Isn’t this what you did? The score has been checked twice. It is very possible, as @ucbalumnus said, that the teacher reuses tests. What will be gained by your daughter seeing the numerical score? Is it possible that the issue with this lies with Canvas’ system? What is the benefit to the school and the teacher to hide information from you and your child?
The biggest problem is this:
I don’t mean to be snarky, but I am wondering if your daughter and her friends have some insight that would lead them to believe this scenario is plausible. Does the school have a history of covering up such behaviors? Does the school have a history of PR snafus? What is the motive for denying the student access to the actual test? This theory is, quite frankly, stretching the boundaries of credibility.
The best thing to do is to have your daughter reach out to the teacher and find out where she didn’t do well on the exam. Getting a “C” isn’t the end of the world and every student has times when they don’t do as well as they think they did on a test. Just because she didn’t feel like she got a “C” isn’t proof that there is some conspiracy to penalize her (and other students).
One of mine ended up failing a math midterm. He had done all the homework and had done OK on the preceding tests, but made lots of mistakes on the test. He went over it with the teacher and she honestly said he got the material and there wasn’t anything specific he didn’t understand or was doing wrong.
Did you ask just to see the Canvas report (what is that) or for the teacher to go over the test with your student and help her understand where she went wrong). I don’t get why the teacher the wouldn’t go over the test with the students. Even if she uses the same test, reviewing is a good part of learning.
Do you think the Canvas did not record all of her answers or that your dd maybe bubbled incorrectly (missed one and some answers were off by one)? Or are you thinking there was some type of curving or voiding of certain questions to reduce the grade of one group and raise the score of another? That is a big accusation and highly unlikely! Although unfortunately there have been exceedingly rare cases where test scores were manipulated.
I think the biggest issue is that she thought she did well. So if there is nothing to hide, shouldn’t the teacher want her to see what she didn’t understand? See what she didn’t learn so she knows in the future?
To be fair what happened to my son was very out of the ordinary. He was already in advanced math with just 12 kids and already studying subject matter well beyond what they were testing for. His principal was going to contact them if our appeal didn’t solve anything, it was that strange. It only effected him. It wasn’t a global issue affecting others. We put our feelers for others to if issues and it was just him.
Again, I just think it’s reasonable to have your daughter go over the test with her teacher to learn what she got wrong so she will know the information later on. Doing that she will see what she got wrong /right.
I have no trouble believing the OP’s child earned a C, but think the teacher’s response to a request to see the numerical score is odd enough that I understand why the child is jumping to all kinds of conspiracy theories. In high school and thus far in college, no teacher has ever refused to discuss a test with the child/adult - taking it is a whole different story as many have mentioned reusing of tests. A refusal to show the numerical score is just weird. Even in college where often all that pops up is the final grade, if the child had a question on the final grade vs expectations and emailed the professor to inquire about their final grade, they had no issue providing the information.
And I’m probably more than a little more open to “hey if something smells weird” as one of my child’s teacher’s in high school complete threw out the final after an issue with other classmates cheating, changed the entire grading scheme and then bungled the math on final grades as she had to override the system the final was now worth 0. She ended up with a grade that made absolutely no sense based on her results. After my daughter’s attempts at an explanation were futile. I became involved and SHOWED her that her math was wrong and she still refused to acknowledge the problem. I had to involve the principal and good 1/4 of the class had their grade changed because of her utter incompetence and refusal to fix the error when it was pointed out.
PRECISELY. Obviously having gotten thus far in life, we have a solid grasp of real world situations, which is why the sense that something is really amiss that we decided to jump in and get involved ourselves, it just didn’t seem right.
To clarify,
The exam was run on Canvas as a multiple choice exam.
After the exam, the teacher “muted” the automatic score report for Canvas, which would have been available to indicate the computer graded # correct.
Then, they verbally told the students what they got, the numerical grade for the exam.
My daughter was told she got a numerical grade which translated to a C.
The “checking” the school admin did so far was to literally email us a reply saying they “checked” (no Canvas printout, which is specifically available by the way, for the numerical score), and they left it at that, saying they “checked” and nothing was wrong. No documentation or Canvas printout of the computer scores, which we specifically asked for.
That’s why the situation got totally bizarre, it takes 3 seconds to print out the page from the website, but even now the official numerical score from the multiple choice exam is still “muted” for us on Canvas
Op- your D can reach out to the teacher, tell her that her studying plan was likely “off” since by the time she took the test she was VERY confident that she understood all the concepts and could do all the calculations, so she’d like to sit down and learn where her understanding of the material fell short so she can better prepare next time.
There’s no need to escalate (yet) if the teacher is open to a “here’s what you need to learn” session, vs. what the teacher might have perceived as “we’re attacking you for not giving our kid an A”. And a review session will either yield that your D actually deserved a better grade, OR that she got the wrong answer due to careless mistakes, running out of time, etc.
A teacher paranoid about leaks of a test that is intended to be reused may believe that post-test review may give the student a way to pass information to later students (e.g. younger siblings), as in “the question about ___ was hard, and it looks like the answer was ___ but was really ___”.
Note that the College Board offered the question-and-answer service (where the test taker got the questions, the test taker’s answers, and the correct answers) only for specific SAT dates, presumably those where the tests used were not going to be reused in the future. This seems analogous to what is a likely situation here.
Of course, the lack of transparency by itself makes the student and parent (like the OP) more suspicious, as well as preventing the potential learning benefit of reviewing the test. It would be better if the teacher did not reuse tests, and reviewed the answers (when I was in high school, reviewing the answers was the norm after the teacher graded the tests and returned them to the students).
Even before that, the auto graded Canvas score report showing the # correct on the multiple choice is available, but they just refused to show it to us.
ie. They literally just verbally told my daughter what she got, the numerical score which translated to a C.
Then even after I reached out, they refused to show or provide the auto-graded Canvas score report, which would have shown us the number correct.
The “checking” the school admin people did was to email us with a reply saying they “checked” and nothing was wrong. That’s it. No documentation or Canvas printout like we asked for, the printout takes 3 seconds, but the report page on Canvas has been placed under “mute”, so we can’t view the score on Canvas directly.
It’s really the sense that something is amiss that we decided to jump in (in the past if it had been just kids stuff saying mean things to each other, we’d have told our daughter to focus on the big things). This time we felt we had to get involved ourselves, it just didn’t seem right.
The exam was run on Canvas as a multiple choice exam.
After the exam, the teacher “muted” the automatic score report for Canvas, which would have been available to indicate the computer graded # correct.
Then, they verbally told the students what they got, the numerical grade for the exam.
My daughter was told she got a numerical grade which translated to a C.
The “checking” the school admin did so far was to literally email us a reply saying they “checked” (no Canvas printout, which is specifically available by the way, for the numerical score), and they left it at that, saying they “checked” and nothing was wrong. No documentation or Canvas printout of the computer scores, which we specifically asked for.
That’s why the situation got totally bizarre, it takes 3 seconds to print out the page from the website, but even now the official numerical score from the multiple choice exam is still “muted” for us on Canvas
My daughter and I think a few of her peers in the same situation are worried as they have the same teacher next semester, and especially if there’s more “discretionary” type grading thrown into the mix (this time it’s just all multiple choice), my sense is they should resolve the situation asap
In other words, the teacher and administration appear to be acting like they are guilty of something, which naturally causes you to speculate on what they may be guilty of.
We had an issue once with a state exam. It’s required and they made a mistake on the math portion. Gave the wrong instructions and my kid and one other strong math kid finished the math portion early. Then they realized the mistake and refused to let these two kids finish the next page. So they lost points.
When pressed, the principal pushed it under the rug and so did the teacher. We went to the Superintendent and assistant superintendent. The AS, was great and cleaned it up. They never reported it to the state.
The principal actually bullied my kid to back off. I asked to see the policy and met with the principal. I also reported the issue to the state who then corrected the school report. My kids was graduating the school so timing was important. Also, my kid was applying to some programs where it could have impact.
The lesson, some people will push something under the rug if there is an issue. I’d ask nicely to see the policy regarding Canvas grades in writing. Then I’d meet with top person and communicate same. If I didn’t get the info, I’d say I’ll be having my attorney contact the school board within 48 hours and also writing a letter which will be communicated to the school board. I will be raising the issue until you resolve it based on the school policy.
Bet you get a response. Also, is there a way to request in writing your kid not be placed in that teacher’s class again?
I understand their worry. I also believe that admin would say they “checked,” when nothing much was done at all.
I don’t understand why one demographic’s results would be lowered, while another’s one would be raised at the teacher’s discretion. Don’t the school report cards usually show info on standardized tests? Or do yours show grade distributions?
Regardless, I think it is suspicious that you can’t see any information. When it comes to what schools do, nothing suprises me anymore!
Having been out in the corporate world I know people fudge stuff to suit their personal whims all the time - eg earlier on in my career i remember one supervisor was notorious for giving kids with a HIGH GPA a hard time when on a panel interviewing them, because (apparently) he didnt want to have someone be hired who had a higher GPA than he did.
We still try to teach our kids to have trust in the system, do the right thing and trust in the process, but it’s not like teachers are incapable of fallibility, personal prejudices.
I mean, it is not that hard to print out the Canvas score sheet, showing just the numerical scores even.
Instead, the teacher just verbally told my daughter the score, and muted the automatically generated computer score on Canvas, which would have shown up otherwise. If the Canvas score sheet matches/ or even is close to what my daughter was told verbally, why is it so hard to produce
I’m not suggesting you blindly “trust the system”. I’ve suggested away to turn the situation away from something combative and suspicious into a learning opportunity. Which may soften up the teacher, and get everyone to back down.
What is to be gained by continuing to suspect that something nefarious is going on if- in fact- your D missed several questions and got a C? Why not have your D take the lead here and ask the teacher for help reviewing the material?
That said, I’d like to point out another common error in multiple choice exams is misreading a question. Often they are worded in a way that makes it easy to not understand what the question actually was.