Update.
Mr. Teacher spoke to my daughter this morning.
Yes, that choice of words was deliberate. It certainly wasn't that "they talked." A twenty minute phone call, and she said about four complete sentences (and she's a virtual Chatty Cathy doll... LOL).
I doubt that it is going to do much good, and so does she-- in her opinion (uncoached) he was contradictory and this seemed (to her) to be about writing style, but also about 'right' answers, even though he said that it wasn't. I could watch the expressions on her face-- she was so distressed and confused. She was frantically taking down everything he said to her, but it is clear that much of the time, her thoughts were "what the HELL DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??"
He didn't really use any active listening skills with her, so he still has no real concept of WHY she is having trouble writing the way he wants her to. This even after he supposedly discussed strategies and motivation with Ms. Barracuda (who I also spoke with yesterday morning, so I
know approximately what she was going to say to him, and it involved using a more give-and-take communication model, I'd put money one it).
DD is so very discouraged. She doesn't
want to change her entire writing style to suit one teacher, and particularly since this particular teacher doesn't write all that well himself, but is insisting that he is training her to some "college standard" that he thinks she is not yet meeting.
I'm just as perplexed as she is about what he actually wants from her, because it doesn't make any kind of rational sense that I can see. I'm tempted to let my DH write an essay for him (with DD's input on content) to see if ANY of the people in our house can hit his target.
Between the two of us, it's clear that we have a LOT more collegiate writing experience to draw from. He's just plain
wrong. 
Oh-- and before I even talked to him the first time, I had DD rewrite all four essay questions to her most rigorous teacher's standards. Remember, though, that these are theoretically short answer questions at the END of an in-class exam. They aren't formal essays.
He was going to read them and discuss THOSE with her, I had thought. Apparently not. He went through his original comments on the exam with her. Like she's too stupid to have READ what he wrote to her or something.
SO frustrating. She tried to tell him "yes, I know-- I read that. You wrote that on my exam," but he kept cutting her off to "tell" her more (of what he'd already said to her, evidently).
This is why teachers should stick to teaching in their expert subject areas and not worry quite so much about "character" development, because NOW he's convinced that my daughter needs a lesson about conformity. (My suspicions, anyway).
Well, she doesn't. She's TRYING to conform. But you're not telling her what the RULES of this particular form are.
It's like he wants a sonnet, but keeps saying "the meter is irregular here," and "you need to watch that your rhyme scheme isn't slipping after the first two lines," and "this isn't long enough."
Those aren't good instructions for a sonnet if the student hasn't ever SEEN one or been given the basic guidelines of the form. KWIM?
If anything, I'm more exasperated than I was before.
