Email school or let it go? (grading issue)

[Anonymous]

Who cares about the difference between an A and an A- in middle school? Who would actually start a thread like this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Was it an excused absence? Why didn’t he hand it in the next day or send it electronically?

+1 It sounds like he did earn an A-. Rules are rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would have YOUR SON email the admin(you can of course help him) He deserves the A-that is definite and the teacher should have caught the fact he was absent and sick. He turned it in the next possible time he was in school. All legit for no points take off for being late.

However in HS, teacher really want to see kids advocate for themselves. Heck even in MS it is great practice. It was a crazy end of year andhe was sick, just explain to him that the email should come from him, help him out and he can also cc you on the email to the admin.

He didn't, though. He turned it in two days after he came back. "Block scheduling" is not an excuse for this. He should have turned it in the day he returned. For middle school, I am sure he could have found time to drop it off in her classroom, and even if he couldn't do this during lunch or between classes, he could have asked another teacher for permission to take it during the last 5 minutes of a class. There is no way this boy was completely unable to drop off the paper the day he returned. No middle school teacher would have refused him permission to deliver his paper at the end of their own class period, or he could even have asked another teacher to give the paper to the English teacher, OR he could have emailed the paper to his English teacher, either as a Word doc or a scan. A kid who takes two days and blames his schedule just doesn't care enough to get the work turned in on time.

Either way his assignment was not missing and doesn’t deserve to be left at a 50% in the grade book. His current grade is inaccurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it an excused absence? Why didn’t he hand it in the next day or send it electronically?

He did. He handed it in the next class which was Thursday due to block scheduling, but the teacher didn’t change it from missing (50%) to the actual grade.

OP - I would resend the email and cc the principal. The grade should be changed.

OP, thanks, you are correct. There was no way to hand in electronically. He was sick with strep throat on the Tuesday it was due. He handed it in during the next class period on Thursday.

Absolutely follow up with the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn't you have the son email instead of doing it yourself (serious question)? he can cc" you if you want the admins to know youa re involved.

actually, if a kid emails from his @fcpsschools.net account he cannot cc parents unless they happen to be fcps employees.
In an effort to make the email accounts "safer" for kids fcps made it so that they can only email other @fcpsschools.net or @fcps.edu accounts.
This also means that teachers can't email kids and also cc parents (something I often do at my nonFCPS school).

Yes, we can. We use our fcps.edu accounts and can easily email students at their fcpsschools.net email, as well as CC parents/guardians on the same email.

[Anonymous]

Has OP updated us?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it is important to your son, there is no. harm emailing the principal. I am just shocked that a 'missing' still gets 50%!

Because you can't do math. For the thousandth time, for whatever stupid reason this 100 point grading system was originally invented for, it really ended up only being used for the last 40 points of the scale for a grade above failing. The divisions of grades are incorrect for an even system. An A should be 100, B should be 75, C should be 50, D should be 25, and F should be zero if you want a full scale of 0-100, but that wasn't done. For some reason D was moved up to 60. Regardless of why, people realized that it was a flawed system that wasn't broken up correctly but instead of changing all the passing grades, they just made the floor 50 so A-D didn't have to change, which is perfectly acceptable when each other division is also 10 points.

Can we ever be done with this argument?

Ok, but my child is in a school in a different area that also uses a 100 point grading system, that also only really uses the top 40 points of the scale as you have described above. However if my child gets a 'missing' she gets a big fat zero for this assignment on her grade book which can have a really negative effect on her gpa. However if she got 50% rather than 0% for the assignment her grade would not be impacted as severely. What is wrong with the math here?

What you are describing here is the EXACT reason that many schools have now made a 50 the bottom of the 100 point scale. A zero can cause a disaster - a 50 not so much if it's only one. Think of it this way - if you are using a 4 point scale an A is a 4, B is a 3, C is a 2, D is a 1, and F is a zero. An F is not a negative 6 on a 4 point scale.

Thanks - I get it, maybe it isn't such a bad thing. I wish my kid's school had this system. However, the pp says I can't do math - which is incorrect. A 0% still has more of an impact than 50% on a 100 point grading system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why wouldn't you have the son email instead of doing it yourself (serious question)? he can cc" you if you want the admins to know youa re involved.

actually, if a kid emails from his @fcpsschools.net account he cannot cc parents unless they happen to be fcps employees.
In an effort to make the email accounts "safer" for kids fcps made it so that they can only email other @fcpsschools.net or @fcps.edu accounts.
This also means that teachers can't email kids and also cc parents (something I often do at my nonFCPS school).

Yes, we can. We use our fcps.edu accounts and can easily email students at their fcpsschools.net email, as well as CC parents/guardians on the same email.

perhaps this glitch has been fixed. for a long time this did not work - admittedly, I have not worked in the county for several years. it is still true however that a kid cannot email his teachers and copy his parents and a parent cannot email a teacher and copy the student. we have tried. it doesn't work.

[Anonymous]

One thing I wonder if OP has considered is he turned it in and the work was terrible so the teacher just let the 50 stand. I have done that. Kids score a 35% on the rubric but I don’t want to score them lower than a kid who did nothing would get so I round it up to a 50. Typically that comes with the chance to redo, but not in the last week of school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing I wonder if OP has considered is he turned it in and the work was terrible so the teacher just let the 50 stand. I have done that. Kids score a 35% on the rubric but I don’t want to score them lower than a kid who did nothing would get so I round it up to a 50. Typically that comes with the chance to redo, but not in the last week of school.

Or- maybe he didn’t actually submit it but told you he did. Kids are notorious for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it an excused absence? Why didn’t he hand it in the next day or send it electronically?

+1 It sounds like he did earn an A-. Rules are rules.

No it doesn’t sound like he did. The assignment was still listed as a 50% in SIS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing I wonder if OP has considered is he turned it in and the work was terrible so the teacher just let the 50 stand. I have done that. Kids score a 35% on the rubric but I don’t want to score them lower than a kid who did nothing would get so I round it up to a 50. Typically that comes with the chance to redo, but not in the last week of school.

Doubtful as the kid had an A already in the class up to that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing I wonder if OP has considered is he turned it in and the work was terrible so the teacher just let the 50 stand. I have done that. Kids score a 35% on the rubric but I don’t want to score them lower than a kid who did nothing would get so I round it up to a 50. Typically that comes with the chance to redo, but not in the last week of school.

Doubtful as the kid had an A already in the class up to that point.

Yeah but he was absent and it was the last week and he turned it in 2 days later … he might’ve rushed it. Keep in mind, the A could’ve been from the benefit of the retakes we have to allow kids now. You never know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing I wonder if OP has considered is he turned it in and the work was terrible so the teacher just let the 50 stand. I have done that. Kids score a 35% on the rubric but I don’t want to score them lower than a kid who did nothing would get so I round it up to a 50. Typically that comes with the chance to redo, but not in the last week of school.

Doubtful as the kid had an A already in the class up to that point.

Yeah but he was absent and it was the last week and he turned it in 2 days later … he might’ve rushed it. Keep in mind, the A could’ve been from the benefit of the retakes we have to allow kids now. You never know.

No because retakes can only earn 80% max - that’s not an A.

[Anonymous]

I’ve been in the same situation - but let it go bc it was a middle school class. As others have said only high school matters.