Canvas report, and if there are any errors, have those be fixed, I don’t think we’d even bother to ask follow-up questions/ or try to cause them PR issues etc, so I don’t know what they’re fearing, in showing us the Canvas report
Thanks for your inputs, it’s helpful to have a range of perspectives.
Maybe just to provide more context,
I guess as parents our intuitions are very often correct, because we’ve been with our kids for years / have the benefit of long term observation etc. In this case, I trust my daughter when she’s been telling me she really thinks something is not right with the grading. I helped quiz her a few times in the lead-up to the exam, and she got majority of the answers right. So I believe her when she tells me she didn’t think she messed up or if the exam was that difficult (she mentioned it was ok right afterwards)
Even if she did get a C, from my perspective if I were to take an objective look / eg. try to view it as though it’s someone else and their daughter, it’s no problem in the sense that it’s not going to affect her long run goals or anything. If she did get a C and the true Canvas reports show that, then it’ll just mean she needs to do more studying if she wants to improve. But the issue it seems is the teacher is not even letting her view the Canvas score reports.
The situation with her and a few of her classmates I mentioned relates to a few demographic details, in short if they as a group indeed all had their grades pushed down on the multiple choice final exams, and it was discovered that the teacher had indeed done so specifically for that group of students who share the same demographic features, the concern maybe is that the teacher/ school admin would not look great from a PR/ optics standpoint.
I guess there are several possibilities
(a) My daughter got a C, we view the true Canvas report which confirms thus, no problem, knowing my daughter she’d probably just study more to improve next time.
(b) My daughter did not get a C, the true Canvas report shows she got another grade, the teacher made a mistake in reporting the score, with the transparency of grading we fix this. eg. If we don’t do anything, and it happens again it’ll be a continued series of bad grades for no reason
The situation just seems that after the teacher refused to show us my daughter’s Canvas report (even the numerical report), the school admin seems to be trying to sweep things under the rug by just saying they “checked” and there are no issues, perhaps fearing opening the can of worms on the optics situation above. But honestly, if they show us the Canvas report, and if there are any errors, have those be fixed, I don’t think we’d even bother to ask follow-up questions/ or try to cause them PR issues etc, so I don’t know what they’re fearing, in showing us the Canvas report
Does this teacher have a history of unfair grading on previous tests?
Multiple choice tests can be very tricky, even when students are well prepared. I guess as a parent, my assumption would be that my kid didn’t do great and needs to figure out how to improve next time.
Aside from asking to see the exam, did your D ask the teacher to sit down to review with her where the knowledge gaps were? I think I’d take that route before trying to escalate further to see the report.
I’m assuming that your child is in HS since we are talking about “teachers” and not “professors”.
If this is high school the simplest answer is really to determine if this is a true school policy. Have your child ask another teacher if this is the case in their classroom. You are accusing the teacher and school of something very serious, I would tread carefully if this does not affect her grade.
Yes. This is by far the most sensible thing to do. She can ask the teacher to please tell her the most common types of problems she got wrong. She can ask to come in for extra help so that she understands the material better.
Why is there an assumption that there is a nefarious scheme at play to cover up something? Kids don’t do as well as they expected on exams all the time.
It’s in the teacher’s interest for your child to do well. I highly doubt there’s anything worse going on here than your daughter simply got a C.
If this is junior year of high school, then this is potentially a big deal. If this is 8th grade, then not so much. I don’t see any hints here about the age of the child.
It seems very odd that a student is unable to view/review their exam/test results. How can a student’s own test be confidential? The lack of transparency on the part of the teacher and the school admin is a red flag imo.
She never questioned a final but I would have advised her as I did OP - to ask the teacher if there were trends in knowledge gaps. If the teacher opts to show the exam, that would be their prerogative, but I wouldn’t demand to see it.
In her college, the process is to request a re-grade if a student believes their score is way off mark.
This student got a C. It happens. The teacher and school admin have checked. There were occasions for both of my kids in high school when a grade was recorded incorrectly. The teacher immediately corrected the mistake. This is not one of those cases.
I get that this student and her parent find it impossible to believe that she got a C on an exam, and that because the kid likes science and studies hard, it’s improbable that she got a C. It isn’t. This is very common. I am a test prep tutor. I have had a number of students who get amazing scores during prep, using ONLY official tests for practice, and on the day, they don’t get the score they hoped for. When we discuss, they often say they felt anxious, they didn’t sleep well the night before, or whatever. Often, they thought they did very well.
Final exams are supposed to be hard. I don’t get people thinking there’s a cover up and that there must be a problem when clearly, the school has checked and rechecked. The student got a C, and life goes on.
And this is why finals are typically only worth a small percentage of the final grade and make minimal change in the final grade. My older S was notorious for getting Cs and Ds on finals in classes he had high Bs and As for the year, finals are hard!
I don’t find it impossible that the student received a C. I find it troubling that a student can not see their own exam results. Just chalk it up to another educational “advantage” for technology. Give me pen and paper any day.
The weirdest thing to me is they won’t give the numerical score. Letter grades usually correspond to specific scores, so she is telling you something about the numerical score but not divulging it exactly seems odd. Not a conspiracy, but odd. Has the teacher in the past provided the numerical scores (and access to exams for review)? I agree that getting more clarity is good.
I will say that I’m sure the other parents on here can attest that drilling and prepping a student can still result in Cs on tests. That’s life!