Student comment section on report card

Parents Forum
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<p>Seriously, there is so much capriciousness in high schools today, and teaching quality has declined to the point that it's only fair for students to be given the opportunity to provide context for their high school grades. Of course this will never happen, and it's unlikely that if it ever did, students would actually benefit. They would no doubt be seen as making excuses. Still, this year my D could write these comments for certain classes:</p>

<p>foreign language--had no teacher for 4 months, only a sub who did not know one whit of the language. For final exam project, teacher only had time to give input and corrections on rough draft for students with lowest grades--not mine.</p>

<p>science--took advanced level rather than honors, since knew would struggle with this subject. Teacher did not want to create different lesson plans for the two levels, so taught our class just like he taught his honors class. So it was the same difficulty as honors but without the benefit of honors weighting.</p>

<p>English--teacher never taught the literature herself. Divided us into groups every class for discussion and analysis. The blind leading the blind... Never graded half of our work, so seldom had input before next assignment due.</p>

<p>elective--in second-to-last class, announced final would be held next class, a Monday, rather than a week later as per the official finals schedule. Regrettably, I was on a red eye flight from the other coast (sister's college graduation) and returned home only 15 minutes before school started that Monday. Had not anticipated having to take a final on no sleep, since finals were not scheduled for that day. No exam make-ups allowed for "family vacations."</p>

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<p>@TheGFG‌ Though your daughter’s experience is rather extreme, my three teens have had quite similar situations, and I fully agree with your comment about poor teaching quality. Yes, there are some excellent high school teachers, but I am appalled by what my kids report about some of their classes. And we’re in a suburban school district which is considered one of the best in our metropolitan area. It makes me want to pull all of them out of school and homeschool them. Unfortunately, I’m not a good teacher either (I did homeschool one of them for middle school), so I don’t have a better option.</p>

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<p>@thegfg Similar experiences in our highly rated high school. What was really frustrating for DS was having the peer review assignments come back with positive comments, minor edits from the students and then get a low grade from the teacher. Not really sure what the purpose of the peer-review is if there is little correlation to how the teacher grades.</p>

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<p>And then there are the notorious differences between teachers, such that EVERYONE knows you want to get Mr. Smith and not Mrs. Jones for AP Calc, because Mr. Smith understands the math and knows how to teach it whereas Mrs. Jones doesn’t and your final grades will reflect that disparity. Yes, I know this stuff sometimes happens in college too. But if your kid is unlucky several times, that’s all it takes to knock them out of the top 2% of their high school class, off the honor roll, or out of NHS qualification, etc. and thus eventually out of college scholarships and admissions to certain schools. This is especially the case if mom and dad can’t afford the $80-125/hr. private tutoring costs to compensate for a poor teacher.</p>

<p>As for this being extreme, actually this is my youngest of three, and I could have written similar comments for the other two as well. They attend a well-regarded suburban public school, but lots of students get tons of outside tutoring which camouflages the problems.</p>

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<p>I continue to be happy about the level of teaching our local HS manages to maintain. The only bad teacher S had was in AP Physics. The students actually wrote a group letter to the administration to complain about him. He was replaced the following year. He had a couple of lackluster ones, but nothing like the OP describes.</p>

<p>BTW, capriciousness and erratic teaching quality are nothing new. I recall plenty of it in my top suburban HS circa 1970.</p>

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<p>@TheGFG‌ Do you have any ideas of solutions to the problem? I agree that something should be done, but my kids don’t want me to speak up for fear of retaliation. Ours is a small school and they may have to take other classes with those teachers. On a positive note, two of the worst offenders (terrible teachers) retired or were asked to leave this past year, at least one due in part to multiple parent complaints.</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t say a student comment section is necessarily the answer, but perhaps contacting the guidance counselor? I had similar struggles as yours and my GC was very helpful in explaining the situation</p>

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<p>@TheGFG I agree, developing a good relationship with the GC is the most important thing in cases like this. Discuss these issues with them and they can provide context in their reports. If there is really an outstanding situation that your D feels she must explain herself, that’s what the Additional Information section on the common app is for. But beware of sounding like you’re making excuses, just state the facts. </p>

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<p>You’re right; it’s completely unfair to judge people without a full view of the situation from their own perspective. Thank goodness it never happens in any other arena in life. </p>

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<p>^Lovely snark–are you a teacher? </p>

<p>You all must live in states with weak teachers’ unions. The principal admitted to me he has little control over his teaching staff (said that unfortunately he can’t make them do what he asks), and the GC just suggests the student avoid taking classes in the future to which the notoriously ineffective teachers tend to be assigned. Too bad if it’s an honors class that the student wants and needs. No one seems to feel the need or have the ability to do anything about poor or abusive teaching. The “life isn’t fair; deal with it” mentality is such a lazy response from an authority figure.</p>

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<p>I know I should not interupt this discussion, but the snark comment put me over the edge…</p>

<p>Happy to admit I’m a teacher; some comments on the student’s comments:</p>

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<p>Sorry about the sub, we have absolutely no control over them and always say it takes 2 days of time to miss 1 day of school. It is especially hard getting a language sub, as many schools are cutting electives and few want to risk the certification.
But the complaint seems to be that you were doing too well to get extra help when others were struggling. Did you ask for/need help? Are you upset that your classmates did get help and so their grades weren’t worse?</p>

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<p>Here the complaint seems to be that the teacher was doing a better job than you expected. Maybe you should be glad you learned more rather than missed the weighting? And perhaps the grading for your class was less stringent, or you were allowed to use notes on a test, or you had a choice of essays that honors classes didn’t. There are lots of ways to differentiate without covering less material, and with standardized testing, that’s often what we’re encouraged to do.</p>

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<p>Sounds like a good class - the Socratic method is a great way to learn to appreciate literature and discover it for yourself, rather than listen to a lecture. And we do want to encourage you to write often, especially if you’re college-bound, since it helps you to analyze the material. But 2 writing assignments a week for my 5 classes of 25 gives me 250 essays or short responses to correct every weekend. If I do only grade half of your writings, it should still give us both a good idea of how you’re doing.</p>

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<p>Sorry our schedules weren’t in sync. We have only a day or 2 to submit grades after exams, and that’s sometimes not enough time to grade, especially for a project or writing based assesment.<br>
If you were my kid, I’d have let you take a sick day. :)</p>

<p>And by the way, many of us do seek comments and evaluations from our students. We’re all learners.</p>

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<p>If this is true, your PRINCIPAL should not be a school administrator.</p>

<p>Our school requires evaluations be done by students for each teacher. They are done similarly to college classes…written by the students and put in a sealed envelope. </p>

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<p>If you are going to help students actually do a FINAL exam/project–note this isn’t helping them in advance, it’s actually helping them with the final–then it is unfair to help just some students. That means you are essentially curving the lower scores, not the entire range of scores.</p>

<p>If a student is being taught the exact same material as the students in the honors class, is doing the exact same homework and is taking the exact same tests, then how is it fair he doesn’t get the same weighting as the honors student? </p>

<p>Socratic seminars are formal and guided. They do not consist of freshmen ignorantly chatting about a piece of literature whilst the teacher shops on amazon.com. </p>

<p>For two months the school regularly e-mailed the final exam schedule. Last minute, the teacher decides to administer the final on a regular class day–not on one of the final exams days. So not only was the date of the exam moved earlier and at the last minute, it was moved up so early that it no longer fell into the scheduled final exam period. Doing this for all his classes gives the teacher a week off. Nice. I don’t lie to the school about attendance even when it would be convenient. That way I can firmly say “no” also to senior skip days etc. Interestingly, the principal told me I could have lied. Lovely. </p>

<p>You have no way of knowing if I am giving fair representation of the facts, and that’s fine. You don’t have to believe me because there have been plenty of studies done lately which indicate a serious decline in educational quality in the US. In the current competitive admissions environment, high school grades are more crucial than ever. At the same time, teaching is worse than ever. Not a good situation. </p>

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<p>I do believe you’ve represented the facts fairly - as you see them - and I was trying to show how they look to me. I just don’t understand how parent/teacher relationship has become so adversarial. We’re not out to get your kid, we don’t make all the rules and we aren’t responsible for the system. We do believe what we do is important, and whether you believe me or not, we’re doing the best we can, under conditions we all wish were better.
(And I’m using “we” to mean “most of us” who teach - I agree that there are bad teachers, as there are bad apples in every profession. But that’s not under our control, either.)</p>

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<p>Teaching has a very low bar for entry into the profession. My neighbor’s D is the type of student who initially failed the very easy high school proficiency test, had to take the Praxis several times, and yet finally scraped by and is ready to become a teacher if she can find a job. There are plenty like her out there: good and nice people who mean well, but simply aren’t very smart or well-educated. They themselves don’t know how to do what they are supposed to be teaching. After all, only a short time ago they went through the very same poor schooling my child is now experiencing. The older generation of teachers seem to be far more knowledgeable and professional. You likely belong to that group. </p>

<p>The parents I know who pay attention, talk to their kids, and are involved, have the same concerns I do. Obviously, there are plenty of people who think their kids’ schools are great. So long as they think that, life is easy for them and they don’t have to do anything. Meanwhile, DH I have to teach and re-teach every single night, and other parents do the same or spend thousands of dollars a year on outside tutoring. You can believe my children are especially stupid if you want, but both of the older ones were admitted to an Ivy and Stanford and did very well. So they are not afraid of challenge or hard work, which seems to be the default attitude about anyone who criticizes a teacher. Yup, that or they’re just so dumb they don’t understand what a Socratic seminar is and isn’t. </p>

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<p>You may not “make” the rules, but they are largely the product of 40-plus years of very aggressive union bargaining that, in some places, has resulted in work rules that would make a 1975 UAW local leader in Detroit blush. Parents have become more “adversarial” toward educators as the perception has grown that the latter are more interested in job security than student outcomes. </p>

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<p>I’m not looking to start the union argument (although as someone mentioned on another thread, attaining a good wage and job security used to be a good thing in American labor and the country does not seem to be benefitting from a change in that thinking), nor am I willing to admit that teachers are dumber than everybody else and the profession is going to hell in a handbasket.</p>

<p>If you care, here are some of my views from the trenches:: </p>

<p>We do spend 90% of our time dealing with 10% of the students - just to get them to sit down and shut up so the rest of the class can learn. And we know that affects the class’ learning, but class sizes keep growing and so classroom management gets harder. It used to be that you could remove a disruptive kid from a classroom, but that doesn’t happen any more. Administrators don’t want to deal with discipline (and their decisions about suspensions often get overturned at a higher level, so I’m not blaming them entirely). A disruptive kid now gets a “plan,” a series of steps to take to encourage better behavior. And that’s not a bad thing either, but if you have 8 or 9 of those in a class of 27, we spend a lot of time “warning” and “transitioning” and not so much teaching.</p>

<p>It takes time to get tenure (3 years in PA, where I teach). Let’s use that to evaluate teachers and show the lazy ones the door! Here I do blame the administrators. Observations are not what they should be, and 5 years in a classroom (which is what is required before becoming an administrator) is not enough to learn what makes a good teacher, or even how to tell a good one from a bad one. </p>

<p>And don’t even get me started on cell phones! My district, like most others, stopped fighting the phone battle and allowed them in the classroom. They are part of 21st century learning, after all - but it kills me to walk through my building and see both students and teachers on their phones!! Ok, I get that this is their future, and, yes, they have access to every piece of knowledge ever gleaned, but what good does that do them if they can’t apply it? And most of them are just wasting time - actually doing much worse, if the increase of online bullying is any indication.</p>

<p>I’m also getting tired of learning the “great new teaching system” somebody talks my district into buying every couple of years. We’re supposed to change our methods, redo our lessons and conform to “research-based procedures to improve student outcomes” - until the next one comes along. What a waste of time and money!</p>

<p>And yet, it’s pulling teeth to get a district to pay for a grad class where I might learn something I do need. I’ve spent $4,000 out-of-pocket on classes at Penn State in the past 3 years and I wonder why I had to. Seems like somebody should be making it easier for me to keep learning, not more expensive.</p>

<p>And you know, I don’t really mind the testing thing - I’d love a system that could tell me what my kids know and need to know compared to their national peers. But to use it as a punishment for both the kids and teachers is counterproductive. In PA, the class of 2017 can’t get a high school diploma unless they pass 3 paper-and-pencil tests. Great, so my kids who are behind, or whose talents lie in hands-on work (and who will make great welders, plumbers and hair stylists), will now have to leave without what everybody keeps telling them is a very valuable asset. Or worse, we’ll spend tons of time and money on alternate “projects” to satisfy the loopholes already built in to the testing requirements.</p>

<p>The really bad news is that I don’t see much changing unless we are willing to accept the notion that some kids learn better and faster than others, and if they don’t, it’s not bad teaching. But are we willing to go to a system where testing determines who gets more education, as they do in other countries? That’s just so, well, un-American, where we believe anyone can grow up to be President. And if that’s where we wind up (and the seeds are being planted), I’m glad I’ll be retiring before that.</p>

<p>What I do see coming is most kids learning from a screen, not a teacher. We’ll still need schools - after all, babysitting is a big part of the job - but it will be rooms of kids in front of screens with a few “facilitators” in the building to keep peace. Education will be cheaper, standardized, measurable, more effective and more efficient. And the idea scares the $@&)! out of me. 2084 anyone?</p>

<p>As I first said, I probably shouldn’t be in this thread, but I do believe more could be accomplished if parents could see teachers as part of the solution and not part of the problem, and the same for us and parents, but I’m not holding my breath.</p>

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<p>You know, we never believed teacher’s could be so awful until my D first started high school. Sure, the kids had had a couple teacher’s who weren’t “inspiring” but until 9th grade, we’d never encountered a teacher who simply didn’t care… who had truly tuned out or was actually incompetent. My D, who is passionate about her studies… who needs high level of intellectual engagement was hit profoundly by this. She had honors English teachers handing out crossword puzzles as weekly vocabulary work. It’s not an exaggeration when I say they were only given 1 book to read that whole year… in HONORS English. She had a physics teacher who insisted he wanted to “teach kids to learn” as opposed to actually teaching physics. The only kids who passed (mine included) were families who sought outside tutoring as the material was not covered in class… and it’s not like he HID this fact. In 2 years D had 3 student teachers and a permanent sub (and that sub was for Spanish… a language he admitted he couldn’t speak.) She so angry and then depressed… .didn’t help she was 14 and feeling totally powerless to change the situation. I talked to everyone I could and the whole freaking school was impotent to change. D’s grades tanked and we yanked her out of the school end of Sophomore year.</p>

<p>D did write about it in her college essay. She didn’t spend a lot of time on her teachers. She acknowledged it was a less than ideal situation but she instead focused on her response to it and how it hurt herself more than it “made a point.” Of course, it helped that D moved into a challenging middle college program and got straight “A’s” in difficult, college classes the last two years. It gave her more clout.</p>

<p>I think students must be very careful in how they approach this stuff in college apps. For D, it seemed pretty well received… in some cases, VERY well received. However, like I said, she didn’t spend her essay ranting on teachers… just focused on how she turned things around for herself.</p>

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<p>Unfortunately, the idea you’re espousing above is not only out of vogue in the larger American populace and some educational activists, but even within many Ed school cultures/K-12 educrat establishments. </p>

<p>It’s a factor in why educrats penalize teachers who cannot get every student to pass at grade level…even if the main causes are the fact he/she’s not putting in the work and/or prioritizing disrupting the classroom…sometimes violently. It’s also one factor in why so many once idealistic friends who went into K-12 teaching drop out before reaching the 5 year mark. </p>

<p>One major white elephant in discussions about K-12 education issues is the omission of the student’s responsibility in his/her learning process. In fact, many such discussions imply that they have no responsibility for it and their portion is often off-loaded onto the teachers. That IMO, is extremely unreasonable expectation. It also creates a disincentive for students to own their own part in their learning process as if they mess up in some way…“It’s always the teacher’s fault”. </p>

<p>Moreover, educrats who impose the latest passing fad theory from Ed schools and find they didn’t achieve the desired results also seem very inclined to blame the teachers first…</p>

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<p>Oh good…another teacher bashing thread.</p>