Seeking Parent Experiences With Unresponsive MCPS Administration

[Anonymous]

Looking for advice from other MCPS parents. My child is in 6th grade at a school where a language class is required, and we are dealing with a teacher situation that has become incredibly frustrating.

The teacher rarely returns graded work, grades appear subjective with little or no feedback, and neither students nor parents receive responses to emails. Canvas is not updated in a meaningful way, so it is often impossible to tell what assignments are missing or why grades were given. If a student misses class due to illness or another legitimate reason, there is essentially no opportunity to make up missed work or instruction.

There have also been multiple instances of inappropriate or off-topic discussions during class. Most concerning, the teacher recently told students that they are basically done teaching for the year and that the remaining three weeks should be treated as a study hall.

Several parents, including me, have already contacted guidance counselors and school administration, but nothing meaningful has changed. Since raising concerns, I feel my child’s grades have become even worse, with no transparency about how they are being determined and no opportunity for her to learn from mistakes or improve.

At this point I am trying to understand what recourse parents realistically have within MCPS when administration appears unwilling to intervene. Has anyone dealt with something similar? Were you successful escalating to the principal, district office, or Board of Education? I am especially interested in practical next steps and documentation strategies.

Please do not ask me to name the school or teacher publicly.

[Anonymous]

1. Contact. Do you have the right email address? Sometimes teachers prefer a specific one, which they usually give out during Back To School Night. Ask the counselor, and CC the Principal, for a meeting with the teacher if you cannot contact them successfully.

2. Grades. See 1.

3. End of year shenanigans. Yes, right now, a lot of teachers are switching to babysitting mode. My son's AP World History teacher apparently didn't teach them all the units, so *after* the AP exam, he went crazy and wanted his students to finish the missing units. This led to my son working through the weekend AFTER the last day of the school year, to get an A in the class. It was nuts, completely nuts. But most teachers are the opposite: they front load so they can relax a bit at the end of the year.

3. Why are you suddenly waking up now? May 28 isn't the time when anyone is going to be responsive, OP. This is on the parents, too. The time for establishing contact with a problematic teacher is in the first semester.

[Anonymous]

^ sorry, messed up by bullet points

[Anonymous]

That was our experience in HS with a language teacher and my kid dropped language as that teacher would be their teacher the following year. Best thing we did was get an online tutor to strengthen that language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That was our experience in HS with a language teacher and my kid dropped language as that teacher would be their teacher the following year. Best thing we did was get an online tutor to strengthen that language.

We have a poor, but not quite as bad as OP's experience, with our kid's middle school language teacher. We didn't complain as strongly as you did, but when I contacted the guidance counselor, it was implied that the language teacher had "known issues," but that she is close to retirement, so nothing was going to change with respect to her employment. We ended up getting an online tutor too.

I guess you could cc Taylor and BOE members and see what happens, and I imagine you'd get more of a response, but it's still the case that it's difficult to discipline (let alone fire) union protected teachers.

[Anonymous]

New teacher?

[Anonymous]

Pull them out of the class or if you still want them to learn that foreign language, insist on a new teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Contact. Do you have the right email address? Sometimes teachers prefer a specific one, which they usually give out during Back To School Night. Ask the counselor, and CC the Principal, for a meeting with the teacher if you cannot contact them successfully.

2. Grades. See 1.

3. End of year shenanigans. Yes, right now, a lot of teachers are switching to babysitting mode. My son's AP World History teacher apparently didn't teach them all the units, so *after* the AP exam, he went crazy and wanted his students to finish the missing units. This led to my son working through the weekend AFTER the last day of the school year, to get an A in the class. It was nuts, completely nuts. But most teachers are the opposite: they front load so they can relax a bit at the end of the year.

3. Why are you suddenly waking up now? May 28 isn't the time when anyone is going to be responsive, OP. This is on the parents, too. The time for establishing contact with a problematic teacher is in the first semester.

I have done 1 and 2 since tbe start of the quarter. Let my child handle it through guidance in quarter 3 when we realized this was not a situation she could just do her best and get through. She has documented emails and appointments where she requested a teacher change. Since the start of quarter 4, I got involved. I reached out to the teacher 3 times over email, then twice with guidance copied, emailed the grade level VP and had a phone conference. Nothing has changed. Now I want to ensure that no other students has their love of school and this language crushed by this unprofessional POS, to be quite frank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Contact. Do you have the right email address? Sometimes teachers prefer a specific one, which they usually give out during Back To School Night. Ask the counselor, and CC the Principal, for a meeting with the teacher if you cannot contact them successfully.

2. Grades. See 1.

3. End of year shenanigans. Yes, right now, a lot of teachers are switching to babysitting mode. My son's AP World History teacher apparently didn't teach them all the units, so *after* the AP exam, he went crazy and wanted his students to finish the missing units. This led to my son working through the weekend AFTER the last day of the school year, to get an A in the class. It was nuts, completely nuts. But most teachers are the opposite: they front load so they can relax a bit at the end of the year.

3. Why are you suddenly waking up now? May 28 isn't the time when anyone is going to be responsive, OP. This is on the parents, too. The time for establishing contact with a problematic teacher is in the first semester.

I have done 1 and 2 since tbe start of the quarter. Let my child handle it through guidance in quarter 3 when we realized this was not a situation she could just do her best and get through. She has documented emails and appointments where she requested a teacher change. Since the start of quarter 4, I got involved. I reached out to the teacher 3 times over email, then twice with guidance copied, emailed the grade level VP and had a phone conference. Nothing has changed. Now I want to ensure that no other students has their love of school and this language crushed by this unprofessional POS, to be quite frank.

The Principal should have been involved if you wanted the school to do anything.

We hired tutors when it was clear the school had difficulty hiring teachers and could not change a teacher’s behavior. It happened this year in my kid’s AP Physics C class. No physics graduate wants to teach K-12, so the schools can’t find worthy people.

[Anonymous]

OP, in a nutshell, this is why people put their kids in private schools. At any cost. You're dealing with MCPS. You think it's going to change?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, in a nutshell, this is why people put their kids in private schools. At any cost. You're dealing with MCPS. You think it's going to change?

I considered it but they would have lost 2 years of math progress. No private school I visited had math on par to MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking for advice from other MCPS parents. My child is in 6th grade at a school where a language class is required, and we are dealing with a teacher situation that has become incredibly frustrating.

The teacher rarely returns graded work, grades appear subjective with little or no feedback, and neither students nor parents receive responses to emails. Canvas is not updated in a meaningful way, so it is often impossible to tell what assignments are missing or why grades were given. If a student misses class due to illness or another legitimate reason, there is essentially no opportunity to make up missed work or instruction.

There have also been multiple instances of inappropriate or off-topic discussions during class. Most concerning, the teacher recently told students that they are basically done teaching for the year and that the remaining three weeks should be treated as a study hall.

Several parents, including me, have already contacted guidance counselors and school administration, but nothing meaningful has changed. Since raising concerns, I feel my child’s grades have become even worse, with no transparency about how they are being determined and no opportunity for her to learn from mistakes or improve.

At this point I am trying to understand what recourse parents realistically have within MCPS when administration appears unwilling to intervene. Has anyone dealt with something similar? Were you successful escalating to the principal, district office, or Board of Education? I am especially interested in practical next steps and documentation strategies.

Please do not ask me to name the school or teacher publicly.

Last name begins with K?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, in a nutshell, this is why people put their kids in private schools. At any cost. You're dealing with MCPS. You think it's going to change?

I considered it but they would have lost 2 years of math progress. No private school I visited had math on par to MCPS.

Your kid isn't a high schooler at Blair Magnet. You could have found a private school that didn't lose you two years of progress.

[Anonymous]

If they're unwilling to intervene it means that they have tried, and failed, to find a better teacher for that class.

You should have had an in-person meeting with the Principal by winter break, OP, but it's not too late to suss out why they did nothing, and what they plan to do regarding cogent instruction for next year, since apparently the teacher is here to stay.

But can I say something? Your experience doesn't sound too bad, in the grand scheme of things. I've heard of language teachers leaving for the year and the kids getting a long-term sub that *could not speak the language*. Happened to my best friend's daughter at Sligo years ago. One of my kid's math teachers refused to give him all of his 504 accommodations and the school didn't lift a finger because it was during the pandemic, and only affected my kid. And so on and so on. In my kids' elementary, one teacher was a habitual yeller and she's still there, apparently.

Basically unless there's downright abuse or racial slurs... nothing is going to get done.

And yet, I still think MCPS does an excellent job overall. It's a large school system, with many cracks, but the overall level of instruction is vastly superior to most other public school systems, and for AP and post-AP classes, to most private schools.

[Anonymous]

You can go over the principal's.head to their associate Superintendent and reach out to the head of the mcps language department. The middle school grade does not have to count towards the overall high school gpa unless you want it to, I believe...so in the end, recognize this.