Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Teacher telling class individual students' grades

What do you think about this? Honestly, I thought it went out years ago, but it seems to be common practice at DD8's gifted magnet. They don't tell the class everyone's grades, but if a child gets a 100% (or a few children) and others don't do too well, the teacher will mention it, seemingly as a motivator or something ("Janie got a 100% and she's the only one, so the rest of you need to work harder").

I wonder if someone thinks this is the "way you handle gifted kids" or something? They did it last year as well. ??

FWIW, my kid is often the one getting the 100s.

In addition to being appalling, I believe it's also a violation of FERPA (the federal law that protects privacy rights of students). Have a look.

DeeDee

Ditto DeeDee... I am almost positive giving out students grades is against the law now.

Wow. I hadn't actually considered that. I found this:

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/parents.html

but it isn't helping me too much--is this what we're talking about?

"Under FERPA, a school may not generally disclose personally identifiable information from a minor student's education records to a third party unless the student's parent has provided written consent."

I agree with DeeDee.

In high school I was sometimes singled out in this way, and I did not mind it. I was a competitive student who wanted to do better than his classmates. If the student being mentioned does not mind, I don't think it is a problem. The best athletes are often recognized.

I wish on student report cards that the average grade were provided. If your child gets an A in math in a class of 20 you may interpret it differently if 5 kids did than if 15 kids did.

Are there schools that don't do this, gifted or otherwise? It was pretty common in my experience. Teachers might even give some kind of small reward to kids who got 100% on a test, the best essays were regularly read aloud (and credit given to the author), etc.

I even had an Algebra II teacher who would post the recent top test scores and their owners in a corner of the board. It was one of the few classes where I wasn't regularly on the top, either. Maybe I should have been doing some of that homework after all? Nah... close enough.

I don't see any problem with publicly acknowledging good performances. I would have a problem with publicly calling out poor ones. "Praise in public, correct in private" applies here.

Yes. Colleges no longer post grades, even tagged with student ID or SSN rather than name-- it's no longer permitted. In the same way, elementary schools should not be releasing grades of any individual student to any person except that student or the parents.

DeeDee

This is actually a bit difficult to find specific, official information about--if anyone can hunt it down, I'd be grateful. It's clear that educational records must be confidential, but I'm not clear on whether grades on individual tests or assignments are considered educational records. I certainly have no plans to pursue this issue ATM, but I'd like to have the info just to have it.

Add me to the list of those that would question the school re FERPA and privacy.

I remember in college when I was taking a 300+ person psych lecture course they used to post the test scores in order to demonstrate just exactly how a bell curve worked - plotting dots for how many people got each score. I overheard people one day looking at the chart and making really disparaging - almost threatening - remarks about the "curve buster". Apparently that was me but luckily names weren't posted, only the grade. These were college students at a highly competitive university. I can only imagine how a group of pre-adolescents in a highly competitive gifted program might treat the offending "curve buster." Even if not illegal I think it sounds like a really, really bad idea.