<p>When deciding whether to pursue a school matter, I always ask myself if the teacher’s decision has ramifications for the future. Your situation definitely does. She’s being ridiculous and unreasonable, esp. given the AP impact.</p>
<p>A timely topic for me. My D missed last Friday for her brother’s college graduation. She told the teacher TWO WEEKS ahead of time. The teacher refused to let her give an oral report that would be given on the missed day. Furthermore, the teacher has been gone 4 of the last 6 days (but made it to school at 3:20 every day for softball practice…). So, she wouldn’t let her give the report any other day either.</p>
<p>I tried to talk to the teacher, and she said daughter was SOL, and she wouldn’t talk to me b/c she had softball practice. Small school, short walk to the principal’s office. He was somewhat dismayed at her actions. Her solution? No one would give the oral reports or get the points. Way to overreact and punish the students who had prepared.</p>
<p>So…I feel for you, OP. As others suggest, I would deal with it promptly before everyone scatters for summer and it all gets shoved under the rug.</p>
<p>You might approach her directly and bring up the tracking issue. If you feel she might be reasonable and on your team, you could agree with her as an adult that an object lesson is great (consequences for missing work) however, in this case the consequences are too far reaching to be a good lesson. Your son needs to have the AP tracking option open to him so he needs to be allowed to make up the work.</p>
<p>In SOME cases, when a teacher sees you are on the same side- trying to do what’s best for the kid- and not just a complaining person, they may work with you. Of course, teachers are people, too, and some have hidden agendas and some are lazy, etc. So, if she does not work with you, yes go over her head. BUT, I do find educators get tired of our generation of parents always making excuses for the kids and they are more willing to work with a parent when you can find an area of common agreement, like, he should have learned something here…then more on to the consequences in this case being vastly out of line with the error.</p>
<p>Also, making the quiz up is not the only option. I think this has been mentioned, but another option – perhaps even more reasonable – is to drop that quiz when figuring his average.</p>
<p>I have elementary/middle/high school school kids. No way should anything from 5th grade affect choice of high school classes. I’m glad our high school has a policy that any kid can sign up for any AP class he/she wants. English classes are the same through 8th grade. 9th and 10th have “honors” by recommendation–usually those are the kids who’d go into AP Eng. Lang./Lit for 11th and 12th grade. If a kid who didn’t take honors in 10th grade wanted AP in 11th (rarely would this happen) he/she could sign up.</p>
<p>They’ve found that this works, because students (and their parents) know what their ability level is. Only kids who are willing to do the work would want to sign up for AP.
There are a few kids who might not be great students all around, but have a strong interest in a particular course–they don’t want those kids to be excluded just because they didn’t make a certain grade in another course the year before.</p>
<p>If I were the mom, I would ask someone from the new district if this upcoming middle school tracking is really “set in stone” through high school. It seems that students would be moving up and down in tracking depending on performance in middle school.</p>
<p>If I felt that this was really going to put my kid at a disadvantage with the new district, I would go to the current teacher and explain exactly why my kid “needs” to make up that quiz, or have it excluded from the average. Once the teacher understands why your kid “needs” to have a certain grade, she may willingly change the grade with no extra work. (Former teacher–I have done that.)</p>
<p>Spoke with the principal today, we are actually friends (Her husband is our scout leader) and it is not a call I ever want to make. I prefaced the call saying that for now, in my opinion the ball was in the teacher’s court and I was simply waiting for an answer from her but did not expect on today because there was whole class field trip. I went on to lay out how I viewed the issue and she agreed that he should be able to make up the quiz or the grade be dropped. It was simply a quiz on 5 chapters and he scored a 100 on the whole book test so certainly he understands the material. We agreed to give her until the end of day tomorrow to make a decision and then if 1) I don’t like the decision or 2) she simply does not answer, the principal will make an appearance. She did say something very interesting. In her opinion, agenda listed assignments (this was not) are on the student’s shoulders to make sure the work is completed and turned in, but exams and quizzes, she feels it is 100% the teachers responsibility to make sure the student takes the exam at a time that is not disruptive or arranged with the student. She also said that before any teacher closes a unit, she should bring missing assignments to students and parents attention.</p>
<p>On another note, this is the first time since my son has been at this school (he started in K) that I ever even remotely thought about going beyond a teacher. Great kids, great teachers, great school. I am sure the correct decision will be made :)</p>
<p>As a teacher, I’m appalled at your son’s teacher’s response. Not only could I not live with myself if I responded that way, I would never get away with it!</p>
<p>I am sure it will to. I was thinking about this and, as a teacher, I could understand taking a hard line if a child knows the protocol and is, perhaps, a frequent problem in the area of absenteeism, failure to make up work or whatever. It just surprises me that a teacher would be so inflexible with a child who has had perfect attendance.</p>
<p>One of my pet peeves (I should go to that thread!) is kids who are repeatedly absent, especially when it is for vacations or sporting events. I see the kids once per week and usually have lessons that go on on for several weeks. When kids miss a class, they throw the whole rhythm off when they return. I will have twenty kids working on step 1 of the lesson and three working on step 2. It often involves lengthy and complex preparation and it takes away from the other kids when I have to backtrack for a few.</p>
<p>When kids have been sick, etc. I completely understand and when a child is out once in a blue moon to do something special with the family, I understand, as well. But there are those that take days preceding every school vacation week, come back with a tan and want to be caught up on the part of the lesson they missed. Anyway, just venting. The OP’s son’s absence wouldn’t even be on my radaar.</p>
<p>Great job, collegeshopping! I’m so glad it worked out this way. The principal had a different take on tests/quizzes which I hadn’t thought of, and it totally makes sense.</p>
<p>I find it positively absurd that a missed assignment in fifth grade will determine what courses this child is allowed to take in high school. that is way too much pressure on a child so young, and it encourages unhealthy helicopter parenting. This is a time for children to make mistakes with relatively little consequence (other than a worse grade and parental disappointment/appropriate discipline). </p>
<p>I would tell the teacher that you think she has dealt improperly with you and your child, and explain why with polite firmness and detail. Say that moreover, due to the high stakes of this situation, you feel compelled to seek arbitration with the principal. Say that while you will use this as an instance to teach your child the importance of self-advocacy, following up, and disciplined attention to missed assignments (and not letting him slide just because you feel the teacher was unreasonable), putting this child on an academic track for years to come that is below his capabilities is an unreasonable consequence for this situation. </p>
<p>Signed,
Someone who hated reading and was not diligent with missed assignments in my pre-teen years (of course, none of this could possibly be the case now)</p>
<p>In the first week of middle school (6th grade), my son was assigned to help a boy with a broken ankle by leaving with him five minutes before social studies ended and carrying his books to their next class.</p>
<p>One day, the teacher gave a homework assignment after the two boys had left.</p>
<p>The next day, when they did not turn in the homework assignment that neither of them knew about, they both got zeroes – which made it mathematically impossible for them to get As for that quarter, no matter how well they did on other assignments. They were told that it was their responsibility to find out from classmates about what had happened after they left the room and that they should have realized it.</p>
<p>A harsh consequence? Perhaps. But there were no lasting ramifications. This school system did not track in any subject except math until high school, and even math tracking only started in 8th grade. </p>
<p>I did nothing to intervene in this situation (except to suggest to my son that in the future, perhaps he should not offer to help kids on crutches – at which point he told me that he had not volunteered, he was assigned). But if it had affected long-term academic placement, I would have.</p>
<p>Note to people who know where I live: This did not happen in our community. In fact, it is probably unimaginable in our loose-as-a-goose, PC-to-the-max county. When my son started 6th grade, we lived in a different community in New Jersey.</p>
<p>Same here. I’m a little flabbergasted (naive, perhaps?) that they start tracking as early as 6th grade. In part because a lot of the kids who were top students in elementary ended up with low Bs or worse in HS and vice-versa. That included many kids who were in the top percentiles on standardized testing. Can you really predict in 5th grade who will be ready for AP classes five years later? I know many a frustrated parent who’s straight A child in elementary school struggled for Bs in hs and even middle school. Though I agree with the OP, given that the district does this, I would fight the grade.</p>
You think there were no lasting consequences, but in fact there may have been more subtle ones. Your son probably lost a little respect for his teacher because of that decision. At least that’s what happened in our house when my son’s fifth grade teacher marked him wrong on a test and refused to give him credit. (The question was what was the first US colony. He wrote Roanoke. She said she meant the first successful colony.) I told him not to contest it further since he still had an A on the test. From that moment on that teacher could do no good. Every little slight, became a huge complaint. By the end of the year he had soured the whole family on the teacher. I wish I’d gone in and asked her to admit her mistake. </p>
<p>In any event, since this will have obvious lasting consequences I would certainly ask for the grade to be changed.</p>
<p>collegeshopping, I’m glad that things seem to be working out. Reading through the whole thread, I noticed that the teacher assigned your son an 85, and that meets the pre-AP cut-off for the district where you currently live. So, she may have thought that there was no impact of the grade. The teacher may not have known that the cut-off is 90 in the district to which you are moving.</p>
<p>The whole idea of fixed tracking seems poor to me, especially starting this early. In our district (not in Texas), parents can over-ride the school’s placement, into any course they believe will suit their child. There is one requirement: the student has to get a B in the higher-level course to stay in that level.</p>
<p>The idea that a ten-year-old needs to take more responsibility in this case does not seem appropriate to me.</p>
<p>QM, I agree that the teacher may not have gotten the consequences of the 85, which is why I would have gone back to her first and nicely explained. But it still doesn’t excuse not answering a parent’s e-mail.</p>
<p>Marian, I agree completely. My instincts are generally against helicoptering. It’s just that in that instance when I refrained it really came back to bite me!</p>
<p>Good point, Youdon’tsay. The local teachers distributed information at the beginning of each year, stating that they would return email or voicemail within 24 hours of receipt.</p>
<p>For the parents who are saying that it’s the OP’s son’s responsibility: No problem with having the OP’s son advocate for himself as the first step. But if that doesn’t work, what would be the point of having the student in classes at the wrong level for the next 7 years? And with a probable impact on college admissions chances (not just at the top, but many places, since I think Texas uses weighted GPA’s for class ranks). Speaking as Colonel (Ret’d.) in the Parental Helicopter Patrol, I’d admit there are some instances that I’d call differently from others, and could easily understand the disagreement. But for a 10-year-old at an academic branch point?</p>