My 9th grade boy with LD earned a D in his English class. During the marking period he missed 4 assignments. The teacher will not accept a missing assignment past the Thursday of the same week. He received 4 zeros for his missing assignments which affected his grade. When the teacher finalized his grade, she deducted 4 whole points off his grade because of the missing assignments, therefore failing him. He earned the zeros, which I accept, but then took 4 additional points off his final grade.
I am fighting this “double penalization”. I do not feel that was right. This is her grading policy, not a district wide policy.
I am having a hard time accepting this and feel I shouldn’t. He earned a D, not a F.
I was advised I should modify his IEP so he has more time to finish assignments when he needs it.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I do not know what else I should do. The teacher says this is her policy and is standing by it. This will be his teacher through high school and I do not want my son to face any issues because I want to fight this grade.
Any suggestions are appreciated!!
Re: Question about grading policies
The path of least resistance would be to suck it up and adjust the IEP so that this circumstance will not happen again. It seems unfair to double penalize a student. The other scenario which would be ideal is “tighten up” on the responsibility. It is my understanding that the there is a standard district policy for grading. In my district Special Education students are unfortunately graded on the same standards/benchmarks as regular education students unless otherwise specified by the IEP.
Is this really her policy? That is the question. Has she done this to any other students in your son’s class? If not, perhaps she is making things impossible for him to succeed and is screwing him unfairly because she resents teaching a student with an LD? It wouldn’t be the first time such things have happened.
My father, was a school education nazi. He rode me so hard it was horrible. He actually crossed the line into physical abuse over school work. One day in highschool he came home from meeting my teachers and he told me, he wanted me to drop my world history class. I was astounded when he said “the teacher is unfair and crazy.” It was the one and only time in my school carreer where he accepted someone else was going to be at fault for a poor performance by me.
So i guess my issue is, don’t you have any say so in who he studies with? Can’t he drop the english class or take it with an alternative teacher? Preferably one without a stick up the @$$?
My first step if i were you, would be to find out if this truly is her so called policy. My second step would be to circulate a petition amongst the parents if it actually is. Because if it is she is potentially screwing everyone’s kids out of a future at an ivy league with her double dipping penalization nonsense. Not only is she double dipping she is even tripple dipping. In the sense that if the kid gets the assignment done 3 weeks late, ok i can see knocking some points off for tardiness, to ad to the points taken away for poor word choice bad spelling and grammar, but to force a kid to take a 0 after an arbitrary date that she has cooked up based on…. numerology??? Perhaps a tarot card reading from a phone Psychic Lady Sheba??? Is just ludicrous. I am sure other parents would not approve of this policy either. That is perhaps one way to aproach it. Making sure everyone knows she is crazy in her grading policy and get other parents to complain with you.
Another thing you could do is talk to the principal i would guess.
But, having this nonsense explicitely disaproved by an IEP would be helpful if he is going to have to deal with her through out highschool. Though, I gotta say, having to write into the IEP that one teacher’s insane grading policy should not be allowed to be applied to your son seems somehow…. Just rediculous since this policy is unfair to all her students.
I am a fan of the finnish education system. Here is why. In finland, they have the strongest student union in the world. They also have one of the strongest teacher’s unions out there also. Infact more than 2 thirds of all mainstream teachers are trained in and use cutting edge special education techniques in their mainstream classes as a standard. What is more, the students of Finland are the most sucessful in the world. They are succesful, because teachers are supportive. Teachers have a job, their job is to teach. School is not a prison for punishment it is a place to learn and grow. If this teacher wants to penalize her captive clients so harshly and unfairly perhaps you should suggest to her that she take up a new occupation in a maximum security prison. There is tough and there is completely unreasonable. She has crossed the line. She is no longer teaching anyone anything and should be fired as her job is to teach rather than to abuse her students and weaken their opportunities for the future. By not accepting papers past date X, she is literally denying them the ability to correct an error of tardiness….
I dunno what to tell you. I wish i did. Honestly reading this makes me remember just why i hated school so much. Only in america can education be pore about penalization than about the transfer of information from teacher to student. Disgraceful.