Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy "best" is NOT a good goal-- explaining

Right-- and my greatest worry after my phone conversation with him is that HIS goals for my child are diametrically opposed to this.

He wants her to focus on "meeting high standards" and "working harder" and being relentless in her "pursuit of excellence."

I just thought, "Ohhhhh, NOOOOOOOOOO" when I heard him say some of those things. She had been doing SO well with this class in particular (enjoying the material even though it is a bit on the slow/remedial side), and that was an appropriate challenge for her-- she and he do NOT communicate well (on either side, I might add), and she doesn't trust or like him.

So for her, that WAS an appropriate-- and actually somewhat DAUNTING-- set of learning challenges. She had to meet the challenge of learning from someone that she DOES NOT LIKE. She had to force herself to meet the PACE of the class even though it's too slow and the content isn't as deep as she'd like. She was figuring out how to meet external standards while still maintaining her own inner goals with the material. KWIM?

Now he's decided that that isn't what he wants her to get out of the class. Gaaaaa!!!

Okay-- several people have asked about the percentages.

The exam that was savaged (as some kind of object lesson in 'striving to do your best') earned a 67%. Probably a less subjective grading of that exam would have earned more like an 80%, even with a pretty harsh set of standards.

That single exam is 22% of an exam composite which is 40% of the course grade.

Ergo, that exam is 8% of the grade in the class. Earning 67% on it basically drops the course percentage by about 6%.

Anything less than 93% in a class is not an A. Ergo, my child's new "perfect" score in the class just became 94% as a result of this one exam, leaving her in the position of needing to earn 99-100% in order to earn an A in the course. There is no question in my mind that this is now her primary goal, which is a shame, because she HAD actually been engaged and learning, against considerable odds.

It is not comforting, by the way, when the student's teacher doesn't seem able to "follow" the math there, when my 13yo worked it out in about two minutes.


And also on the subject of unfair grading practices, here's a lovely wrinkle. In the case of STRUGGLING students, they are encouraged to "retake" poor assessments for better grades. High-achievers are frequently ineligible to repeat anything. Yes, that's right. Same course, same material, same assessments, and standard policy is to use assessments FORMATIVELY for some students, and exclusively summatively for others. This is the single biggest gripe that my DH has about our school. It really burns his britches that DD can't "re-do" a lab report that she earns a B on, but a student who earns an F on the same lab report is walked through doing it over-- for an improved grade.

You are NOT being "that parent." HE is being "that teacher."

Let us re-examine the problem from that perspective.

The teacher is failing to see that his definition of "very high standards" is not an objective absolute. If I've read correctly, he's created an arbitrary set of objectives that he made up just for your daughter. This is not acceptable unless she signed up for some special "extra honors" section of the class that demands performance different from the rest of the students. If she's just a regular student like everyone else, IMO a formal written protest to Mr. or Ms. TeacherBoss is in order. Argument: if he made up new rules for one exam for one person, who's to say that he won't keep changing the goalposts?

This approach does NOT allow a student to "grow." It engenders feelings of helplessness in general and negativity about a subject.

Does this teacher understand the damage he could do here, and the damage that he did two years ago?

Is there another section of this class (with another teacher) that your DD can take?

My opinion, FWIW, is that this guy needs to understand that

• You are NOT "that parent"
• He's the one who's wrong here;
• He has no right to impose his random idea of what's best for your daughter on her. He clearly doesn't know her well enough anyway.

My heart is just breaking....

My DD is working on a quiz for a different class and has now been working on a pair of "short answer" questions for an HOUR. Yup. Because she can "make them better."

After all, she still hasn't really done her "best" since there are still... er... things that she knows that she hasn't expressed? Things that the textbook covered? The possibility that the teacher may, at some point in the past or future, discover a written answer which is superior to what she currently has on paper?





*#%^*#$^%$!!!!!!!

If you've already spoken to him on the issue, and he hasn't yielded, then the next step is to call a meeting with the principal wherein you watch him squirm to explain why he's applying a different grading standard to your child than to everyone else in the class.

I agree with Dude. Try a face to face with the teacher. If that does not work then step up another rung. If the material was below what your daughter can do, I could understand a teacher pushing beyound the current standard. However that can be done without using a 100% on existing as the critiera.

Well, I had the conversation, all right.

I eventually got tired of rehashing the same ground over and over and just took the bull by the horns. I didn't come right out and use the phrase "well beyond the scope of this course" but it was a VERY narrow thing.

I very definitely DID use the term "good enough" though he deliberately misunderstood that phrase and I had to go back a couple of times and rephrase/explain it. I helpfully used the example of my DD working and reworking and reworking a pair of little five point questions on that quiz today in my explanation. I seriously do NOT think that he has ever actually heard of/seen a hard-core perfectionist in full flight. :sigh: I found it a bit frustrating, though, to get half way through an explanation only to find out that he was still "stuck" on something I'd said at the beginning.

Come to think of it, this explains a lot about what he doesn't care for in my daughter's writing as well. One point which he cleared up definitely sheds some light on things.

He evidently expects students to "assume that they are offering an explanation to someone who has NO background in the material." Whoah. Really? NONE? Do they have good English skills? Know that we have a single POTUS at any one time? Should one explain what is meant by terms like "governance?" What about "representative?" Is this mythical tabula rasa a foruth grader? A college student? A dog?

I pointed out that this particular requirement is a little... er... idiosyncratic. (He seemed to be a bit nonplussed though entertained by this word, by the way... perhaps it was new? Anyway-- that's what I meant about frustrating.) I did explain that in most coursework, students are encouraged to answer exam questions as though they were addressing: a) a reasonably competent classmate and/or b) the course instructor. Ergo, while there may be nothing wrong with his standard, it is most certainly NOT normative, and probably requires a bit more emphasis for students to understand what he intends there.

At any rate, I feel that he IS understanding that I'm hardly looking for him to apply some kind of 'softer' grading standard to my child (which he at one point suggested gingerly, and I quickly dismantled), but on the other hand, I'm ALSO not looking for him to go deciding what HER goals ought to be for this class, and the fact is, he's just transformed ALL of her former goals into "do not fail to obtain 93% average in class," which supercedes learning in importance for her.

Kind of shot himself in the foot if he was looking to make that a "formative" assessment.

If it was "summative" then he needs to rethink how he's looking at grading, since he made quite contradictory statements to me about what it is he's "really looking at" in evaluating students. On the one hand it "isn't" about particular phrasing, buzzwords, etc. It's about the student's underlying understanding of the question, etc. On the OTHER, apparently, it IS about stating things in particular ways. Since he repeatedly has stated both verbally and in writing that my child KNOWS the material well, and that the problems were about her not stating her answers "directly enough" or with enough "specificity," or "clearly labeling" examples/evidence referentially with respect to the questions. In other words, this is MOSTLY stylistic. But when I pointed out that I'm not sure that she CAN learn to do what he's looking for on future assessments since she doesn't know what's in his head beforehand... well, he's not looking for any particular buzzwords, just understanding of the underlying ideas... and strong, clear statements...

(Yes, I know. He didn't seem to understand a lot of things that were wrong with this line of reasoning... and the fact is that he's attempting to parse 'style' points with someone whose style is VASTLY different than his own, and also didn't understand the terms summative and formative. AUGH.)

If this is how historians all write-- using subjective/ambiguous statements/evidence with emphatic value judgments attached, I mean-- then I think that DD is probably doomed in this class. I also begin to see very clearly why physical scientists regard this kind of "scholarly activity" with such ill-concealed disdain. :sigh: He apparently objects to my daughter's tendency to choose evidence, offer plausible ("it may be" not "it is so") explanations and let the reader make value judgments. I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't that her writing choices are a bit sophisticated for what he is actually LOOKING for. He seems to want very choppy sentences that make SVO statements and TELL the reader WHAT TO THINK... (yes, he did say that).

Anyway, we left it that he'll at least review what she turned in this morning (I had her pull out her exam and REWORK the questions without looking at the graded version), and she gave him that along with a scanned copy of her handwritten notes re: the essay questions. He'll set up a phone conference with her once he's had a chance to go through that material. He is also (still) going to discuss this with the Ap Lit Barracuda to find out how it is that she can insist on "highly demanding standards" year after year without shutting my kid down-- which he SORELY needs to learn.

This kind of thing is just crazy-making, frankly.

A number of teachers use the "explaine it like I know nothing rule" you see this in MS and HS. They use this to force most students to do a better job of discussing or explaining a topic. Most teachers teach to the 80% rule and have devloped technigues that they belive should work for all. A rare teacher understands that each student should be treated fairly, but not equally. It sounds like you have one that misses this. Also its hard to challange the king in there castle. I belive its time to move up the ladder on this issue.

Honestly, I'm left with the disgusted impression that this is ALL just a load of subjective hogwash.

What he seems to REALLY misunderstand is that while HE has 250 students, they only have ONE of him.

So when he flubs something or makes an offhand, inaccurate/misleading remark, it sticks with at least a few of them.

Good historians do NOT write this way. History resembles the hard sciences in some important ways, in that you have to gather data and provide evidence to support your conclusions. Many writers follow this process. Like the sciences, people can distort the facts or cherry-pick among them to make fraudulent points.

Is the teacher a historian or an educator?

Again, the stuff I've read here sounds like arbitrary edumacator babble. I think you need to write to this guy's boss. He CANNOT hold different students to different standards while handing out the same grades in the same class.