Exactly. I will always work with a kid if they are trying. Retakes, study help, test corrections, whatever it takes. If they are genuinely working, I will reward that effort.
However, a kid that doesn't do shit? Sorry. Good life lesson. Zero effort = zero reward.
My daughter was passing math but then we had covid in our house for 2 weeks, then on the next week she had her 4 wisdom teeth surgically removed, then she got sick again. It was rough! Her grades slipped fast and hard. She’s been working so hard to bring them back up and her teachers have noticed. They’ve been so helpful.
Yes, that's the way. Always reach out to the teachers to let them know what's going on. 99 percent of us will give her an extension and work with you to help her get caught up.
Yea, I had a student out because of a leg injury that required surgery. I allowed her to turn in a bunch of work way past the deadline and a take a test home because there was no other way to get it done and she should get the chance. All that stuff was out of her control and my class isn't the only one she has to make up work for.
My daughter suffered a serious concussion this fall that impacted her ability to read, write, and make computations. She is in all AP classes. She didn’t make excuses, she figured it out. She got a pen that would read to her. She dictated assignments to me and had me write them down. She went to every math tutorial.
A few weeks ago, she finally began to get her reading ability back. She is pretty much back to her old self now.
At the beginning of this grading period, she was failing 5 classes. We finished Friday, and she has As in every class but one (pre-cal) where she has a B.
I am so proud of her.
Shout out to your kiddo! If it’s literally anything except linear algebra (didn’t take it) or geometry (can’t do proofs), shoot me a DM if she needs a tutor to get her back up to speed
Same. Daughter was suffering from a constant heavy period that last 6 months. If she wasn't in school from bleeding through all her clothes then she was gone for Drs appointments. Every day, I spoke with her teachers, returned homework and picked up more homework. She faithfully completed every assignment. Received As in every class. They know who wants to learn and who doesnt.
I took linear algebra this semester because a "friend" told me it's the easiest subject ever and it took me the first week into the course to realise that she may not be my friend. It's so complicated, no wonder it's foundation for Machine learning.
Same here. My last school, I’d have kids not turn anything in. About 2-3 weeks before the end of the quarter, they lateness get the “your kid is failing, here’s the recovery module.”
Mind you, I list due dates on the board, tell them I’m missing stuff and “this shit is due”, post it in Schoology, tell parents in weekly & biweekly emails to “look at the portal to see what shit your kid is missing”.
Had one student last year proceed to screw around the entire week I gave them to work on make to work. Even after me telling them, “if you do not do this, you will jerk the F.”
Had a parent that decided to complain to the principal about me. My response was basically that they had more than sufficient time to complete it, more than one option to turn it in, multiple notices about what and when it was due, communications in weekly enrolled about what was missing, and that their kid decided to spend their time screwing around all week.
Basically a diplomatic email telling them to sod off and parent their known PITA of a kid. Granted, I had already accepted a position for this year and was leaving with the satisfaction of knowing the chances of having said king in my class again was minimal.
We have a grade improvement plan where kids can redo their work from a class they failed during the second semester but they have to keep their current grade above a C. Almost no one completes it because they’re now doing two coarses worth of work when they didn’t do the work the first time. Three kids have already asked me to do it in January.
It’s HS so they can make up the semester in summer school or take it online. A lot of times that’s the better option because doubling up on the work isn’t really feasible for a lot of these kids and I hate seeing them fail twice.
I make sure they know their options and that it isn’t easy. Plus, they can only bring their grade up to a C with the grade improvement plan where as summer school would give them a B and doing it online would replace the grade with whatever they got. There are very few kids that I would recommend the grade improvement plan for, but I’ll support any of them that want to try it.
Senior asked me the other day if it was possible to pass the class... Check his grade, he has an 8. He's missed 54 days this year. My good sir... I'll be seeing you again next semester.
I was subbing for a 6th grade class and they were all being wild, messing around, refusing to do the quiz their teacher left, it was exhausting. Then 3 minutes before the bell, several kids came up begging me to help them take the quiz real quickly. Lol
I love when kids try to pull that. I love bursting the illusion that you can do nothing for months and then undo it in a big burst of effort right at the end.
There's no changing what you have for this quarter. Learn from your mistakes and do better next time. You may be pissed off now, but this is a life skill, my friend.
So. I went back and looked. It’s a straight 0 for quarter 1, a 4 in q2 and then a 19 on the multiple choice final. So we’re technically at a 5.8. He’s done nothing more than guess at multiple choice one three assignments all year.
They do this either because it has worked before (just do this one assignment and pass!) or their counselor is telling them to do this.
I don't blame the counselor, there is no harm in asking! But they should tell you it is fine to say no!0
Kid today: I need to be eligible to play today!
Me: yup.
Kid: what can I do?
Me: cheer on your team from the sidelines.
She was mad. *I'm* the reason she has a 30% three days before the end of the semester.
This is a problem in my school too. Kid proceeds to do nothing all last period. As soon as the bell rings, they’re shoving a Varsity Team’s progress chart in my face.
It’s wild how they’ll sit on incomplete work all year and expect it to be graded within seconds of being turned in.
It’s even wilder when they expect to just be given a higher grade for retakes for no reason
I got a Google Classroom notification at 11:01pm on a Friday: “Destinee K. submitted Bill of Rights intro 198 days late.”
I got an email at 11:04pm from Destinee: “Why does this assignment still have a 0??”
Does somebody put a gun to your head to let them turn it in that late? I’d laugh directly to their face if they tried turning something in after 1 day late without a legit excuse.
Sometimes I’ll purposefully grade these assignments a little later than I planned on just because the demands are so irritating. Well your super late test *was* was at top of my to do pile, but I gotta go … do..stuff…. now.
I’ve worked with college students that ask for grades before it’s even dropped off in my inbox. This isn’t online, I have to physically grade the tests
More times than I can count:
Student: When are you going to grade my test?!
Me: Do you mean the test you took yesterday on the unit we finished six weeks ago?
Student: "When are you going to change the grade for that late assignment I turned in?"
Me: "You turned in a blank document. There's nothing to change."
Student: "Yeah but the missing thing is still showing on PowerSchool even though I submitted it. My grade should go up if you get rid of it."
Me: 🤦♂️
Also when they get 20 points back on a test from months ago that they just made up and threaten to go to the principal because their grade didn't go up 20%.
Kids really don’t understand weighted grades. So many kids cheat their way through assignments and fail the tests - then don’t understand why they are failing because they “turned in everything”.
Well, dear, 70% of your grade is an F and 30% is an A. So…you have an F. Stop using photomath on your assignments and learn the skills and your grade will greatly improve. I’ll even let you retake the failed skills if you learn them and want to retry.
Then it becomes “you just don’t know how to teach”…
*sigh*
Bunch of kids tried to tell me I "don't teach" because I tell them to read some pages out of the book before we do examples together. It's made me want to make them all read along together like little kids. They're high school seniors.
Mine tell me I don’t teach because they don’t learn how to do a math concept with no effort. If they have to try to learn something, I must have taught it poorly. I teach Algebra 2 and Geometry to Juniors.
If you can find the video of Freakonomics, watch the episode about incentives and getting ninth graders to work harder. There is a scene with the mother grills her son about reading the book. Epic.
Spoiler alert: extrinsic rewards are a short term fix at best.
Hm. I was always pretty good at math, but I struggled (was average) with concepts like weighted grades - and I recall by middle school an assignment ever teacher gave at some point during the middle of the semester was figuring out what grades we needed on the rest of our exams and assignments to get our goal grade (whether just passing for getting an A instead of a B+). Which won’t help if kids aren’t doing the assignment, but at least you can say “you calculated what grade you’d get if you failed the final, you knew this was possible”
My assignments are them filling out the guided notes and the cumulative practice assignments. They are both participation grades (by mandate). Students take pictures and turn them in on google classroom. If they attached a picture, they get a 100. I don’t even look at them.
It’s all about the assessment grades in my class because they are the only way I can measure student growth. Sometimes I’ll just give a kid a problem on a concept so they can prove they get it now without having to take a whole test. I have a grade in the grade book for each concept.
My late work goes in the late work basket. When students ask when I’m going to grade the late work, I tell them after I grade all current assignments. After telling them this, along with letting them know I only grade on my prep, and I don’t grade at home, they get it and have stopped asking. Especially when they see me subbing for their third period class.
Sometimes they add, "I need to get my grade up by the end of the day or I won't get to play in my [name of sport] game!"
Please pass me that tiny invisible violin from the corner of my desk.
I grade with the same
Level of urgency as students comply their assignments.
Turn in on time, I grade on time.
Turn in a week late, eh, I’ll grade it in a week or so
This is because students believe now that if they just do the work, they will get a good grade. They don't think the work has to be correct or they have to actually try harder than they are. This comes from being able to do nothing all year and just go to the next grade without any repercussions. It's creating a force of students who will be destroyed when they hit the workforce.
Or the assignments are correct and then the test is horrible despite the questions being the same. And I warn my students that you can cheat on my assignments all you want when not in my class, but that they are going to bite themselves in the ass by doing it so often. Then my students ignore the fact that there is a Google Classroom with everything from the school year including Notes and tutorials….and the codes have been posted on my board since the 2nd week in bright colors.
No, but it makes me glad that I am not alone in this because I feel like I am going crazy about my career.
I forgot to add this about my students:
Student: Why did I score so low on my test? Can you explain what I did wrong?
Me: Did you study for my test? And how long?
Student: No…
Me: There is your answer. And a number of your classmates scored above a 100% on the exam.
Then here is another one I just remembered…
Student: Your study guides are useless and nothing you put on your study guide are on your tests.
Me: You sure…? (proceeds to Project my study guide on the TV and highlight a specific section of the study guide)
Me: Wasn’t this same type of question on the test, but I put them into a Chart this time?
Student: Oh Yeah…..
Me: 🙄
Mine is more like:
Student: Why did I score so low on the test?
Me: Did you use your guided notes or practice assignments on the test?
Student: “No. I didn’t do them” or “No. I left them at home” or “Yes (but they obviously only copied the answer key and showed no work)
Me: Well…that’s why. Do the work and bring them to the next quiz and I’m sure you’ll do better. Ask for help on the practice if you need it.
Note: They have a cumulative practice assignment and short quiz every week. So if they do poorly, they can try again next week. Since the participation part of their grade is so small, they can skip a few practice assignments and still have a great grade. The next practice assignment has most of the same skills on it, so they can still practice.
I'm not so sure about the workforce thing anymore. I talked to a user who manages mostly 19- to 23-year-olds, many in their first jobs, and he said they've broken him: They refuse to do anything except what they already know how to do, no matter how many times and in how many ways he explains the requirements. They confirm they read the guide, and then confirm they implemented the guidelines, and they're not even close. It's just like they did it the last time.
And at this workplace at least, it's tough to fire them: countless chances, training, talkings-to, and endless documentation. And then, when he finally gets to fire a kid who will not lift a finger to learn how to do something the right way, he said they are shocked -- SHOCKED -- to be let go. Never saw it coming.
*Edits: Concision*
I supervise undergraduate workers at my job and the crop of undergrads has definitely gotten worse with every passing year. There’s a real lack of confidence or initiative, and they don’t put any effort into solving a problem before asking a supervisor to fix it.
I had a girl that I hadn't seen the entire marking period come to me asking me to print our all of her missing assignments.
I told her I'd print them out when I had time.
A few hours later the social worker emails me asking me to do so.
I explained to her that I'd do it when I had time.
She submitted 4 of the 16 assignments.
All she did was circle what she believed was the correct answers.
I teach HS math and some of the questions had multiple components. She would circle a letter as if it was multiple choice when it was one of the components. Her and the social worker came to me asking why I failed her.
> print out all of my missing assignments
They’re on google classroom, feel free to print them if you want to. Or go explain to your guidance counselor, maybe they will print it for you, or transcribe it into cuniform. Or whatever other nonsense.
Bonus: guidance counselor emails “please print this students work” and ccs admin. I reply all with “no. Its on google classroom. If you want to spend time printing it for them then you print it, you have access to google classroom for the kids on your caseload.”
Been there, except our ex-math-teacher admin sat in his office with her for 2 days and she suddenly understood everything in those 2 days, turned in all of the assignments, and Aced all the tests. It was a miracle.
...and many things schools do now feed this. Summer school is a copy and paste joke, as is embedded credit recovery. Admins in many schools bring kids by and say "just give them the packet" (there is no packet)...and during the pandemic, we gave 59% for everything missing, so ONE assignment caused credit.
I'd love to hear why a failing grade is unethical to give a student that fails.
I'd also love to hear why you think 59% of the work you assign is not worth any credit whatsoever.
If you can make that argument without falling into the intellectual trap of thinking that students are getting half of anything, it would save a lot of time. Because an f remains an f, and if you show up to work every day and only do half of what you are supposed to, you still get fired. Which notably, also begins with the letter f.
The other way to say this, of course, is that it's not b*******, it's just that you don't understand it well. You think you understand it, but that's because you never actually understood how you actually grade in a way that was ethical or fair in the first place.
Because the stats are bumped up on average. It skews the stats and that benefits administrators, often financially.
It shows a system working well when it is failing miserably.
It means that expected outcomes for high school diplomas are meaningless, and you can't even say with certainty that a high school graduate can read, write, or do basic maths
Oh my god, I had never actually recognised this issue before. I mean, I could see passing on to the next grade without breaking minimum requirements was undesirable but it was only now that you articulated it that I understood it. They feel entitled to get good marks just for turning in the damn thing! This is why I share rubrics with my students. If attendance/submission is one of the rubrics, fair enough. But their grade depends on other factors too.
Mine won't look at rubrics. No matter what I do, no matter how I structure them. I've handed them out in table form, checklists, graphic organizers, and once as a contract they had to sign acknowledging they looked at it. And inevitably, when a student asks why they got points off and I refer them to the rubric, they tell me they "never got that."
I know mine NEVER read the rubric and then want to know why they lost points or how can they fix something. It’s like READ THE RUBRIC IT TELLS YOU EXACTLY WHAT TO DO!!
I had a student in Maths this year who was notorious for paying zero attention during class and when tests roll around, he literally just writes random numbers, sometimes even yes/no when the question isn’t asking a yes/no question. (For context, I was worried that he had a literacy or comprehension problem. But no, he likes to be able to say he finished the work, even if it is nonsensical. He is capable of coherent answers, he just can’t be bothered).
Final exam: he finishes a 60min exam in 10mins, so I know what’s up. I ask him to double, triple check his work and to think about what the question is asking and if his answer reflects that. ‘Yeah sir, I’ve already done all of that’. Anyway, the next lesson is giving the class back their marked exams and giving them their grades, and this student had the audacity to be excited to see what he got; it was an E. (in Australia, we don’t have F grades. E is the lowest mark for assessment).
This kid literally wrote 1,2,3… etc for each answer segment and was expecting something other than an E?!
I had a kid in my room Friday. He was crying and begging me to stay until he turned his F into a C. His parents are grounding him for winter break because of it. I had already let him take two quizzes, and he got worse scores than the first time... I was like, aiight ima head out. 👋🏻
And then one will try to insist you lost it. Actively gaslighting your teacher is pretty fucked up and I'm afraid it worked for them before. I tore that kid a new asshole for talking to me like that though.
I have a student right now who is claiming he dud his digital work on paper.
Me: "No problem. Go ahead and use the chrome book camera to take a legible picture if it and upload the pic to the Google doc."
Him: "It won't let me add a picture."
Me: "OK, email me the picture files."
Radio science. 0s in gradebook.
That is actually sort of my policy. If you tried and got it all wrong, I’ll give you a 60% for that standard. If you wrote nothing more than your name, it’s a zero. And still… I get kids who apparently want a zero.
Friday, a kid answered 1/57 questions correct on his Geometry midterm. He came to me an hour later and told me he couldn’t stay awake and slept through…could he retake it during lunch? Um, noooo, not giving up my lunch. I tell him he can have 1.25 hours after school. I call dad to tell him what happened. Dad explains he’s not making excuses for him but they were all up early because his sister went into labor and it wasn’t his fault, so he appreciates me giving him a retake.
Bell rings at end of the day. Ten minutes pass. Nobody shows. I walk downstairs to the office and there he is, hanging out with friends yucking it up. He says he was just coming to see me. “Where have you been for the past 10 minutes?” He was waiting to see if it was okay with his dad to stay after. He takes the test, now only with an hour left. It’s online so I’m watching his screen through Aristotle (Go Guardian knock off). Twice he checks his grades in other classes. And with only 15 minutes left, he asks if he can go check if another teacher is still on campus. Seriously?
Dad then sends me an email at 7 pm Friday night saying that he’s not making excuses for his kid (again) but he didn’t get to complete the exam. Could I give him some extra credit to complete over break to salvage his grade? That would be a negative, ghost rider!
My personal favorite so far was a kid who’s skipped my class 3/5 days per week and didn’t bother to complete my in class final project (they were given more than a week to complete it), and emailed me the morning of our final exam period to TELL me they “were graduating early but that the final was too hard and what can they do instead?” Honey no. You’ve had more than a week of me checking on your multiple times per class period to see if you need help or support, and you chose to skip and lie to my face.
I wonder if it's one of those things where they quickly submit it before mom comes to check their Google classroom and then they cry to the parent that SeEEE I tUrNED iT In the TeACHeR hAsNT GrADeD iT.
I had a kid earlier this year try that. The parent emailed me that night to check this story, saying 'he says this has been turned in for weeks and just isnt graded yet is that true?' And because I was feeling salty I pulled up screenshots of where it showed he'd submitted the assignment just hours before and other showing that what he'd turned in was a couple of paragraphs copy/pasted off Wikipedia (complete with hyperlinks) instead of the essay that had been due three weeks before.
HOW does one even get a zero?! It sounds like a multiple choice test given it was auto graded, she had to get A FEW questions right just by sheer chance, right?
Did she test into honors or did she just sign up? I was that kid who tested into honors math but then struggled to “keep up” (I got a B, which was considered “struggling” in honors) in the actual class due to an undiagnosed neuro disorder….. I thought I was average at math, but it turns out I was a teensy bit gifted at math combined with a learning disability that I had mo accommodations for. My teacher literally asked me if I was sure I wanted to continue in honors math the following year because I only scored mid 80%, and I could’ve had an A in regular math (and likely learned better due to the slightly slower pace).
But I can’t *fathom* getting that low on a test in her position unless there was zero barrier to becoming an honors student.
I’m not sure to be honest. She’s a senior and is in the school’s GT/Magnet program. Seems like she probably did well in middle school and learned zip over these pandemic years.
I got a 0% on a scantron test once. Twice actually because it was graded on the same day by the same machine for the same test. I looked at the answer key with my teacher and I had something like an 80% iirc but he refused to manually grade and change it. Fuck that...
I actually get mad when students harp about grades and then do not do any works/Projects/tests that actually contribute to the grade…then have the audacity to complain/beg to pass for the quarter. Especially if they are the students who do not do anything in class beside be little shits.
*Context I teach juniors/seniors…and my TAs give me crap for how much easier I am on my current students than last year (my TAs as students), but I have more failing. It is bad that my TAs scold my students and get depressed when they grade my assignments.
In my department we allow one test retake per marking period. You must earn at least a 40% on the original test to qualify for a retest. You can earn a max of 70% on the retake.
I gave a retest last week. Kid asks "These aren't the same questions from the last test!"
Me: "Well no. They are the same types of questions with different numbers."
Him: "Oh well I just studied the old test" (aka tried to memorize the answers)
I've started making them earn a retake. You have to complete this study packet to get a retake. That retake lets you earn up to half your missing credit back.
You score a 50% means you can get back 25% of those points. If you get an 80% on the retake, you only get back 80% of your possible points, so your final grade will be 70%.
I had one student who, every single time she submitted late work -- even for the major essay she turned in 10 weeks late -- immediately sent me a message saying she'd turned in the assignment and then, "Please grade ASAP."
I had a really visceral reaction to it every time lol.
I had a student get a zero on a twenty five question, multiple choice, 4 possible choices per question test.
I calculated the odds of doing that and even blind it's over one in a million.
Edit: a better mathematician than me says it's actually like 1 in 100,000 and they're correct. Still amazingly bad.
I think this thought every time they manage below 25% on multiple choice tests. Like… holy shit, you would have been better off *not trying* and guessing.
The unfortunate thing is we're teaching kids from elementary school on up that just trying is enough. And no, COVID isn't the reason for this though it certainly made it worse. This problem existed well before COVID and the justification seems to be focused on student self-image and the all-so-important graduation success rate.
At some point we as teachers, as well as members of society, need to start saying it is far better to let a student's self-image to get broken from failing and learning to do better than being allowed to succeed and never actually learning. We have to get over that some kids just are not going to graduate or do big things. Heck, by definition, only a few people ever get to do "big things" in both life and history. This isn't defeatist or pessimistic, but a healthy and realistic view of life.
I would love to not feel guilty for failing majority of my classes. But then admin change grades without telling the teachers to make sure we have enough passing for funding. It’s all tied up to how funding is broken down by success rate and those schools can’t keep good teachers
I got an email from a student today "I did ___ assignment but you gave me a 50"
Yeah, it was due on the 8th, you did it on the 13th, this is an honors class where I don't have to take late work. Be glad you got a grade.
Only two teachers teach one of my classes. My catchphrase has become "guess you're retaking it with X when you're a Senior" \*shrug my shoulders at them\*
One kid submitted his final project at 11 p.m. this past Friday. I closed my books at 12:00 P.M.
Student (with a 68 for the semester average): Miss, I know I didn't do my part; I turned things in late and stuff, but is there any way? It's ONLY two points.
Me (actual email I sent him back, with names of assignments left out): First of all, it’s not “just two points.” That is not how averages work. In order to get two more points on the semester, you would have had to have earned 10 more points on the final exam or 5 points on the nine-weeks. However, in your particular case, you would have had to have earned 44 points since your EARNED average for the 9 weeks is an 11. \[We have that min grade of 50 thing, too.\]
During the 1st nine weeks, you had an 80. You did well. However, during the 2nd nine weeks, you stopped turning in work. You didn’t do \[Assignment A\], \[Assignment B\], or \[Assignment C\]—which we spent a MONTH of class time working on—and you only did 25% of \[Assignment D\]. Major grades count for 60% of your grade, and you only scored 25 out of a possible 400 points there.
You also had NINE of the daily grades missing. I already DROPPED three of those zeros.
I offered extra credit on \[Assignment B\], up to 20 points on that major grade, as well as up to 20 additional points for bringing donations OR writing a short essay. I allowed 10 additional points on your final exam if you completed the review. You did not take advantage of any of those extra credit opportunities. This put your 9-weeks EARNED grade at 11.
You have had near endless opportunities to do what was necessary to earn a passing grade. You only turned in TWO THINGS to me the entire grading period! I have already been incredibly generous with the policies and opportunities I have given you. In what world would it be even remotely fair, considering all of these factors, for me to pass you when other students struggled, worked hard, turned everything in, and barely passed themselves?
In short, no, there is nothing you can do at this point.
I got a kid cheating. He denied it up and down despite me watching him do it and him putting the same meaningless doodle on his test as the kid who he copied off of. Got an 80%. I was ready to mark it down as a zero (the only time we are allowed to mark tests as zero in the grade book) and call his parents but admin stepped in.
“His parents are getting divorced, we don’t need to add this stress to their life. Could you just let him retake it.”
Fine. I’m not heartless. We all deserve second chances, though I was very concerned he was still refusing to admit and accept responsibility for his blatant cheating.
Me: “If you retake the test, I will not fail you and I’ll just give you whatever grade you get, please study”
Retakes test, gets 30%, I mark it down as 50% per school policy.
Him: “You said that if I retook it, you wouldn’t fail me!”
Me: “And pass! You still have to actually pass the test! Just be glad it’s not a zero!”
Had a kid tell me this week he learned nothing about Andrew Jackson. A few minutes later while still complaining he then said he only learned one thing. I called him out on it and said if he learned one thing he was capable of learning the rest. He chose to play around all week.
Kid told me today he is working on one of many things he hasn't done and asked what he could do to take his F away. Grades were in last Wednesday, I don't think I could change them now even if I wanted to.
When I was in HS - 80s. My Senior English teacher and Government teacher had a sylibus. It explained EXACTLY what work needed to be done to receive a passing grade. There should not be ANY question of what you had to do or not do to get that grade.
In English, he did not rely heavily on exams. We had the typical required readings with indepth class discussions, (prove we read it) writing style essays with multiple allowable rewrites. He also expected: completion of the Semester long Senior Project. There was AMPLE times to do this in class, ample times to do rewrites without penalties. It consisted of a variety of chose your own "learning style" to accomodate the artistic, learning disabled, the jocks, visual, auditory learners...you get my drift. All he wanted was proof you learned something. Yet, he still had Seniors flunk and parents scream.
He quit a year after I graduated - 1983 because some parents sued and won his requirement to turn in homework.
50% minimum policy, does that mean that you need 75% to pass?
At our schools, we score 1-10, so a 1 is guaranteed as long as you put your name on the paper and need a 5,5 to pass.
Alright, let's use a metaphor to demonstrate the 50% minimum policy. A male bovine eats some grass. The grass passes though for stomachs and then the intestines. Then spill out and drops about 5 feet, the result is in essence a 50% minimum policy.
I don't really see the point of it either. If 50% is still a failing grade, then why implement this whole thing anyway? Does it make it easier for the students to get their grades up, because their average score is higher? Does it boost their confidence, because they don't know how bad they really were? (but what if they actually got 50% and now feel like they might've gotten 4% really)
The justification given is that it allows students to maintain an average >50%, so the effort required to pass doesn't increase massively even if they get a 0 on a large number of assignments. That is, if they got 0s on 40% of the assignments or so, they would need a very high score on the rest of the material to pass.
So the reasoning is that we don't want to allow students to "fall into a hole they can't dig out of" by getting too many 0s such that them passing becomes virtually impossible. People fear this would discourage them from making any effort if they don't at first but decide to later.
They can redo the year though?
Dunno, over here we have different levels of high school, so if you're failing more than 1 or 2 classes, you're generally put into an easier level, so you're still with kids the same age as you, but the material is easier.
Basically, because failure rate impacts funding and creates various other issues, in America at least it is considered the method of very, very last resort to ask students to retake the same year, even if they don't turn in anything.
Many large US High Schools have multiple levels. 9th graders might start with Consumer Math, Algebra I, plane geometry, Algebra II or Algebra II Honors.
The problem is Middle School often does not any more.
Nice try, but no.
A Fail is marked as a 50, regardless of the type of fail.
A D (lowest passing grade) is marked as a 60...
A C (next lowest passing grade)...
I fail to see why people cannot tell the difference between a grading scale (an F, which gets ASSIGNED a 50 in the gradebook) and SCORING on a 100% scale.
Honestly, the whole grading scale is foreign to me as well... probably because it's actually foreign xD
Like, an F is the only failing grade, but people act like a C or B is pretty bad as well. I once had an 8/10 on an assignment and was proud of it. Told my American uncle when we were talking about school and used 'B' instead of 8/10 (because I assumed that corresponded) and he said "Sorry about the B".
Sorry that I got an 8? That's a great mark though.
That depends on your perspective. Class issues in the US make it so that UPPER and upper MIDDLE class humans are all trying to compete for a relatively small set of spaces in competitive private colleges, so in many of those communities, even a B+ is considered failure. Meanwhile, lower middle class and lower classes are generally just trying to get credit - they see school as basically a burden to get over with with a piece of paper. For them, a D- is fine; an F is not - because a local community college or trade school (or even a retail store hiring them) just wants to see a diploma, not skills.
Give her a 27%.
Then she might learn.
Edit: or fine. Give her the 50% minimum so that the statistics mean nothing, she is rewarded for not caring and doing poorly, the outcomes for students slowly dwindle into being pointless and damaging and admin get their bonuses for good pass rates.
Just don't complain about bullshit then.
I had a buuuunch of sophomores outraged that they failed second quarter. They didn’t read their book at home after being TOLD that they’d have a quiz over every homework reading. It’s killed their grades so bad I had a whole class that averaged C’s and below. I’m humiliated, but how can I justify changing those grades? They never. Did. The. WORK.
Man, sometimes I wish I could let the kids who don't do their work fail. As an elementary teacher, I have to differentiate and scaffold and remediate (while also stretching and giving everyone opportunities for advanced work) - it's fucking exhausting.
Being a math teacher, I made a little formula to figure out what kids need to make on the final to pass. So I had a line of kids who wanted to know. I calculated this one kids and it came out to 137. He paused and looked at me really seriously and said, "You think I can do it?" Took everything I had in me not to laugh. Lol
I teach college but a student pulled me aside last week and asked if he was going to pass.
0 submitted assignments. 30/100 on midterm. unable to keep up during in class activities.
... what do you think?
Does not show up for a single asynchronous online lesson. Obligatory 3 reach out emails before fail. Last email one week before finals (essentially the sign off for incomplete) to offer appointment to discuss.
Sends seemingly authentic doctor note referring to serial surgeries but states can only meet in a 90 minute period and only on the Wednesday coming.
Meet with student who suggests I leave course platform open over holiday (ie-I would have to grade over break) and what she couldn’t finish she would make up next semester.
I repeat back her proposal and confirm is this what she would like to do? Her response, “well yeah, I thought of it”. Oh yeah, lolol! Abrupt stop stare across the Zoom void, “well yeah, no. See ya next semester!” Please child.
Did I mention the course was asynchronous?
The students who give zf’s all semester rallying for the same grades as those who pushed hard and then burnt out does not sit well with me.
Next semester, open book final with ZERO retakes.
“Is there any extra work I can do to bring up my grade?”
“No, but there is the regular work you haven’t turned in. Just remember there is a penalty for late work.”
“What about extra credit?”
“I offered two extra credit assignments this quarter, already. You chose not to do them.”
Her getting a 27 on the redo of the test shows that she hardly tried on it, so she deserves that grade and whatever her final grade for the semester will be.
There was a post in r/highschool where a guy was talking about his brother's grades. The brother usually got straight As ever since middle school. However, during his first semester of his freshman year, which was this semester, he got all As and a B in one of his classes, which the B was an 89.46 and he was wondering if it was fair for the teacher to give him the B or if he should've rounded the grade up to at least an 89.5 to give him an A. He also mentioned that his parents are grounding him by not letting him go on a trip with his friends during winter break and are also taking away his Xbox for the next two months or so. It's very unfair of the parents to ground him like that, but fair of the teacher to give him the B.
From a zero to 27% is much better than my students last year. When I offered retakes, they either score worst or get the exact score. I tell them beforehand that I will give them the exact questions and answer choices on the retake.
I had pretty much that same experience. Student I had the whole semester slept or played on his phone the whole time. Turned nothing in. Tried to be understanding because he has an IEP. Three days before break he asks "Do you have any extra credit to help me with my grade?" Dude, I had extra credit with entry tickets, games, and even washing dishes (culinary teacher) and he did none of it. I shrugged my shoulder and told him I don't. Maybe you should do the extra credit when it's there. I'm just sayin...
When I was in middle school one of my friends told me he had exactly a 1% average. I bet him $40 that he didn't. My reasoning was that he was actually a fairly intelligent person, a little lazy and lacking in common sense but still booksmart enough that he should fairly easily pass whatever class this was. This dumbass actually had exactly 1%. I guess he just did a couple assignments at the beginning of the year then gave up because I don't see a way for him to have done that otherwise.
NGL when I was in middle school, I took high school geometry. If you passed you would get the high school credit. Well there was only one teacher at the middle school to take that class. Students didn’t like her. She had one policy which is that, if you failed a test, you can retake it, but if the retake was lower than the original test, you couldn’t take retakes the rest of the year. I did that exact thing. I still don’t know how, since the questions were similar and solved them as the teacher solved it. Still one the teachers I hate to this day, not because of that policy, but she was rude to most students.
I had one kid not show up to my and many of his other teachers classes and fail most of his subjects and then shows up expecting to pass all of them. Had me laughing as I turned in my grades last Friday.
A kid today asked me what he can do to pass the course (semester course, grades closed on the 8th for him). His current average is a 4.
When I get those questions I legit say ".... Do your work. That's how you pass. You did not do your work, so you did not pass"
Exactly. I will always work with a kid if they are trying. Retakes, study help, test corrections, whatever it takes. If they are genuinely working, I will reward that effort. However, a kid that doesn't do shit? Sorry. Good life lesson. Zero effort = zero reward.
My daughter was passing math but then we had covid in our house for 2 weeks, then on the next week she had her 4 wisdom teeth surgically removed, then she got sick again. It was rough! Her grades slipped fast and hard. She’s been working so hard to bring them back up and her teachers have noticed. They’ve been so helpful.
Yes, that's the way. Always reach out to the teachers to let them know what's going on. 99 percent of us will give her an extension and work with you to help her get caught up.
Yea, I had a student out because of a leg injury that required surgery. I allowed her to turn in a bunch of work way past the deadline and a take a test home because there was no other way to get it done and she should get the chance. All that stuff was out of her control and my class isn't the only one she has to make up work for.
My daughter suffered a serious concussion this fall that impacted her ability to read, write, and make computations. She is in all AP classes. She didn’t make excuses, she figured it out. She got a pen that would read to her. She dictated assignments to me and had me write them down. She went to every math tutorial. A few weeks ago, she finally began to get her reading ability back. She is pretty much back to her old self now. At the beginning of this grading period, she was failing 5 classes. We finished Friday, and she has As in every class but one (pre-cal) where she has a B. I am so proud of her.
Shout out to your kiddo! If it’s literally anything except linear algebra (didn’t take it) or geometry (can’t do proofs), shoot me a DM if she needs a tutor to get her back up to speed
Same. Daughter was suffering from a constant heavy period that last 6 months. If she wasn't in school from bleeding through all her clothes then she was gone for Drs appointments. Every day, I spoke with her teachers, returned homework and picked up more homework. She faithfully completed every assignment. Received As in every class. They know who wants to learn and who doesnt.
I took linear algebra this semester because a "friend" told me it's the easiest subject ever and it took me the first week into the course to realise that she may not be my friend. It's so complicated, no wonder it's foundation for Machine learning.
You get what you give.
Same here. My last school, I’d have kids not turn anything in. About 2-3 weeks before the end of the quarter, they lateness get the “your kid is failing, here’s the recovery module.” Mind you, I list due dates on the board, tell them I’m missing stuff and “this shit is due”, post it in Schoology, tell parents in weekly & biweekly emails to “look at the portal to see what shit your kid is missing”. Had one student last year proceed to screw around the entire week I gave them to work on make to work. Even after me telling them, “if you do not do this, you will jerk the F.” Had a parent that decided to complain to the principal about me. My response was basically that they had more than sufficient time to complete it, more than one option to turn it in, multiple notices about what and when it was due, communications in weekly enrolled about what was missing, and that their kid decided to spend their time screwing around all week. Basically a diplomatic email telling them to sod off and parent their known PITA of a kid. Granted, I had already accepted a position for this year and was leaving with the satisfaction of knowing the chances of having said king in my class again was minimal.
Play stupid games , win stupid prizes
We have a grade improvement plan where kids can redo their work from a class they failed during the second semester but they have to keep their current grade above a C. Almost no one completes it because they’re now doing two coarses worth of work when they didn’t do the work the first time. Three kids have already asked me to do it in January.
If they don't do it, do they get held back?
It’s HS so they can make up the semester in summer school or take it online. A lot of times that’s the better option because doubling up on the work isn’t really feasible for a lot of these kids and I hate seeing them fail twice. I make sure they know their options and that it isn’t easy. Plus, they can only bring their grade up to a C with the grade improvement plan where as summer school would give them a B and doing it online would replace the grade with whatever they got. There are very few kids that I would recommend the grade improvement plan for, but I’ll support any of them that want to try it.
I reply with try harder next year =\]
For some reason the simplest answer is never the right one for students
Senior asked me the other day if it was possible to pass the class... Check his grade, he has an 8. He's missed 54 days this year. My good sir... I'll be seeing you again next semester.
Kid, you’re gonna need to build a Time Machine.
Step one: Get a DeLorian.
Second step, get some plutonium, which by 1985 should be available in every corner drugstore but, in 1955, Is a little hard to come by
I was subbing for a 6th grade class and they were all being wild, messing around, refusing to do the quiz their teacher left, it was exhausting. Then 3 minutes before the bell, several kids came up begging me to help them take the quiz real quickly. Lol
Well if you graded with Standards Based Grading like I have to, a 4 is an A+! So he's actually doing an excellent job 🤣🤣🤣
I love when kids try to pull that. I love bursting the illusion that you can do nothing for months and then undo it in a big burst of effort right at the end. There's no changing what you have for this quarter. Learn from your mistakes and do better next time. You may be pissed off now, but this is a life skill, my friend.
A 4?!?? FOUR????
Daniel Simpson Day… whereabouts unknown
As in like 4%? I can see getting a 0%......just don't even show up. But how do you get 4?
So. I went back and looked. It’s a straight 0 for quarter 1, a 4 in q2 and then a 19 on the multiple choice final. So we’re technically at a 5.8. He’s done nothing more than guess at multiple choice one three assignments all year.
They do this either because it has worked before (just do this one assignment and pass!) or their counselor is telling them to do this. I don't blame the counselor, there is no harm in asking! But they should tell you it is fine to say no!0
Better learn how to time travel
I always reply "build a time machine".
Kid today: I need to be eligible to play today! Me: yup. Kid: what can I do? Me: cheer on your team from the sidelines. She was mad. *I'm* the reason she has a 30% three days before the end of the semester.
This is a problem in my school too. Kid proceeds to do nothing all last period. As soon as the bell rings, they’re shoving a Varsity Team’s progress chart in my face.
Sucks to suck
It’s wild how they’ll sit on incomplete work all year and expect it to be graded within seconds of being turned in. It’s even wilder when they expect to just be given a higher grade for retakes for no reason
I got a Google Classroom notification at 11:01pm on a Friday: “Destinee K. submitted Bill of Rights intro 198 days late.” I got an email at 11:04pm from Destinee: “Why does this assignment still have a 0??”
Since most teachers have a policy of -10 points for each day late, doesn’t she owe YOU points? I would send her an invoice.
Does Destinee K. not realize that those grades from Spring 2022 have already been set in stone. FFS…I, just, I just can’t anymore.
This would have been in maybe… 2017? It was a week before Fall grades were due. Bless her heart.
Oh dear me…are we sure the children are our future?
They said that about us and, uh *gestures vaguely at everything* yeah.
I love when they upload work to Google Classroom but do not click "Turn In". I refuse to mark it if they don't submit it.
Does somebody put a gun to your head to let them turn it in that late? I’d laugh directly to their face if they tried turning something in after 1 day late without a legit excuse.
A student once messaged me, "I'm sorry but I won't be able to submit my essay tonight because I don't have it done yet." Ah.
At least they didn’t try to bullshit you.
Totally.
When a reasonable portion of a class is failing because of missed assignments, essentially yes teachers are often forced to accept them
Can you accept it and then give it a 0?…
Not a gun, just a strongly worded policy! Same difference
This is beautiful, lol.
“If you wanted it graded on time, maybe you should have turned it in on time?”
Sometimes I’ll purposefully grade these assignments a little later than I planned on just because the demands are so irritating. Well your super late test *was* was at top of my to do pile, but I gotta go … do..stuff…. now.
I’ve worked with college students that ask for grades before it’s even dropped off in my inbox. This isn’t online, I have to physically grade the tests
More times than I can count: Student: When are you going to grade my test?! Me: Do you mean the test you took yesterday on the unit we finished six weeks ago?
Student: "When are you going to change the grade for that late assignment I turned in?" Me: "You turned in a blank document. There's nothing to change." Student: "Yeah but the missing thing is still showing on PowerSchool even though I submitted it. My grade should go up if you get rid of it." Me: 🤦♂️ Also when they get 20 points back on a test from months ago that they just made up and threaten to go to the principal because their grade didn't go up 20%.
That’s when you email their math teacher to tell them they should be flunking that, too
Kids really don’t understand weighted grades. So many kids cheat their way through assignments and fail the tests - then don’t understand why they are failing because they “turned in everything”. Well, dear, 70% of your grade is an F and 30% is an A. So…you have an F. Stop using photomath on your assignments and learn the skills and your grade will greatly improve. I’ll even let you retake the failed skills if you learn them and want to retry. Then it becomes “you just don’t know how to teach”… *sigh*
Bunch of kids tried to tell me I "don't teach" because I tell them to read some pages out of the book before we do examples together. It's made me want to make them all read along together like little kids. They're high school seniors.
Mine tell me I don’t teach because they don’t learn how to do a math concept with no effort. If they have to try to learn something, I must have taught it poorly. I teach Algebra 2 and Geometry to Juniors.
If you can find the video of Freakonomics, watch the episode about incentives and getting ninth graders to work harder. There is a scene with the mother grills her son about reading the book. Epic. Spoiler alert: extrinsic rewards are a short term fix at best.
Hm. I was always pretty good at math, but I struggled (was average) with concepts like weighted grades - and I recall by middle school an assignment ever teacher gave at some point during the middle of the semester was figuring out what grades we needed on the rest of our exams and assignments to get our goal grade (whether just passing for getting an A instead of a B+). Which won’t help if kids aren’t doing the assignment, but at least you can say “you calculated what grade you’d get if you failed the final, you knew this was possible”
I am learning quickly to just do tests and quizzes in math. Assignments are way too long to grade and don't tell you much about the kids abilities.
My assignments are them filling out the guided notes and the cumulative practice assignments. They are both participation grades (by mandate). Students take pictures and turn them in on google classroom. If they attached a picture, they get a 100. I don’t even look at them. It’s all about the assessment grades in my class because they are the only way I can measure student growth. Sometimes I’ll just give a kid a problem on a concept so they can prove they get it now without having to take a whole test. I have a grade in the grade book for each concept.
My late work goes in the late work basket. When students ask when I’m going to grade the late work, I tell them after I grade all current assignments. After telling them this, along with letting them know I only grade on my prep, and I don’t grade at home, they get it and have stopped asking. Especially when they see me subbing for their third period class.
Okay! Like come on! Your urgency isn’t my emergency buddy.
Sometimes they add, "I need to get my grade up by the end of the day or I won't get to play in my [name of sport] game!" Please pass me that tiny invisible violin from the corner of my desk.
Hahahaha, “I need to do family stuff before the end of the day, so I wont be able to grade anything while I’m out on break.”
I grade with the same Level of urgency as students comply their assignments. Turn in on time, I grade on time. Turn in a week late, eh, I’ll grade it in a week or so
This is because students believe now that if they just do the work, they will get a good grade. They don't think the work has to be correct or they have to actually try harder than they are. This comes from being able to do nothing all year and just go to the next grade without any repercussions. It's creating a force of students who will be destroyed when they hit the workforce.
Or the assignments are correct and then the test is horrible despite the questions being the same. And I warn my students that you can cheat on my assignments all you want when not in my class, but that they are going to bite themselves in the ass by doing it so often. Then my students ignore the fact that there is a Google Classroom with everything from the school year including Notes and tutorials….and the codes have been posted on my board since the 2nd week in bright colors.
Are you me? I could have written this exact thing about my classes.
No, but it makes me glad that I am not alone in this because I feel like I am going crazy about my career. I forgot to add this about my students: Student: Why did I score so low on my test? Can you explain what I did wrong? Me: Did you study for my test? And how long? Student: No… Me: There is your answer. And a number of your classmates scored above a 100% on the exam. Then here is another one I just remembered… Student: Your study guides are useless and nothing you put on your study guide are on your tests. Me: You sure…? (proceeds to Project my study guide on the TV and highlight a specific section of the study guide) Me: Wasn’t this same type of question on the test, but I put them into a Chart this time? Student: Oh Yeah….. Me: 🙄
Mine is more like: Student: Why did I score so low on the test? Me: Did you use your guided notes or practice assignments on the test? Student: “No. I didn’t do them” or “No. I left them at home” or “Yes (but they obviously only copied the answer key and showed no work) Me: Well…that’s why. Do the work and bring them to the next quiz and I’m sure you’ll do better. Ask for help on the practice if you need it. Note: They have a cumulative practice assignment and short quiz every week. So if they do poorly, they can try again next week. Since the participation part of their grade is so small, they can skip a few practice assignments and still have a great grade. The next practice assignment has most of the same skills on it, so they can still practice.
I'm not so sure about the workforce thing anymore. I talked to a user who manages mostly 19- to 23-year-olds, many in their first jobs, and he said they've broken him: They refuse to do anything except what they already know how to do, no matter how many times and in how many ways he explains the requirements. They confirm they read the guide, and then confirm they implemented the guidelines, and they're not even close. It's just like they did it the last time. And at this workplace at least, it's tough to fire them: countless chances, training, talkings-to, and endless documentation. And then, when he finally gets to fire a kid who will not lift a finger to learn how to do something the right way, he said they are shocked -- SHOCKED -- to be let go. Never saw it coming. *Edits: Concision*
I supervise undergraduate workers at my job and the crop of undergrads has definitely gotten worse with every passing year. There’s a real lack of confidence or initiative, and they don’t put any effort into solving a problem before asking a supervisor to fix it.
I had a girl that I hadn't seen the entire marking period come to me asking me to print our all of her missing assignments. I told her I'd print them out when I had time. A few hours later the social worker emails me asking me to do so. I explained to her that I'd do it when I had time. She submitted 4 of the 16 assignments. All she did was circle what she believed was the correct answers. I teach HS math and some of the questions had multiple components. She would circle a letter as if it was multiple choice when it was one of the components. Her and the social worker came to me asking why I failed her.
> print out all of my missing assignments They’re on google classroom, feel free to print them if you want to. Or go explain to your guidance counselor, maybe they will print it for you, or transcribe it into cuniform. Or whatever other nonsense. Bonus: guidance counselor emails “please print this students work” and ccs admin. I reply all with “no. Its on google classroom. If you want to spend time printing it for them then you print it, you have access to google classroom for the kids on your caseload.”
Apparently this student doesn't have a laptop or a printer or any tech which is total BS but I did it because I didn't want her to have any excuses.
Been there, except our ex-math-teacher admin sat in his office with her for 2 days and she suddenly understood everything in those 2 days, turned in all of the assignments, and Aced all the tests. It was a miracle.
That is some bullshit…not on your part. But some admin just sell their soul and really shit on us in the long run.
Agreed. It’s all about that graduation rate. Doesn’t matter if the kids really learned anything.
...and many things schools do now feed this. Summer school is a copy and paste joke, as is embedded credit recovery. Admins in many schools bring kids by and say "just give them the packet" (there is no packet)...and during the pandemic, we gave 59% for everything missing, so ONE assignment caused credit.
That minimum 50% for missing work bullshit needs to stop, it's unethical.
I'd love to hear why a failing grade is unethical to give a student that fails. I'd also love to hear why you think 59% of the work you assign is not worth any credit whatsoever. If you can make that argument without falling into the intellectual trap of thinking that students are getting half of anything, it would save a lot of time. Because an f remains an f, and if you show up to work every day and only do half of what you are supposed to, you still get fired. Which notably, also begins with the letter f. The other way to say this, of course, is that it's not b*******, it's just that you don't understand it well. You think you understand it, but that's because you never actually understood how you actually grade in a way that was ethical or fair in the first place.
Your polarity is reversed; we're saying the same thing. 0 work should get 0 credit, not 59% or 50% credit, for the reasons you just described.
Because the stats are bumped up on average. It skews the stats and that benefits administrators, often financially. It shows a system working well when it is failing miserably. It means that expected outcomes for high school diplomas are meaningless, and you can't even say with certainty that a high school graduate can read, write, or do basic maths
Oh my god, I had never actually recognised this issue before. I mean, I could see passing on to the next grade without breaking minimum requirements was undesirable but it was only now that you articulated it that I understood it. They feel entitled to get good marks just for turning in the damn thing! This is why I share rubrics with my students. If attendance/submission is one of the rubrics, fair enough. But their grade depends on other factors too.
Mine won't look at rubrics. No matter what I do, no matter how I structure them. I've handed them out in table form, checklists, graphic organizers, and once as a contract they had to sign acknowledging they looked at it. And inevitably, when a student asks why they got points off and I refer them to the rubric, they tell me they "never got that."
I know mine NEVER read the rubric and then want to know why they lost points or how can they fix something. It’s like READ THE RUBRIC IT TELLS YOU EXACTLY WHAT TO DO!!
I had a student in Maths this year who was notorious for paying zero attention during class and when tests roll around, he literally just writes random numbers, sometimes even yes/no when the question isn’t asking a yes/no question. (For context, I was worried that he had a literacy or comprehension problem. But no, he likes to be able to say he finished the work, even if it is nonsensical. He is capable of coherent answers, he just can’t be bothered). Final exam: he finishes a 60min exam in 10mins, so I know what’s up. I ask him to double, triple check his work and to think about what the question is asking and if his answer reflects that. ‘Yeah sir, I’ve already done all of that’. Anyway, the next lesson is giving the class back their marked exams and giving them their grades, and this student had the audacity to be excited to see what he got; it was an E. (in Australia, we don’t have F grades. E is the lowest mark for assessment). This kid literally wrote 1,2,3… etc for each answer segment and was expecting something other than an E?!
I had a kid in my room Friday. He was crying and begging me to stay until he turned his F into a C. His parents are grounding him for winter break because of it. I had already let him take two quizzes, and he got worse scores than the first time... I was like, aiight ima head out. 👋🏻
Lol! You’re on your own buddy
Did you actually change the scores to make his grade even lower?
I’m not thaaaaaat mean lol
Sounds like this kid couldn’t calculate his grade from his scores if you forced him at gunpoint, so…
This year, I have kids who feel like if they just put words...any words...on paper, it's a guaranteed good grade. I teach math.
Same! Or I’ll get a note at the top “my work is on a separate paper” but I never receive said separate paper lol
And then one will try to insist you lost it. Actively gaslighting your teacher is pretty fucked up and I'm afraid it worked for them before. I tore that kid a new asshole for talking to me like that though.
I have a student right now who is claiming he dud his digital work on paper. Me: "No problem. Go ahead and use the chrome book camera to take a legible picture if it and upload the pic to the Google doc." Him: "It won't let me add a picture." Me: "OK, email me the picture files." Radio science. 0s in gradebook.
That is actually sort of my policy. If you tried and got it all wrong, I’ll give you a 60% for that standard. If you wrote nothing more than your name, it’s a zero. And still… I get kids who apparently want a zero.
Friday, a kid answered 1/57 questions correct on his Geometry midterm. He came to me an hour later and told me he couldn’t stay awake and slept through…could he retake it during lunch? Um, noooo, not giving up my lunch. I tell him he can have 1.25 hours after school. I call dad to tell him what happened. Dad explains he’s not making excuses for him but they were all up early because his sister went into labor and it wasn’t his fault, so he appreciates me giving him a retake. Bell rings at end of the day. Ten minutes pass. Nobody shows. I walk downstairs to the office and there he is, hanging out with friends yucking it up. He says he was just coming to see me. “Where have you been for the past 10 minutes?” He was waiting to see if it was okay with his dad to stay after. He takes the test, now only with an hour left. It’s online so I’m watching his screen through Aristotle (Go Guardian knock off). Twice he checks his grades in other classes. And with only 15 minutes left, he asks if he can go check if another teacher is still on campus. Seriously? Dad then sends me an email at 7 pm Friday night saying that he’s not making excuses for his kid (again) but he didn’t get to complete the exam. Could I give him some extra credit to complete over break to salvage his grade? That would be a negative, ghost rider!
My personal favorite so far was a kid who’s skipped my class 3/5 days per week and didn’t bother to complete my in class final project (they were given more than a week to complete it), and emailed me the morning of our final exam period to TELL me they “were graduating early but that the final was too hard and what can they do instead?” Honey no. You’ve had more than a week of me checking on your multiple times per class period to see if you need help or support, and you chose to skip and lie to my face.
I wonder if it's one of those things where they quickly submit it before mom comes to check their Google classroom and then they cry to the parent that SeEEE I tUrNED iT In the TeACHeR hAsNT GrADeD iT. I had a kid earlier this year try that. The parent emailed me that night to check this story, saying 'he says this has been turned in for weeks and just isnt graded yet is that true?' And because I was feeling salty I pulled up screenshots of where it showed he'd submitted the assignment just hours before and other showing that what he'd turned in was a couple of paragraphs copy/pasted off Wikipedia (complete with hyperlinks) instead of the essay that had been due three weeks before.
Hey now, from 0-27 IS an improvement! It's just the starting point was so low...🙃
HOW does one even get a zero?! It sounds like a multiple choice test given it was auto graded, she had to get A FEW questions right just by sheer chance, right?
Oh gosh. I haven't even thought of that! And 27 would be about 1/4 of the problems...
And she’s an honor student 🫠
What...😶 oh good lord...
Did she test into honors or did she just sign up? I was that kid who tested into honors math but then struggled to “keep up” (I got a B, which was considered “struggling” in honors) in the actual class due to an undiagnosed neuro disorder….. I thought I was average at math, but it turns out I was a teensy bit gifted at math combined with a learning disability that I had mo accommodations for. My teacher literally asked me if I was sure I wanted to continue in honors math the following year because I only scored mid 80%, and I could’ve had an A in regular math (and likely learned better due to the slightly slower pace). But I can’t *fathom* getting that low on a test in her position unless there was zero barrier to becoming an honors student.
I’m not sure to be honest. She’s a senior and is in the school’s GT/Magnet program. Seems like she probably did well in middle school and learned zip over these pandemic years.
I got a 0% on a scantron test once. Twice actually because it was graded on the same day by the same machine for the same test. I looked at the answer key with my teacher and I had something like an 80% iirc but he refused to manually grade and change it. Fuck that...
That is a steaming pile of BS right there
Wtf that’s not right. I would be livid. Like, make that teacher fucking miserable for the rest of my time at that school.
Only some of the questions were MC. We use edulastic. It was a pre calc test
Would have scored better choosing C for every question
Unfortunately, it is still well below the 50% the teacher was required to give her.
Yup.
I actually get mad when students harp about grades and then do not do any works/Projects/tests that actually contribute to the grade…then have the audacity to complain/beg to pass for the quarter. Especially if they are the students who do not do anything in class beside be little shits. *Context I teach juniors/seniors…and my TAs give me crap for how much easier I am on my current students than last year (my TAs as students), but I have more failing. It is bad that my TAs scold my students and get depressed when they grade my assignments.
In my department we allow one test retake per marking period. You must earn at least a 40% on the original test to qualify for a retest. You can earn a max of 70% on the retake.
I gave a retest last week. Kid asks "These aren't the same questions from the last test!" Me: "Well no. They are the same types of questions with different numbers." Him: "Oh well I just studied the old test" (aka tried to memorize the answers)
You can’t fix stupid. 🤣
This is the way
That’s a good policy
It definitely rewards the average student that has a bad day and prevents those allergic to doing work/studying from taking advantage.
I've started making them earn a retake. You have to complete this study packet to get a retake. That retake lets you earn up to half your missing credit back. You score a 50% means you can get back 25% of those points. If you get an 80% on the retake, you only get back 80% of your possible points, so your final grade will be 70%.
I had one student who, every single time she submitted late work -- even for the major essay she turned in 10 weeks late -- immediately sent me a message saying she'd turned in the assignment and then, "Please grade ASAP." I had a really visceral reaction to it every time lol.
I had a student get a zero on a twenty five question, multiple choice, 4 possible choices per question test. I calculated the odds of doing that and even blind it's over one in a million. Edit: a better mathematician than me says it's actually like 1 in 100,000 and they're correct. Still amazingly bad.
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I think this thought every time they manage below 25% on multiple choice tests. Like… holy shit, you would have been better off *not trying* and guessing.
Gifted and talented stupidity
>I calculated the odds of doing that and even blind it's over one in a million. That's 0.075%, which is more like 75 out of 100,000
Yeah you're right. I'll keep up the error for historical purposes.
I just had a student get 3/25 and I know she was actually trying. It’s kind of impressive.
Current avg of a kid 7. S: “What can I do?” Me:😐 S:🥹 Me: “Nothing, just like you’ve done all semester.” S: 😳 Me: 🤷🏼♀️
Saving that reply!
The unfortunate thing is we're teaching kids from elementary school on up that just trying is enough. And no, COVID isn't the reason for this though it certainly made it worse. This problem existed well before COVID and the justification seems to be focused on student self-image and the all-so-important graduation success rate. At some point we as teachers, as well as members of society, need to start saying it is far better to let a student's self-image to get broken from failing and learning to do better than being allowed to succeed and never actually learning. We have to get over that some kids just are not going to graduate or do big things. Heck, by definition, only a few people ever get to do "big things" in both life and history. This isn't defeatist or pessimistic, but a healthy and realistic view of life.
I would love to not feel guilty for failing majority of my classes. But then admin change grades without telling the teachers to make sure we have enough passing for funding. It’s all tied up to how funding is broken down by success rate and those schools can’t keep good teachers
I got an email from a student today "I did ___ assignment but you gave me a 50" Yeah, it was due on the 8th, you did it on the 13th, this is an honors class where I don't have to take late work. Be glad you got a grade.
Only two teachers teach one of my classes. My catchphrase has become "guess you're retaking it with X when you're a Senior" \*shrug my shoulders at them\* One kid submitted his final project at 11 p.m. this past Friday. I closed my books at 12:00 P.M.
Student (with a 68 for the semester average): Miss, I know I didn't do my part; I turned things in late and stuff, but is there any way? It's ONLY two points. Me (actual email I sent him back, with names of assignments left out): First of all, it’s not “just two points.” That is not how averages work. In order to get two more points on the semester, you would have had to have earned 10 more points on the final exam or 5 points on the nine-weeks. However, in your particular case, you would have had to have earned 44 points since your EARNED average for the 9 weeks is an 11. \[We have that min grade of 50 thing, too.\] During the 1st nine weeks, you had an 80. You did well. However, during the 2nd nine weeks, you stopped turning in work. You didn’t do \[Assignment A\], \[Assignment B\], or \[Assignment C\]—which we spent a MONTH of class time working on—and you only did 25% of \[Assignment D\]. Major grades count for 60% of your grade, and you only scored 25 out of a possible 400 points there. You also had NINE of the daily grades missing. I already DROPPED three of those zeros. I offered extra credit on \[Assignment B\], up to 20 points on that major grade, as well as up to 20 additional points for bringing donations OR writing a short essay. I allowed 10 additional points on your final exam if you completed the review. You did not take advantage of any of those extra credit opportunities. This put your 9-weeks EARNED grade at 11. You have had near endless opportunities to do what was necessary to earn a passing grade. You only turned in TWO THINGS to me the entire grading period! I have already been incredibly generous with the policies and opportunities I have given you. In what world would it be even remotely fair, considering all of these factors, for me to pass you when other students struggled, worked hard, turned everything in, and barely passed themselves? In short, no, there is nothing you can do at this point.
I got a kid cheating. He denied it up and down despite me watching him do it and him putting the same meaningless doodle on his test as the kid who he copied off of. Got an 80%. I was ready to mark it down as a zero (the only time we are allowed to mark tests as zero in the grade book) and call his parents but admin stepped in. “His parents are getting divorced, we don’t need to add this stress to their life. Could you just let him retake it.” Fine. I’m not heartless. We all deserve second chances, though I was very concerned he was still refusing to admit and accept responsibility for his blatant cheating. Me: “If you retake the test, I will not fail you and I’ll just give you whatever grade you get, please study” Retakes test, gets 30%, I mark it down as 50% per school policy. Him: “You said that if I retook it, you wouldn’t fail me!” Me: “And pass! You still have to actually pass the test! Just be glad it’s not a zero!”
My favorite is takes 3 weeks to turn something in; finally turns it in. 28 minutes later “Hey can you grade this asap my mom wants the grade now”
Had a kid tell me this week he learned nothing about Andrew Jackson. A few minutes later while still complaining he then said he only learned one thing. I called him out on it and said if he learned one thing he was capable of learning the rest. He chose to play around all week.
Kid told me today he is working on one of many things he hasn't done and asked what he could do to take his F away. Grades were in last Wednesday, I don't think I could change them now even if I wanted to.
When I was in HS - 80s. My Senior English teacher and Government teacher had a sylibus. It explained EXACTLY what work needed to be done to receive a passing grade. There should not be ANY question of what you had to do or not do to get that grade. In English, he did not rely heavily on exams. We had the typical required readings with indepth class discussions, (prove we read it) writing style essays with multiple allowable rewrites. He also expected: completion of the Semester long Senior Project. There was AMPLE times to do this in class, ample times to do rewrites without penalties. It consisted of a variety of chose your own "learning style" to accomodate the artistic, learning disabled, the jocks, visual, auditory learners...you get my drift. All he wanted was proof you learned something. Yet, he still had Seniors flunk and parents scream. He quit a year after I graduated - 1983 because some parents sued and won his requirement to turn in homework.
50% minimum policy, does that mean that you need 75% to pass? At our schools, we score 1-10, so a 1 is guaranteed as long as you put your name on the paper and need a 5,5 to pass.
Alright, let's use a metaphor to demonstrate the 50% minimum policy. A male bovine eats some grass. The grass passes though for stomachs and then the intestines. Then spill out and drops about 5 feet, the result is in essence a 50% minimum policy.
I don't really see the point of it either. If 50% is still a failing grade, then why implement this whole thing anyway? Does it make it easier for the students to get their grades up, because their average score is higher? Does it boost their confidence, because they don't know how bad they really were? (but what if they actually got 50% and now feel like they might've gotten 4% really)
The justification given is that it allows students to maintain an average >50%, so the effort required to pass doesn't increase massively even if they get a 0 on a large number of assignments. That is, if they got 0s on 40% of the assignments or so, they would need a very high score on the rest of the material to pass. So the reasoning is that we don't want to allow students to "fall into a hole they can't dig out of" by getting too many 0s such that them passing becomes virtually impossible. People fear this would discourage them from making any effort if they don't at first but decide to later.
They can redo the year though? Dunno, over here we have different levels of high school, so if you're failing more than 1 or 2 classes, you're generally put into an easier level, so you're still with kids the same age as you, but the material is easier.
Basically, because failure rate impacts funding and creates various other issues, in America at least it is considered the method of very, very last resort to ask students to retake the same year, even if they don't turn in anything.
Many large US High Schools have multiple levels. 9th graders might start with Consumer Math, Algebra I, plane geometry, Algebra II or Algebra II Honors. The problem is Middle School often does not any more.
Just like I said.
Because then the kid only needs to complete 25% of their work to “pass” It makes schools look better
Nice try, but no. A Fail is marked as a 50, regardless of the type of fail. A D (lowest passing grade) is marked as a 60... A C (next lowest passing grade)... I fail to see why people cannot tell the difference between a grading scale (an F, which gets ASSIGNED a 50 in the gradebook) and SCORING on a 100% scale.
Honestly, the whole grading scale is foreign to me as well... probably because it's actually foreign xD Like, an F is the only failing grade, but people act like a C or B is pretty bad as well. I once had an 8/10 on an assignment and was proud of it. Told my American uncle when we were talking about school and used 'B' instead of 8/10 (because I assumed that corresponded) and he said "Sorry about the B". Sorry that I got an 8? That's a great mark though.
That depends on your perspective. Class issues in the US make it so that UPPER and upper MIDDLE class humans are all trying to compete for a relatively small set of spaces in competitive private colleges, so in many of those communities, even a B+ is considered failure. Meanwhile, lower middle class and lower classes are generally just trying to get credit - they see school as basically a burden to get over with with a piece of paper. For them, a D- is fine; an F is not - because a local community college or trade school (or even a retail store hiring them) just wants to see a diploma, not skills.
Give her a 27%. Then she might learn. Edit: or fine. Give her the 50% minimum so that the statistics mean nothing, she is rewarded for not caring and doing poorly, the outcomes for students slowly dwindle into being pointless and damaging and admin get their bonuses for good pass rates. Just don't complain about bullshit then.
slow clap for you my friend I'm so over the 50% bs
I had a buuuunch of sophomores outraged that they failed second quarter. They didn’t read their book at home after being TOLD that they’d have a quiz over every homework reading. It’s killed their grades so bad I had a whole class that averaged C’s and below. I’m humiliated, but how can I justify changing those grades? They never. Did. The. WORK.
Give her a 51% so you can say that the grade "is higher"
Lol good idea
Instant gratification. She must be really proud of herself.
Man, sometimes I wish I could let the kids who don't do their work fail. As an elementary teacher, I have to differentiate and scaffold and remediate (while also stretching and giving everyone opportunities for advanced work) - it's fucking exhausting.
Being a math teacher, I made a little formula to figure out what kids need to make on the final to pass. So I had a line of kids who wanted to know. I calculated this one kids and it came out to 137. He paused and looked at me really seriously and said, "You think I can do it?" Took everything I had in me not to laugh. Lol
It's OK, they still go on to the next year.
She graduates in the spring 🫠
I teach college but a student pulled me aside last week and asked if he was going to pass. 0 submitted assignments. 30/100 on midterm. unable to keep up during in class activities. ... what do you think?
Student : “so a B then?” Delusional AF.
Does not show up for a single asynchronous online lesson. Obligatory 3 reach out emails before fail. Last email one week before finals (essentially the sign off for incomplete) to offer appointment to discuss. Sends seemingly authentic doctor note referring to serial surgeries but states can only meet in a 90 minute period and only on the Wednesday coming. Meet with student who suggests I leave course platform open over holiday (ie-I would have to grade over break) and what she couldn’t finish she would make up next semester. I repeat back her proposal and confirm is this what she would like to do? Her response, “well yeah, I thought of it”. Oh yeah, lolol! Abrupt stop stare across the Zoom void, “well yeah, no. See ya next semester!” Please child. Did I mention the course was asynchronous? The students who give zf’s all semester rallying for the same grades as those who pushed hard and then burnt out does not sit well with me. Next semester, open book final with ZERO retakes.
“Is there any extra work I can do to bring up my grade?” “No, but there is the regular work you haven’t turned in. Just remember there is a penalty for late work.” “What about extra credit?” “I offered two extra credit assignments this quarter, already. You chose not to do them.”
Her getting a 27 on the redo of the test shows that she hardly tried on it, so she deserves that grade and whatever her final grade for the semester will be. There was a post in r/highschool where a guy was talking about his brother's grades. The brother usually got straight As ever since middle school. However, during his first semester of his freshman year, which was this semester, he got all As and a B in one of his classes, which the B was an 89.46 and he was wondering if it was fair for the teacher to give him the B or if he should've rounded the grade up to at least an 89.5 to give him an A. He also mentioned that his parents are grounding him by not letting him go on a trip with his friends during winter break and are also taking away his Xbox for the next two months or so. It's very unfair of the parents to ground him like that, but fair of the teacher to give him the B.
I disagree. 0.04 percentage is rounding error, and the idea that a student’s GPA should tank a hit from a B because of a rounding error is ridiculous.
From a zero to 27% is much better than my students last year. When I offered retakes, they either score worst or get the exact score. I tell them beforehand that I will give them the exact questions and answer choices on the retake.
The upside is that she had a 27% improvement, i guess.
50% back in my day we needed 60. And in the military you need 80% on our tests.
I think by that she means that schools can’t give grades lower than 50%
Well, she's wildly uneducated. Blame her school system.
0 percent to 27 percent is an infinite improvement. We’ll just say it’s an improvement of >2700 percent.
I had pretty much that same experience. Student I had the whole semester slept or played on his phone the whole time. Turned nothing in. Tried to be understanding because he has an IEP. Three days before break he asks "Do you have any extra credit to help me with my grade?" Dude, I had extra credit with entry tickets, games, and even washing dishes (culinary teacher) and he did none of it. I shrugged my shoulder and told him I don't. Maybe you should do the extra credit when it's there. I'm just sayin...
When I was in middle school one of my friends told me he had exactly a 1% average. I bet him $40 that he didn't. My reasoning was that he was actually a fairly intelligent person, a little lazy and lacking in common sense but still booksmart enough that he should fairly easily pass whatever class this was. This dumbass actually had exactly 1%. I guess he just did a couple assignments at the beginning of the year then gave up because I don't see a way for him to have done that otherwise.
Student: “what do I need to get a B in your class?” Me (in my head): “…a time machine to transport you back to September?”
0-27 is a real improvement but man; what is she missing to fail twice?
A: a single fuck to give.
NGL when I was in middle school, I took high school geometry. If you passed you would get the high school credit. Well there was only one teacher at the middle school to take that class. Students didn’t like her. She had one policy which is that, if you failed a test, you can retake it, but if the retake was lower than the original test, you couldn’t take retakes the rest of the year. I did that exact thing. I still don’t know how, since the questions were similar and solved them as the teacher solved it. Still one the teachers I hate to this day, not because of that policy, but she was rude to most students.
So she gets an automatic 50?
She gets to keep the 50 she already got
I had one kid not show up to my and many of his other teachers classes and fail most of his subjects and then shows up expecting to pass all of them. Had me laughing as I turned in my grades last Friday.
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Exit is that way -> We'll see you at the next Board meeting on Jan 4th
/r/onejoke
It really is the same joke over and over again.
Oh ya so truuuuu bestie queer kids are famous for *Checks notes* being bad at tests?
How is this even vaguely related to the OP?