Canvas, not the teacher, corrects the tests? What?
I am glad to have never heard of such a thing. Yuck.
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What evidence is there that:
- The teacher downgraded her score compared to what she actually earned.
- The teacher did that intentionally.
- The teacher did that specifically against the students you are referring to.
?
That the teacher is being inappropriately secretive about the test would arouse suspicion in a lot of people, but the above speculations seem a lot less likely than the obvious more likely explanation that the teacher reuses tests and is paranoid about leaks, to the detriment of such things as post-test review, grade verification, and trust. Grading errors could be an issue, but they are much more likely to be unintended mistakes than intentional targeting of some students.
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That is a SECONDARY issue.
To me, the threshold issue here is the parentâs/studentâs legal right to see their own work product. The other issues are secondary. The OP should be able to quickly ascertain that with an appropriately worded email and/or checking on school policies via online r//////h.
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My kid teaches at a university and makes a new test each time.
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Exactly. Time to think about filing a Freedm of Infomation request.
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Just checking back in after being off all day yesterday. Maybe I am less of a pot stirrer than the rest of you but if this is a HS student with more time with the teacher (and possibly siblings behind her), this seems like creating problem that doesnât yet exist. OP say you are correct, say your daughter did earn a B- and there was a curve or even malicious intent that made her grade a C, you said that this did not change her grade and she will have the same teacher next year. Unless she is leaving the school what does pushing this further help? And most likely she got a C!
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There is no doubt that you are 100% convinced that a conspiracy is in place to destroy your daughterâs academic career.
Has something else happened this academic year with this teacher that is pushing you in this direction?
If yes, what else happened?
If no, what is you theory as to why multiple people in this school, out of the blue, at the end of the school year, are willing to risk their careers to academically attack your daughter?
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I disagree with all these people. You know the school and teacher and your daughter. She herself, felt that she had done well on her test, which if you have a child, you would know that they are fairly accurate with judging how well or not they have done. I think if you have the instinct that something is fishy, it might be. Whereas all these people who donât know the school or you are ready to say that you are wrong, paranoid, sensitive, and shouldnât risk your futureâŠâŠcrazy talk from people who donât really know any of the actors in this situation.
I have never heard of canvas, but what use is an exam which doesnât let you see where you made faults?
I keep thinking of some girl (was it in the Middle East or AfricaâŠcanât remember), who was told she failed her tests, when she knew she had done well. Found it:
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If you and/or your student went to the school with the assumption that the score was wrong and the school is intentionally involved in a âcover upâ, thatâs a lot different than the student starting with the assumption that there was a knowledge gap. From what you shared, it sounds like you went on the offensive immediately. Iâd dial it back a notch, or two. I hear my dadâs voice in my head telling me that you catch more flies with honey.
Iâm wondering out loud what the grade distribution curve looks like for this exam and if itâs consistent with tests the rest of the year. I would think if there was an error in the grading on canvas, many, many students would be impacted, not just one or a small handful. Maybe thatâs what the administration means when they say they checked and everything was in order.
Lastly, if you are so convinced that this school is acting unethically, you may want to look for a different school for next year.
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While it might be unlikely this is a case of high-level corruption, in my experience it could EASILY be a situation where âmistakes were made.â
Maybe it is different at your schools, but my child has routinely had assignments listed as missing that were not. She has had assignments where she was given half credit because the teacher overlooked entering her grade for half of the assignment. She has had grades entered as zero because her name is the first on the class list and there was a data entry error.
It happens all the time and is generally fixed with a quick visit with the teacher. Talking to administrators usually does not help because they defer to whatever the teacher says is correct without independent verification â which would not happen absent some kind of formal complaint/appeal process.
Now it is the end of the year and many teachers and administrators are busy and/or checked out and donât want to do a forensic examination of one studentâs results.
So do I think there is a wide conspiracy to hurt this studentâs grade? Probably not.
But does that mean the grade is correct? Not necessarily.
Both things can be true. And I return to the larger issue â learning. The point of the test was not to obtain an A, but to master the material. If the student did not master it, it is reasonable to expect some specific feedback so the student can improve future performance. And the feedback necessary to improve learning should also expose any mistakes that may have been made. (Or malfeasance, in the unlikely event the teacher did something intentional.)
Asking for purposes of learning is both more relevant to the reason for taking the class and less confrontational and more likely to get results than demands for evidence and proof.
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I donât understand a teacher not wanting the student to understand what she got wrong. Why canât they see the score reports? I believe OP wasnât assuming issues until she was denied any information. Case in point- my son recent thought he did really well on a maths exam. As it turns out he did really badly. He completely misunderstood a concept. He was given the paper and saw his errors. Learned the correct information and will know it for the future. Isnât that important?
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Multiple choice tests can be tricky. Not only do you need to know the material but you need to correctly read the question and understand the logic involved. A question along the lines of âwhich answer below cannot be an explanation for the observed phenomena?â requires thinking, not memorization. Itâs possible to do poorly on a multiple choice test, even if you feel you know the material, if you donât read the question carefully. I think the most likely scenario is that the daughter earned a C.
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Students frequently think they did well on a test, and really did not, as well as the opposite case. It is quite common for students who did well on practice tests to not perform well on the actual exam. Some students are able to accurately gauge their performance, but many are not.
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Yes, thatâs whatâs important. From what the OP has said, they have not asked the teacher to help the student understand what she got wrong. They have asked for the score report to verify the teacher isnât lying about the students grade.
It seems OP is jumping to the teacher intentionally reducing her childâs grade, instead of working with the teacher to figure out what if any deficiencies her kid has.
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OP, youâve gotten a lot of feedback here. What next steps do you plan on taking?
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But the question is, why are those responsible unwilling to show the actual results? I assume they have nothing to hide and there is no conspiracy, but everyone has a right to see their results: what they got right and what they got wrong. Donât understand the lame excuse of copying examsâŠ
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Have you written exams in the last 3 years?
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Be more specificâŠ.have I taken an exam or have I set one? Neither.
Have I seen my Dâs exam results? Always. Everything is written and they donât generally use multiple choice here. When she did the SAT, she received the numerical result. We could have paid for a copy of her correct/wrong answers, but didnât bother.
As the child, sibling and spouse of teachers, I have every sympathy for the profession, but that doesnât mean that I support teachers who act unprofessionally.
I have never seen any of my kids exam results, maybe in elementary school. I donât know if they had exams returned to them, I doubt it. The amount of cheating that went on during Covid was insane.
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Thatâs how multiple choice tests in all of the LMSâs are generally handled. Auto-scored. You may not have heard of this, but chances are your kids have encountered it frequently.
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