I think about what I would do if my kid were in the same situation as OP, and I would take a different approach. When he previously had a truly unhinged teacher targeting several kids for no clear reason, she initiated contact with us. We bent over backwards to see if there was anything our kid was doing wrong, and once it was clear that he wasn’t really doing anything wrong and she was just kooky, we strategically decided to stay out of making waves. We told our kid that the teacher was a bit loony, and to not put a single toe out of line or make a peep in class. We said that he’d meet and work with all kinds of people, some of whom do not treat you fairly. You have to be strategic with how you decide to handle those situations, and this was a way to learn to keep his head down and get through it. Were it a different situation, we might have chosen to press it. He got through it just fine and there were no real harms. The fact is that our high-achieving kid is going to be FINE, even if he has crappy teachers that aren’t fair. I’m not saying never to fight the battles, but this is one battle that wouldn’t be worth it to me personally. It is different for every person, though!
I wasn’t thinking at first that an individual exam would fall into this, but I think Bill_Marsh is correct that legally, this exam is the student’s record.
If the school receives any federal funding, and I’m assuming they do, then you have a legal right under FERPA to have access, at the very least, to the score, and most likely to the full test as well. I’m not a lawyer, but I will paste the actual regulations regarding this issue and you can decide for yourself if I’m misinterpreting anything here. This is from the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 34 Part 99 (FERPA) 
I can’t link anything but if you go to studentprivacy dot ed dot gov slash ferpa, it’s there:
Section 99.10:
(a) Except as limited under §99.12, a parent or eligible student must be given the opportunity to inspect and review the student’s education records. This provision applies to—
(1) Any educational agency or institution; and
(2) Any State educational agency (SEA) and its components.
(i) For the purposes of subpart B of this part, an SEA and its components constitute an educational agency or institution.
(ii) An SEA and its components are subject to subpart B of this part if the SEA maintains education records on students who are or have been in attendance at any school of an educational agency or institution subject to the Act and this part.
(b) The educational agency or institution, or SEA or its component, shall comply with a request for access to records within a reasonable period of time, but not more than 45 days after it has received the request.
(c) The educational agency or institution, or SEA or its component shall respond to reasonable requests for explanations and interpretations of the records.
(d) If circumstances effectively prevent the parent or eligible student from exercising the right to inspect and review the student’s education records, the educational agency or institution, or SEA or its component, shall—
(1) Provide the parent or eligible student with a copy of the records requested; or
(2) Make other arrangements for the parent or eligible student to inspect and review the requested records.
(e) The educational agency or institution, or SEA or its component shall not destroy any education records if there is an outstanding request to inspect and review the records under this section.
This exam would not fall under any of the exceptions that are listed under Section 99.12 , which are limited to records that would contain information about another student or things that are more relevant to postsecondary institutions such as financial records or recommendation letters and things of that nature.
The same page that I linked defines education records as:
Education records. (a) The term means those records that are:
(1) Directly related to a student; and
(2) Maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution.
I would think that a teacher is a “party acting for the agency or institution.”
And The National Center for Education Statistics -
If you go to nces dot ed dot gov slash pubs97 slash web slash 97859.asp
has more examples of what would constitute an education record, including:
FERPA Defines an Education Record
Education records include a range of information about a student that is maintained in schools in any recorded way, such as handwriting, print, computer media, video or audio tape, film, microfilm, and microfiche. Examples are:
Date and place of birth, parent(s) and/or guardian addresses, and where parents can be contacted in emergencies;
Grades, test scores, courses taken, academic specializations and activities, and official letters regarding a student’s status in school;
Some schools specifically say that exams are education records as well (as opposed to just the scores on the exam), and I think that’s a fair interpretation based on the language of FERPA, but I don’t know if that’s an objective or subjective interpretation. I would think objective, though.
Again, I’m not a lawyer, so my interpretation may be off, but I really do think that under FERPA, you absolutely have a legal right to - at the very least - have access to the actual score on Canvas, even if only in presence of faculty, and most likely to have access to the entire test, again, even if only in the presence of faculty.
And if the teacher did this maliciously, then whether you escalate the situation or not is irrelevant because she already targeted kids unprovoked.
If it was an honest mistake, then surely she should understand why you wouldn’t drop it, especially if the mistake would affect her overall grade, and she should still be apologizing for making the mistake and for having policies in place that made the mistake so hard to rectify.
And if there’s no mistake all, as an educator, she should still understand why there was a need to be certain.
I believe the student was given the score…but was not given access to Canvas to see it for themselves.
Oh my god. Unless you plan to transfer schools do not bring out the legal guns for one exam with zero evidence.
I have had a student who received a D on the final go straight to admin and lawyers. My department chair had to regrade the final, and she gave the student fewer points than I had. In order to stop dealing with lawyers, we agreed to let this student take another final ( which was unfair to every other student in the course). I had to write an entirely new test after the semester had ended. Guess what? She failed that one too.
Sometimes parents don’t want to admit that their kids make mistakes. They will never learn from them if you go on the offensive every time. I’m not defending the style of the OP’s teacher, but I cannot imagine a worse way to deal with one bad test.
Right, they were only given the score verbally, though. Under FERPA, they have a right to review the “records,” which would mean some sort of paper, electronic, or written documentation. Verbal language wouldn’t cut it. Under Section 99.21, they also have a right to request a hearing if they believe any portion of their record to be inaccurate or misleading. So, a verbal confirmation by the teacher simply wouldn’t be sufficient to verify the accuracy of an educational record.
I get the argument that it might not be worth it to fight this aggressively, but I think OP isn’t satisfied and is questioning if she has any rights in this situation, and I think he/she might be willing to fight it. It’s hard to say what’s too much when it’s not a situation you’re in. Do we know if their kid is applying to the very top colleges? One grade could affect that, and if the grade is undeserved (meaning, entered maliciously or mistakenly), I think asserting your rights is worth it.
I personally had a teacher in high school who used a participation grade as a way to give students whatever final grade she wanted to give them. She would take off points for things like using the restroom (with permission) and other things that she would have no real “right” to use in determining grades. I finally went to my administrator about it, and we had a meeting with the teacher, who proceeded to flat out lie about things. I called her out on it and it was obvious that she was lying, and then I said that there are about 30 witnesses to the incident she described and that they could call any one of them into the office right now and hear from them who’s telling the truth.
Long story short, that same day, the participation grade in our class was cut. A couple weeks later, I had to give that teacher a progress report to fill out. She still gave me a grade lower than what I had earned, claiming that I had missed two assignments. I asked her what assignments I was missing, she checked and told me. Right then and there, I grabbed my folder from my desk, took out both of those assignments, and said, “You mean these two, which have been graded by you already, with your handwriting on them?” She then sheepishly claimed to have made a mistake. You don’t know her, and you don’t know me. But no one will ever convince me that it was a mistake.
(Instructors often own their tests as intellectual property. Protecting Your Intellectual Property as Instructors | Student Rights and Responsibilities - McGill University
That’s a good point. But - and I might be missing something (genuinely, I really don’t know, and I’m really not being sarcastic here) - I don’t think that reviewing a test in the presence of the teacher and/or other faculty would violate the IP rights of the teacher.
According to the source you provided:
Since course content created by instructors is considered the instructors’ intellectual property, it should not be distributed, shared in any public domain, or sold without prior written consent.
But reviewing a test in the presence of the teacher would in no way equal distributing said test, sharing it, or selling it.
Isn’t OP’s D in HS? I could have missed it tho! Is the intellectual property issue the same whether HS teacher or college faculty member?
I think you may have forgotten the original post. This is not about one teacher. The is about a teacher AND a school administrator. This is, by definition, a consipracy…to academically derail a group of kids in a certain demographic subset.
I don’t know what would have happened in my kid’s case if we had talked to administration about it. Maybe they would have backed up the teacher and dismissed us. I will never know. Maybe it would have met your definition of conspiracy. There were a number of reasons we didn’t get even close to taking it up the chain. One is that there would have to be extraordinary circumstances to compel us to risk getting on the bad side of school employees (fairly or not). Over the years we have consciously chosen to assume the best and tried super hard not to be antagonistic, even when circumstances might have warranted such behavior. It has served us well, as school employees have often gone the extra mile to help our kids, even when they didn’t “deserve” it! As a rule, we’re unfailingly polite to any employees who serve us, even when we receive poor service, so it could just be a difference in our perspective in general. I just don’t care enough about my steak or my high-achieving kid’s grades to make a stink about anything but egregious stuff. I understand that not everyone agrees with that approach.
Getting a C on a test in these mysterious circumstances falls waaay short of the mark for us when it comes to taking it up the chain, and I probably wouldn’t even bug the teacher about it. I’d give my kid advice about how to handle it, but would make them communicate with the teacher on their own. But, like I said, everyone is different. OP still hasn’t told us what exactly the STUDENT asked the teacher to do as far as getting feedback on the exam. I am not at all surprised that admin has backed up the teacher, as some parent get pretty wild (not saying that of OP, but there are some real ones out there). Fairly or not, I would tread VERY carefully since the kid will have the same teacher next year.
Exactly my question—why not sit down with teacher and ask what content was missed? Have heard nothing about this approach, which seems to me what should have been first step rather than jumping to assumptions about malicious intent
This isn’t a college situation. It’s a high school.
You just said “ not . . . Allowing them to learn from their mistakes is unprofessional. “ I agree. If the student earned a legitimate C on the exam, then she made some mistakes. The only way for her to learn from those mistakes is to see what mistakes she made and where she made them. The exam is the instrument being used to measure her competence in the subject matter. As such, it must be used as a feedback mechanism to have any value in the learning process. The teacher denied this student and her mother access to this feedback mechanism. By your own definition, this is unprofessional. I agree with your definition.
Again, address the OP, not debate each other. Posts not in compliance are subject to removal without notice or comment
I’m not sure if it’s allowed to comment on what I believe to be the issue with this suggestion. I don’t mean this as a debate, but since the OP was asking about what the next steps could be, I think it’s okay to mention why this might not be the most effective way to confirm anything about a score? I apologize if this isn’t allowed.
But regarding asking the teacher what content was missed…I think that could potentially work if the mistakes are unintentional. But if the mistake is intentional, then any person who would willingly and intentionally lower a grade that shouldn’t be lowered would most likely not have any issue with making up things that the student didn’t understand. A liar won’t suddenly confess to the lie just because you asked.
No verbal confirmation from the teacher (or administrators who might cover up for a teacher) can possibly prove that she did not intentionally lower the student’s grade. The only thing that can prove that is the test itself, or at the absolute very least, at least access to the score that Canvas computed.
Even though the vast majority of teachers don’t do things like this maliciously, it’s simply a fact that there are outliers who do. It doesn’t make sense in the way that it doesn’t make sense when anyone discriminates against someone, whenever anyone commits a hate crime, whenever anyone hurts anyone unprovoked. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
If the veracity of the teacher is what’s being questioned, there’s nothing that can solve the issue other than reviewing the actual test. The OP seems pretty certain this wasn’t accidental, so I feel like playing the charade of figuring out what their kid still doesn’t understand wouldn’t solve the issue unless the teacher reviews the test and admits to mistakes. But if she were going to do that, she would have most likely done it by now after a request from the student/parent plus knowledge that administration has already been contacted about the issue.
Amazing! Thank you so much @understandingcollege
Sorry everyone, I’m back now, busy day today
Thank you all for your input, it’s great to be able to read everyone’s responses in terms of building a list of available actions
I also thought more about it & it ultimately came down to this: do I believe my daughter or the teacher?
It’s literally my daughter’s word (she thinks the grading wasn’t right) vs. that teacher’s, who verbally gave her the bad score
In this case, I’d like to give my daughter the benefit of the doubt.
Her reaction was more of surprise than anything, and given we’ve already been having this conversation many times in our family, it’s not like she’s embarrassed about it anymore. Like I’ve told her many times, even if she did get a C when we seek the records, I think she did the right thing in airing her concerns, when she really felt like something is amiss, instead of being passive and simply going along with someone in a position of authority/ taking “their word” for it just because.
The teacher, when asked, was unable/ did not want to show us the Canvas auto-graded score, which was strange to me.
The decision pathway for us is,
- If we seek the records, really get to the bottom of things, and
(a) My daughter’s feelings were right, the bad score was inaccurate/ unjustified, then it would be corrected, and we find out what was the true score, have it be reflected on her records. My daughter would share with the few of her peers who were affected about what happened & they would get their scores changed back too. The teacher would also have pressure to act more fairly in the future given this time they had to show accuracy of reporting. Overall effect: ++
(b) My daughter’s true scores per the verified records match the verbally reported ones. We can rest easy knowing our fears were unfounded. Given that everyone acted honorably in this scenario, there’s nothing to be ashamed of anyway. Overall effect: +
- If we ignore/ suppress our suspicions, just because it’s a potentially awkward situation and takes more work, then
(a) If our daughter’s scores were indeed pushed down, and so did the few others’, and no one did anything about it, because it was their word against the teacher’s, it’d be perpetuating the problem for no reason. Overall effect: –
(b) Even if our daughter’s scores were reported accurately anyway, because we haven’t verified, there would still be suspicion in my daughter’s mind, given that she would still doubt the teacher verbally reported to her the true score. It would probably affect her interactions/ learning in the environment, eg. if you suspect someone doesn’t like you or treated you bad, you’d probably not put in 100% either, even subconsciously. Overall effect: –
Thus on balance, we think it’s probably better we persist in getting to the bottom of this. Obviously this is the first time that (a) my daughter felt the grade was off to such an extent (having done so many years of school by now, she like many of her peers all seem well-versed in guesstimating the ‘range’ they should have scored in), and (b) the teacher verbally reported the score which my daughter questioned, without showing the graded exam, or even the score printout when we asked for it.
Thank you all for your input, there were some really helpful points shared here.
We’ll try to escalate things now. I’m not sure how long the process would take, but I’ll try to update you all (might not post as frequently), and given your help, I promise to let you know the result. At least, if someone here has a kid who faces a similar situation in the future, you’ll have more info at your fingertips on what to do.
If you think of other stuff, please feel free to post, I’ll check back every so often.
Is there another teacher instead of this one that your D can have next semester? I wouldn’t be looking forward to her having this teacher again.
Besides your D letting her fellow students whose grades might have been suppressed know if it turns out that there is a mistake, I’m still wondering about the other group of students who might have had theirs artificially boosted.
The whole class should have their exams regraded.
Looking forward to your update. I am glad you will be getting to the bottom of this.
I think you are missing a possible worst case outcome.
The grade proves to be accurate.
The teacher doesn’t brush off this incident, you get labeled as a difficult parent, that makes the rounds at the school (teachers do go to each other for support), your child doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt for any mistakes going forward, and she will need LoRs for her applications, which you don’t see and don’t know what is written.
You are obviously set on escalating and ignoring all other advice and comments, but hopefully you proceed as respectfully as possible with both the school and teacher. The “I believe my child above all else” and “it’s a conspiracy” isn’t the best starting position in this situation.
FWIW, I’d believe the policeman who pulled my kid over. Kids don’t want to get in trouble or disappoint parents. Much easier to shift the blame if they think they can get away with it. Not the best life lesson on personal accountability.
Agreed, it has been stated that this does not make a different for the grade, so this is basically labeling the teacher as doing something just to decrease OP’s daughters confidence in their ability. They are accusing the teacher of maliciousness against their child and others at the school. If they are wrong it will not be brushed off.