@IxnayBob - Teachers in general despise those kids who are “grade grubbing” and therefore it is counter-productive to confront them about the grades. However, there’s a thin line when confronted with a situation where unfairness is clearly presented. For example, it is categorically wrong to deduct points for missing classes when the students need to take AP and IB exams. I as a parent never got involved in that. As a rule I always have my son do all the communication about such matters. It’s a part of the college preparation, after all. He’s going to have to take care of all the issues that come up in college, so why deprive him of such skill set?
Some teachers, especially those who like to take too much license with their personal ways of doing things, need to be confronted. Still, as a rule, we try to stay away from anything that’d come across as placing the grade as the central issue. Even when I met with the school counselor and the AP Biol teacher, the word “grade” never even came up. The entire discussion was in what ways could my son improve his understanding of the subject. In fact, the only reason why the counselor was in the meeting to begin with was because the teacher, who I think was intimidated by the prospect of meeting the parent one on one, had requested the counselor be present as her security blanket. I found that to be interesting since I only wanted to meet with the teacher to see for myself what my son needed to do to improve his grasp of the subject matter. I wanted to know whether my son needed an outside help (tutor, for example) or was the problem a simple matter of internal adjustments. So, for a meeting that I had envisioned as a parent/teacher consultation turned out to be more than that – accidentally. That was the only time I had gotten myself involved with the school for this son.
I’ve gotten myself involved with the school just once also for my older son, and it was a one on one meeting with the teacher. To make the long story short, with so many parents complaining about this Math SL teacher not only to the school administrators but also to the school district, the school finally relented and had him removed from teaching the course. My older son had to get around dealing with this teacher by taking AP Calc AB and BC and taking the AP exams in both AND still taking the SL exam in order to meet the IB requirement. My younger son took the same winded route only to learn, in the middle of finishing up his AP Calc BC this semester, that he can’t just take the Math SL exam to fulfill the requirement but that he’d have to take the whole class in his senior year. The teacher’s removal came too late for both my sons. But because of the parents’ involvement, all the students in the IB program do not have to deal with this teacher any more.