Reply to Has Anyone Been Able to See Their Child's Mid-Term Exams?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here -

The school is saying to be able to see all of my daughter's exams (5 exams in total), I have to contact each teacher and each department head and schedule each as a separate meeting.  The meetings can only be held before school (which would be before 7am) or after school (at 2pm), not during their 1 hour lunch period because that is considered teacher planning time.

In a sense, their demands is denying me access because I do have younger children that are home in the mornings that I have to see off to school (try hiring a sitter to do that before 7am - impossible) and I do have a job.  I can take off 1 day, maybe 2, but I cannot take 5 days off from work and the commuting time alone traveling back and forth would be ridiculous.

I actually work on Capitol Hill and know a lot about FERPA.  I have quoted it to my principal and she doesn't bat an eye.  The problem is in the enforcement - not much teeth in that department and a pain in the ass to file a complaint through the Dept. of Education.  I also think (and so do some colleagues) that in today's day in age, FERPA needs to be amended to give parents and students the right to have copies of their educational records, not just to be able to read them.  If I could demand a copy, then these ridiculous meeting times would not be a roadblock to me reviewing the exams with my child and my child would be able to reference them when preparing for the final.

What good does it do the students to have them take a 2 hour exam then never see the actual result?  What good does it do MCPS to gather the data then just chuck it somewhere under lock and key that it seems that no one even knows where all the paper goes?  Such a waste of time and money and loss of educational potential.

[/quote]

Do you actually need to have the teacher present when you review the exam?  I think this would only be necessary if you didn't think you could look at the exams yourself and see what the right answer should have been.  This might be necessary in a subject like Algebra or Science or in an English or World Studies class where the answers were essays and you might need an explanation about how the grading rubric was applied.

[b]If you don't need the teacher, write the principal back and say so and that you want to see them all at once and give one or two date/times when you would be free.  Explain again about how the offered option doesn't meet the FERPA standard of access. [/b]

Sometimes it is possible to tell without the teacher why the student did poorly (didn't finish all the Qs, consistently made certain kinds of mistakes, didn't enter answers correctly on scantron, etc.)  But, sometimes it's not (don't know the grading rubric for an essay, don't know the substance well enough to see what the right answer was, can't tell from the test how much each question was worth, etc.)  If you need the teacher, you're sort of stuck getting on the teacher's schedule, but he/she should absolutely accommodate you during lunch or a planning period, especially with an advance appointment, because these are usually the times that they are regularly available for students.  Ask your child when she can seek help from a teacher in normal circumstances at her school.   
 
[b]You should make sure to go in with your student together to review the test.  It's a better learning experience for them that way.[/b] [/quote]

OP here again -

To the PP above, what I bolded makes complete sense and that is how I approached my conversations with the Principal and Assistant Principal at our school.  Yes, it would be logical (inconvenient for a working parent) but logical to have one meeting where all the exams are present at one time so I can look over them with my child.  I don't care who the staffer is that meets with us.  It could be any warm body in the building that is put in place to make sure I don't alter or copy the documents (heaven forbid they should be copied).

My child school has stated that it is a requirement that both the teacher and the department chair be present just so I can see the exams with my child.  These meetings therefore have to be at separate times because they all cannot be coordinated for the same appointment.  As a working parent, that requirement is infringing on my rights to have access to the documents because multiple 20 minutes appointments means I have to lose a significant amount of work time and travel expense to view the documents.  By the timeline they gave me, my child would miss 2 1/2 hours of instructional time in two of her core academic classes to see the exams with me.

My daughter has a learning disability.  Her performance can be inconsistent and long tests seem to be especially problematic for her.  I can look at the test patterns and tell were there careless mistakes made, see if her performance waxed and waned as she took the test, or did she miss whole concepts all together and truly struggled, consistently throughout the entire test.  I also look to see which parts of the tests tripped her up the most - was it the essays or did she have problems with the multiple choice.  I have never challenged a grade that she has received.  Looking forward to college, we would both just like to review the tests to see if there are better ways for her to prepare in the future and to know what concepts she needs to go back and relearn.  She is still learning how to study and how to take long tests - skills she will desperately need to have by college.

My children began taking 2 hour exams since 6th grade.  The comment several PP's ago that these tests are only taken in high school is inaccurate.  To do the math - if a child takes 5 academic classes, those classes have approximately 8 unit tests that are "secured documents" that don't come home for parents and students to review.  To see all the unit tests for one child, that would be about 40 appointments.  If parents also need to see the exams, 5 exams twice a year would be 10 more meetings.  Therefore, a parent would need to schedule about 50 appointments to see all their child's unit tests and exams.  If you have two children, that would be 100 appointments, and so on.  Impossible for the parent and child to get much needed feedback so the child can learn from his/her mistakes.

To the PP that complained about these test being distributed across the county, for other assessments such as Map-R, Map-M, and standardized testing such as the Terra-Nova and 2nd grade GT testing, there is a test window period that all the children have to take the test.  When the window closes, the student cannot take the test.  For unit tests and exams, MCPS can have a similar test window so then the exams can go home after the test window closes.  Simple, no one then would have access to the current test during the testing phase of a one or two week window.  The kids though could use their unit tests to review prior to taking the mid-term or final exams.

Sure the county would have to rewrite the tests every year.  But don't they do that pretty much already?  The curriculum is constantly changing - some new material in, some old material out.  The tests already have to be updated with these changes.  Also, rewriting tests isn't reinventing the wheel.  You move some questions around.  Reword some of them, keep some of them, throw out some, and add some new.  As one PP pointed out, often the rewriting is how tests are improved on and made better over time.  Things get tweaked where they need to because patterns are evaluated to see if an unusually high percentage of students tripped over a particular question.  [/quote]

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