Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to address unfair grade?

My son's spelling test came back with a 0 because he wrote the words on every other line and when he ran out of room, he went back to the empty lines and filled them in. Basically, the words were out of order from how the test was given. She wrote "this is not acceptable!" And slapped a zero on it even though he only missed one word. Huh?

I'm fairly sure he was not trying to be cute or silly, it just seemed logical to him when he realized he wouldn't be able to fit all the words on one side of the paper (there were twice as many words because they are doing singular and plural).

I honestly think she is a little frustrated by him as his behavior has regressed some. We are still waiting on an eval by an OT and then likely vision therapy.

I'm not really good with this kind of thing yet. I'm not happy about it but does the teacher have a leg to stand on here or is she over the top?

I don't know. I can only tell you what I would do in the situation with my own ds. I'd explain to him the teacher's expectations, praise him for his creative problem solving, commiserate with him over the lack of teacher understanding or appreciation for his creativeness, remind him again of her expectations and then let it go.

Without knowing what kind of relationship you have with the teacher, or the one your son has with the teacher, it's hard to to give advice on what to say to the teacher. We've been very lucky to have great teachers so I've never been in the position of having to go in and advocate.

This probably doesn't help.

It sounds like a misunderstanding - the teacher expected the students to list the words in order, your ds didn't know he was supposed to do the words on every line or whatever, he ran out of room, and he came up with a solution that he didn't realize wasn't acceptable. I'd talk to the teacher if you can catch her in person and explain it that way, and let her decide if she's willing to change his grade. I wouldn't argue if she won't on this, it's one spelling test - but I would explain to my ds what to do next time.

polarbear

MoN's advice is how I would handle it.

I don't think I would let this go either. If it was a spelling test and the words were correctly spelled then he deserves to be graded on that alone - UNLESS the teacher was specifically grading on word placement on the page, which I highly doubt.

I also agree that you should talk to your son and explain to him, in the best way possible, that he needs to conform to the mold that is expected and stop being so dawg-gone creative....at least in spelling. (Sort of kidding here, but that seems to be what our children have to do - conform, conform, conform!!!)

If you do decide to contact the teacher about this, I would try to be as diplomatic as possible. If the teacher is already frustrated with your son you surely wouldn't want to add salt to the wound.

Hopefully the school year is almost over and this didn't bring his grade down.

Yes this is my 7 yo. I've had extensive conversations with her about DS but part of me thinks she is not buying what I am selling re his vision issues and sensory/motor skills issues are causing the behavior problems. I sort of think it may be more of what polarbear said so I may need to go in and act nice instead of being defensive which is my gut reaction LOL My husband was livid. He said "what are they teaching? Spelling or how to conform to rigid rules?"

I'd try to be nice as described above. Also, I'm assuming this isn't the first test of the year? I think it's reasonable for the teacher to think that the kids know the drill for the test by now so I'd probably be a little upset with my kid for not playing the game by the rules. I have on who marches to her own drummer and she's had to learn some lessons about learning what the teacher wants. FWIW, her teachers responded better to her asking for the grade to be corrected vs me doing it and she's always been very good at it. Any chance your son would ask on his own at least as a first cut? (ie have him tell her that he ran out of space and ask why the zero). I do think if expectations were clear and minus a disability of some type my kid might be out of luck (ie I might not argue the point and chalk it up to lessons learned for her).

I have had to ask questions on a few occasions where more diplomacy was required and took the nice approach. Frame it as a question to clarify rather than a demand. Good luck!

I think I'd just let it go. He's 7 and it really doesn't matter if he gets a zero on a spelling test. If you're sure of the reason he got a zero, explaining it to him, commiserate, congratulate him on spelling so many correctly and then use this as a learning moment for teacher expectations.

It's a bummer she's like that, but it sounds like she might be someone with whom you need to pick your battles.

lilswee - no it's not the first test of the year but it's the first one where they did the singular word and then the plural so he had 30 words total (like "guess" and "guesses"). He has never run out of room before!

I never got a zero in my entire academic career so it would be hard not to say anything. I didn't see her today when I picked my kids up. Maybe the weekend will give me some time to mull it over.

Small update - finally saw the teacher today after school. I needed to ask her about something else and after we talked about that, I just said "I wanted to ask about that spelling test to see what was going on with that."

She basically said that test was during the week when he was acting worse than he usually does and that he had been called over 2 times to take the test and he didn't come to the group. He got his third and final chance and took the test. She said she thought about that grade. I think she was just fed up with him that day, honestly even though she knows about all his issues.

I didn't ask for the grade change and just explained as I did up above what he did so she knew. I don't know if she will change it or not. DH is still not happy because they are supposed to be testing him on spelling. I guess we will see - it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things I guess. If his spelling average at the end of the year is like 75% or whatever then we will know she kept the 0. If it's 99%, then we will know she changed it (since he usually get 100% or misses just one).