Report Card Disaster

[Anonymous]

So we just got our 5th grader's report card, and after a long run of straight 4's he abruptly ended up with a mix of 2's and 3's for this quarter. We have no idea why, from all the work we've seen he seems to be performing up to his usual standards and his parent teacher conference was quite effusive; the best theories we have are that either he somehow managed to screw up several big assignments without telling us (and without those assignments having come home yet) or he simply rubbed his teacher this year the wrong way somehow and they chose to conceal their dislike for him at the conference. We've reached out to the teacher, but I doubt it'll change anything.

This is a problem because he's applying to private schools for next year. His ISEEs are 8's and 9's, and as I said his previous grades are outstanding, but between this and what I assume is a correspondingly poor teacher recommendation I'm feeling like his odds have just gotten a lot longer. (I guess the good news is that only his 4th grade GPA counts for public school and he'll easily sail into a screened program there - and Hunter/Stuy after that based on his test-taking skills)

My questions are:

a) are we in fact as doomed as we think we are; and

b) is there anything we can do at this late point to soften the blow? Is it worth writing an explanatory letter after we talk to the teacher? One school asked for a second recommendation and that one came from a teacher who likes him a lot better (and gave him better grades), but even if we asked that teacher to send a letter to other schools, I doubt they'd have it before the end of next week, which I imagine is much too late to matter.

[Anonymous]

You are in fact doomed if one of your working theories is that - teacher doesn’t like my kid! What kind of silly excuse is that?! TT do not want parents that will give them a hard time like you seem to be. Unless you have some real concrete evidence to have come up with this then you’re doing yourself and your child a disservice

[Anonymous]

Yeah, because nobody has ever had a teacher have it in for them before.

It was a surprise and I don’t have a better theory, I don’t know why you’d harp on that specifically. Frankly if TT schools have parents like you I’d much rather he go somewhere with nicer people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, because nobody has ever had a teacher have it in for them before.

It was a surprise and I don’t have a better theory, I don’t know why you’d harp on that specifically. Frankly if TT schools have parents like you I’d much rather he go somewhere with nicer people.

Public school? Kick and scream. Drive the principal bananas until s/he agrees to review the grades. My experience with the DOE and DOE staff is that they'll give in eventually. I understand being reluctant to be "that parent" but that's the way it goes with public school. It's up to you to advocate for your child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, because nobody has ever had a teacher have it in for them before.

It was a surprise and I don’t have a better theory, I don’t know why you’d harp on that specifically. Frankly if TT schools have parents like you I’d much rather he go somewhere with nicer people.

Then don’t go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Public school? Kick and scream. Drive the principal bananas until s/he agrees to review the grades. My experience with the DOE and DOE staff is that they'll give in eventually. I understand being reluctant to be "that parent" but that's the way it goes with public school. It's up to you to advocate for your child.

Thanks - you’re right, I should push back harder, we’re done with the school after this year regardless so if I walk away from this with a bad reputation it’s not going have any long term consequences.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP- Before you kick and scream, you need to prepare. You need to find out the basis of those 2's and 3's b/c administration will back a teacher without your proof. I did this for my child in 4th grade when a 1st year teacher was sloppy with the grading. Marched right in there with a spreadsheet of my child's grades on whatever tests, papers, and assessments I could get my hands on (which was all of them, including all 4's on the state exams). The principal was forced to override the teacher. And there was no good explanation for why the teacher demoted her grades from the teacher or the administration. Also, 4th grade counts more than 5th in your application . . . but a severe drop is problematic.

[Anonymous]

Are these the only 5th grade marks the schools you’re applying to will see? Don’t know nyc public school report card calendar. Seems late in the process. Do schools wait this long to receive them? I’d have thought they’d already have done a first pass through the apps. And you’re right, I’d worry about the rec letter too.

[Anonymous]

What did your child say about the grades when you asked?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP- Before you kick and scream, you need to prepare. You need to find out the basis of those 2's and 3's b/c administration will back a teacher without your proof. I did this for my child in 4th grade when a 1st year teacher was sloppy with the grading. Marched right in there with a spreadsheet of my child's grades on whatever tests, papers, and assessments I could get my hands on (which was all of them, including all 4's on the state exams). The principal was forced to override the teacher. And there was no good explanation for why the teacher demoted her grades from the teacher or the administration.

They haven't sent home any graded work, which in retrospect should have been a red flag; even with the tests it sounds like they show them to the kids briefly and then collect them. So I'm unfortunately not in a position to challenge their math based on any material in my possession, though I can - and probably will - demand that they cough up all of his graded work now if they're claiming the grade is based on that.

He remembers getting a so-so grade on one test, but he doesn't remember why, and they don't seem to have raised any issues relating to that test with him, and certainly not with me; also, the grade was not inconsistent with grades he got on tests last year when he still ended up with 4's.

Anonymous wrote:Also, 4th grade counts more than 5th in your application . . . but a severe drop is problematic.

That's good to hear, and suggests that my focus should be on limiting the drop (= fixing the 2's) rather than ending up with all 4's.

Anonymous wrote:Are these the only 5th grade marks the schools you’re applying to will see? Don’t know nyc public school report card calendar. Seems late in the process. Do schools wait this long to receive them? I’d have thought they’d already have done a first pass through the apps. And you’re right, I’d worry about the rec letter too.

Yes, unfortunately. Weirdly enough, the comments on the report card were quite positive, so it's conceivable the recommendation is too and they're just doing something weird with their grading math; at least that's my hope.

Anonymous wrote:What did your child say about the grades when you asked?

He was puzzled, he did not have the sense he was doing any worse than last year. He took particular issue with a few of the subskill grades; for example he feels like percentage-wise he's contributing to class discussions more than his average classmate and yet got a 2 on that.

[Anonymous]

I would follow up with the teacher to express concern both as an indicator that your child might be struggling in math (and you would provide support), but also that you are applying to independent schools and want to make sure this is an accurate reflection of his math ability in school.

[Anonymous]

How’d the rest of the process go - interviews, etc? I wouldn’t freak out per se over this one set of grades but it does leave a bad taste at the very end. Might hurt your app in the eye of a super academic TT but doubtful it tanks your app across the board. I feel for you, it’s a tense time!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public school? Kick and scream. Drive the principal bananas until s/he agrees to review the grades. My experience with the DOE and DOE staff is that they'll give in eventually. I understand being reluctant to be "that parent" but that's the way it goes with public school. It's up to you to advocate for your child.

Thanks - you’re right, I should push back harder, we’re done with the school after this year regardless so if I walk away from this with a bad reputation it’s not going have any long term consequences.

Your reputation doesn't matter for public school. Do what you need to do for your child. BTDT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How’d the rest of the process go - interviews, etc? I wouldn’t freak out per se over this one set of grades but it does leave a bad taste at the very end. Might hurt your app in the eye of a super academic TT but doubtful it tanks your app across the board. I feel for you, it’s a tense time!!

Thanks! That all went pretty well, he seems to have genuinely bonded with a couple of the interviewers (shared hobbies / book interests).

We ended up getting the 2's upped to 3's, but it seems like the two basic problems were:

a) Some incomplete assignments, which neither we nor he knew about, though they claim to have told him. There was no mention of any missing work in the parent-teacher conference, and no email or other feedback home about it; we had no inkling about it until this week.

b) Apparently, having been very focused on the ISEE this fall, he applied ISEE protocol to a couple of math tests - went through them really quickly without showing his work - and got dinged for that in math.

They also reassured me that they wrote him a good recommendation - that the grades unfortunately could only reflect the work he turned in, but that they assessed him as much brighter than that. Nevertheless I'm exceedingly ticked off that they did not warn me - and arguably even actively misled me - about how he was doing in class, and at myself for taking their word for that and not insisting they send home every assignment as it was graded.

So maybe still salvageable - we'll see in a few weeks - but the in retrospect very obvious takeaway is that if you're currently in public school but planning to apply to private schools for middle, you need to be *extremely* pushy about getting feedback early; demand all graded work as soon as it's graded, check in every couple of weeks, basically make it impossible for them to give your kid anything less than a 4 by forcing them to account for every way your kid is falling short of that standard in the moment and addressing it with your kid in each case.

Once all of this is settled, I plan to write to the principal + district pushing for grades 4/5 to adopt open gradebooks (Jupiter/JumpRope) like they use in middle school; particularly given the return of screened admissions, I think grades in upper elementary school are too important to be only tallied up irregularly, and families ought to have a running average available throughout the year.

[Anonymous]

OP so… teacher doesn’t hate you guys. Good to hear