I’ve worked in K-12 public education for a number of years. It is unusual for a student/family not to be given access to a score report in the region of the country where I live. If the family/student offers to sit with the teacher to review the exam & report with no cameras, no leaving the room with the test, etc, and the teacher/school is still refusing, then I would definitely understand families who take it up the chain (teacher → school administration → district administration → school board).
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Thanks for the discussion! it’s great to hear everyone’s thoughts.
To add, my daughter is one of those types who has super thick skin (LOL, if i say so myself), so it’s not like she’s too emotionally sensitive to “handle the truth”, because sometimes i hear the stuff she and her friends say to each other and teenage girls can be brutally honest
If she got a C and the true Canvas reports actually show that, I think at this point she’d actually be relieved to find out her and my suspicions are not true.
But, & this coming from someone who’d dealt with types in the real world who have no problem lying until forced to produce real evidence, it’s not crazy in this day and age to think about the non-zero possibility that things like this can happen, intentionally or not
The situation just seems that after the teacher refused to show us my daughter’s Canvas report (even the numerical score report to confirm the # correct graded by computer), 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.
We’ll think about it more and probably decide something over the weekend
If there’s no bogeyman, why do we fear looking into the dark?
My my S got a grade lower than he expected, he asked the teacher to let him know which topics/areas he got wrong so he can focus on those.
Did your daughter do that?
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My son is a junior in college. He had a very hard class for his major during 20-21 school year. He nearly failed. He asked the TA to review some of his homework with him (not tests) because he felt he should have received at least partial credit. The TA reviewed, spoke to the the prof, and some of the grades on the homework were revised. He also asked the prof to review the tests he had taken. They wouldn’t show him the tests, and the test grades weren’t changed. The homework was a big chunk of the grade though and the change saved him from failing.
Then he got a tutor, met with professor a couple of times, met with the TA twice a week, and brought the grade up to a low C. But at least he passed. It was his fault though. He should have got help the minute he stepped in the class. He thought he understood the material. He did not want to talk to the TA or the professor. Then when things got really bad, he felt stuck. Yes, I gave him a giant kick up the backside.
I’m not saying this is the same situation as the OP’s daughter. I am saying that teachers and professors want their students to get good grades. They can be reasonable, and in the OP’s case, it seems they have been. Students often think they have a good grasp on material, then realize they don’t. There is ZERO benefit to the school and the teacher to give kids low grades. Yes, mistakes occasionally happen, and in my experience, teachers are willing to correct mistakes, but this doesn’t appear to be one of those times.
I feel for teachers right now. Everyone is so stressed these days, and to panic when a kid gets a C, which is a passing grade, then blame the school and the teacher for hiding things, is exactly why good teachers give up their careers.
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100%
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I don’t disagree with this at all. I also agree with Austennut, it’s the same at our local HS that any student would have access to their tests, grades, how assignments match up to the rubrics, etc and it’s incumbent on the teachers to provide the details and support why they graded things they way they did (of course some assignments/tests, etc are more subjective than others).
In the big picture the nature of HS grades has become transactional…students do work, teachers give grades. More students and parents are ‘negotiating’ grades and having success getting them changed, or being allowed to do extra credit, etc. There are many reports of students carrying this outlook (transactional) and these behaviors (negotiating grades) to college.
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To be honest I didn’t expect some of the replies to be so against even the action of merely asking for the numerical score reports
I’m sure some of us, in their experiences so far, have been fortunate to be in worlds where everything and everyone are perfect all the time, but it doesn’t invalidate the experiences of others
If everything is just as it is, why is it such a travesty to ask for the Canvas true report. It takes maybe 3 seconds to print out a sheet of paper
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My D was a grader for o chem and this is 100% true. They had some one who used a fraternity brother’s old problem set from the previous semester’s class put in for a regrade without even looking to see that it was a different problem set! Awful.
As for grading rubrics and such, that’s absolutely true for subjective papers in English and History but a multiple choice test should be pretty darn straight forward. Either the answer is correct or it isn’t.
In this case, the adms said they double checked.
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So to play devil advocate. I see no harm in asking the teacher for a sit down to go over the test and what the student got wrong. If for anything a learning experience to find the correct answer. If this is so much out of the norm for the child I might have a concern also but yes. We have all probably bombed a final before, right?
But, my son took a math test to place into high school. He has always been a 99% er. Math was easy for him. He took the test and was placed into lower math. This was so out of the norm for him. So we called the school board and they said they "never make mistakes. I sent them his previous standardized tests that all had him in the 99% nationally. That peeked their interest. They rescored it and somehow it didn’t scan like 20 problems, that he had all correct. In fact she told me like almost all the answers were correct…
So. Crap happens and if this is so out of the ordinary for your daughter I see no harm in trying to learn which answers were wrong as an educational tool, for learning purposes. I don’t see any teacher refusing to review a test with a student so they can learn what they got wrong.
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Because maybe that’s their policy? Because they double checked? Because they perhaps don’t like parents assuming they are trying to sabotage a kid’s grade? Because it would be incredibly time consuming if they did this sort of review for everyone who doesn’t like the grade their child got? There could be many reasons.
I think your view is completely focused on your child, which is natural. Maybe your child will take away something valuable from this experience. Maybe going forward she will find more effective ways to study, or go to extra help after school, or in college she will attend professor office hours and meet with the TA.
Best of luck to her. One C on a final exam is not going to stop her from getting into college, or a top college even.
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The most likely explanation for this policy is that the teacher reuses the same test year after year and does not want it leaked (even though it is still possible or partially possible - consider leaks of eventually reused SAT). Reusing tests is less work for the teacher, but has various disadvantages, including the situation described in this thread where the student cannot be allowed to review what they got right or wrong.
If a multiple choice test format is such that off by one question errors are possible, that is a possible reason for a student to do poorly despite knowing the material well.
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Yea it seems that many have missed the point of your post.
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Teachers need to create new tests each year. Many don’t but kids can pass on questions orally.
Our school swept some things under the rug, saying they had “checked.”
I hope this can be resolved in a non-adversarial way. Adversarial interactions can have longer term effects.
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This. There should be more parents like you who are assertive enough to get to the bottom of things that do not seem right.
Kids are impressionable enough & had you not found about about it and your son got placed into lower math, he might have internalized the message he wasn’t good at math after all, and it could have been a self-fulfilling prophesy on the basis of a false belief/ error by someone else. People could sometimes go on different trajectories because of that
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did you look in the student handbook? If it isnt their policy it isnt their policy. If they do it for you they will be obligated to do it for every kid in the school for every test, you are asking for special treatment.
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But it sounds like the OP thinks that this teacher may be targeting a particular group of kids based, perhaps for discriminatory reasons.
I’m in the camp that would ask the teacher to review the concepts and also ask to see the numerical output from the scantron.
Not necc true, my S24 was placed in a lower math class basically due to a miscommunication and I went with it. He has succeeded in that level and is extraordinarily confident in his ability and basic skills. The more advanced track may have been more challenging in the beginning but there may have been less early success and more doubts about previously held thoughts of ability.
Thank you all, I’ll be back tomorrow/ regularly to post updates, etc. Unfair things do happen & while we cannot protect our children from stuff all the time, at least i want to know i’ve tried to support them when they truly feel like something is wrong/ can benefit from an adult stepping in.
In this day and age, I know a sensitive matter when i see one & the demographic issue is the specific one which I think might be the fear of the school admin in releasing the true Canvas report. ie. Literally my daughter and the small group of peers who feel the grades for the multiple choice exam have been lowered are of the same demographic (a few other boys of another demographic had remarked in class they did surprisingly well), and yes, if the true Canvas reports when produced show that they had their marks pushed down, it’s going to look ugly
But to be honest, at this point,
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We’d probably be relieved if our suspicions weren’t realized, when the true Canvas reports are shown to us, which the teacher, then the school admin refused so far (they just said they “checked”)
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If the marks had been pushed down, I reckon as long as they fix it, we wouldn’t press on with too many questions, because I know as an adult in this day and age once the demographic issue gets reported/ brought out in public, the discussion can be really triggering and nothing hardly gets done by way of real progress it seems in terms of people’s private attitudes, but that’s just my opinion
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I’m another vote for politely taking it up the chain. Building principal then district superintendent then school board; try to get the other affected parents on the issue with you if you’re at the point of approaching the board. And if the school board president isn’t receptive, you can bring it up at a public school board meeting if you need to. This pathway holds you accountable as well: if it’s exceedingly likely that your kid just got a C without shenanigans, then you and your kid might not want to put yourself through this public and potentially embarrassing process, right? Good luck! Regarding discrimination, it would certainly not be the first time such a thing had happened.
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