WWYD: math teacher with strange grading policies

[Anonymous]

My oldest is a freshman so this is the first time grades are "real" and I struggling with what to do here and would appreciate some DCUM advice (even as a shudder anticipating the comments). Anyway, my son is in honors Alg II and the teacher has the kids take tests with a partner in a way that has started to drag down my sons grade. The way it works is that the kids are randomly assigned a partner and then they each get a slightly different test and then the teacher either grades half of each test and combines it into one grade or just grades one of the tests and gives both the kids that grade. The tests are taken with barely enough time to finish the test so there is not enough time to trade tests and check the partner's work. My son has a C right now instead of what would likely be a low A /high B because of this. Other quarters he has been able to eek out a B+ or an A because he lucked out with partners but this quarter it seems his luck has run out. it is an honors class but any kid can take honors at this school and the class is a mix of 9-11th graders. My son wants to go into STEM so his grades in math to matter. And he will likely have this teacher for 10th and 11th grades as well.

The teachers generally has an attitude of "don't worry so much about grades or where you go to college" which I think contributes to the teacher's general attitude about this.

So WWYD DCUM? Do I do nothing? Reach out to the teacher? Reach out to someone else? Quietly seethe?

[Anonymous]

This doesn’t even make sense. Why is his grade based off of another students test?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t even make sense. Why is his grade based off of another students test?

OP here. I have no idea. This teacher has other unorthodox policies (uses a reverse classroom except on days of tests when she likes to introduce a new very complicated topic for the first 50 minutes and then give kids the last 30 min to complete a test once they are already kind of tired and burned out from learning something new). During back to school night the teacher said nothing about this partner test concept.

[Anonymous]

Email the teacher to clarify then follow up with administrator. If this is true, it’s insane

[Anonymous]

Wtf that’s insane. Yeah I would be going to see the principal in person tomorrow. The teacher is obviously a complete idiot and needs to be literally fired. Who knows what other crazy stuff is happening in his classes!!

[Anonymous]

Check in with other parents.

This is a class wide catastrophe, or your kid is confused.

[Anonymous]

What school district?

[Anonymous]

This is a fake story.

You're pondering this now, in March, when the school year is more than half over?

I (with a college kid and a high schooler) would have complained to the Principal in the second month of school. This is not sound teaching. It breaks all rules of teaching ethics to assign a grade to a student that he or she did not earn themselves.

Even if you're a laissez-faire parent and pathologically clueless, I can't believe other parents have not reacted and demanded the teacher follow conventional instructional methods.

This story does not make sense.

[Anonymous]

OP here again. I have checked with other parents (including parents of very Type A kids), they have verified the partner grading policy. I know several parents are upset but our kids do not want us to say anything because they are worried the teacher will retaliate and they know they will have this teacher for pre-calc and calc because he is the only one who teachers it at the school.

I don't want to say the school district but it is a suburban school district that is generally thought to be good but not amazing (ie not a "W school" or Langley).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again. I have checked with other parents (including parents of very Type A kids), they have verified the partner grading policy. I know several parents are upset but our kids do not want us to say anything because they are worried the teacher will retaliate and they know they will have this teacher for pre-calc and calc because he is the only one who teachers it at the school.

I don't want to say the school district but it is a suburban school district that is generally thought to be good but not amazing (ie not a "W school" or Langley).

Not possible. All the parents I know would demand that this teacher change their grading policy and they wouldn't be fazed by fear of retaliation. I have older kids, and they each had one really bad teacher that their schools could not fire. One was the only AP Calc BC teacher in the school, and the other was the only physics teacher in the school (doing Honors and AP Physics C). But despite being very difficult to learn from in various ways, their grading policies were the ones required by the school system and they did adhere by the rules. Hence why they were not fire-able (just really bad teachers - and you can't tell a bad teacher to teach better, they can't do it).

This is entirely batshit crazy and you parents should have complained to the Principal in the fall. There is no "retaliation" possible here. The retaliation part is a red flag for trolling, actually. All you're asking is for this teacher to abide by conventional grading methods. You're not asking for them to be fired. Public school teachers are used to fielding all kinds of complaints. If the Principal comes to them and says: "confirm for me whether you've been half-assing the grading and if you have, stop that right now and grade everybody's tests correctly", the teacher can't do a darn thing.

[Anonymous]

OP here - thanks all. I wish I were a troll. Honestly when my kid was getting better grades I did not ask for details on the test taking conditions and so did not fully appreciate how the partner tests worked until recently. The teachers actually is very good at explaining the material (since it is reserve classroom I can hear the lessons) so hopefully we can get this grading stuff changed and teacher can stay.

[Anonymous]

I would have said something in the fall. This is crazy and not fair.

[Anonymous]

I’d report this to principals and let them reprimand the math department.
Give them 30 days.
Demand bussing to school of your choice in that district. Or voucher for private school.

You don’t mess around like this with your four year transcript. And algebra II in 9th grade implies smart and in the fast track sitting in class with normal class 10th and 11th graders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t even make sense. Why is his grade based off of another students test?

OP here. I have no idea. This teacher has other unorthodox policies (uses a reverse classroom except on days of tests when she likes to introduce a new very complicated topic for the first 50 minutes and then give kids the last 30 min to complete a test once they are already kind of tired and burned out from learning something new). During back to school night the teacher said nothing about this partner test concept.

What a lazy “teacher”.

Reminds me of mater school when they said you “teacher yourself at home vis class video recordings” and then “come to class with your questions!”

Like it’s some college uni British tutorial class for 20 yos who already had a read math teacher teach them in high school (or A levels).!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d report this to principals and let them reprimand the math department.
Give them 30 days.
Demand bussing to school of your choice in that district. Or voucher for private school.

You don’t mess around like this with your four year transcript. And algebra II in 9th grade implies smart and in the fast track sitting in class with normal class 10th and 11th graders.

Really it’s a 3 year transcript you send the colleges. 9-11th grade. Then you send one later as verification that you graduated