When HS in your town cheats your child

Parent Cafe
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<p>$12k per year is probably about average for that $500K home in many parts of New Jersey. It could be a bit lower in some places, but might be closer to $15K in others. There are a few towns that do not have their own public high schools, forcing residents to pay tuition to send their kids elsewhere (public or private). In those cases, the tax rates are substantially lower. </p>

<p>Tax rates are determined every year and appraisals are recalculated about every ten years or whenever major renovations requiring a building permit are done.</p>

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<p>When I called math teacher #1 for an appointment, she told my daughter in class she doesn’t do phone calls. When I e-mailed, she told my daughter she doesn’t do e-mail. This teacher was let out of her contract midway through the next year, btw. Since she never communicated with me, she had no way of knowing what tone I had (asperity, impatience, whatever). Teacher #2 knew she would retire after last year so she apparently decided to use up all her unused time off for her personal problems. Why the math supervisor didn’t hire a sub is beyond me. The supervisor acts as if she is answerable to no one.
If only going to the school board or principal or district supervisor helped in this town, I would have done it already. But it is not the case. In fact, the ranking of my town’s HS has fallen drastically in the past few years; it is now not even in the top 75 HS in NJ, that’s how bad it is now. Average SAT scores (out of 1600) fell from over 1100 to somewhere in the 900’s in the past 3 years.
Somemom: my house is valued around $450K; my property taxes are $13K. I have 1 in college now also. My DH and I are med school faculty (not MDs); we do not make a lot considering the years of education we have.<br>
If we don’t get the tests back, the tutor is a waste of money - how will the tutor know what to address? Think about it. Private schools have NO standards in NJ (been there, took them out). Nor is moving; how many of you moved while in HS? I did; it was a disaster.
DH and I both teach med and grad students so we know something about educating students. To the history teacher who wants to recycle exams, that’s being plain lazy imo. Or think of it this way - even if the students know the questions beforehand, they still have to write you convincing answers. Even review books recycle questions!!
Interestingly, my daughter does bring home her history, English, etc. tests. Just not math or science.</p>

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<p>I work for a school district. If a teacher receives a phone message or an email from a parent, they have to return the call or answer the email. VERY, VERY bad if a parent is ignored. On the other hand, the district is very supportive of teachers if a parent shows up unannounced and wants to conference with a teacher. We really stress that appointments should be made. Have you tried to talk to the principal? Or an assistant superintendent?</p>

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<p>nj-mother - not sure I understand why going to the principal or superintendent won’t help. Yes - scores are down and the schools are going downhill - does that mean the leadership has given up? If so, you should try to get them fired! Have you written letters, approached the local newspapers? Tried organizing parents around this? I’m sure you’ve done quite a bit - but I wouldn’t stop trying. Keep the heat up - put your complaints in writing. The staff of these school districts sometimes forget who is paying their salaries. If all else fails - maybe a private school is in order…</p>

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<p>For exams that don’t come home, I’ve sometimes asked the teacher to allow me to come into school and look at the exam in the office. This enables me to see what the problems areas were on the exam. No one to date has refused me this request, but I am prepared to go to the administration if necessary.</p>

<p>I think that a tutor should be able to tutor with or without an exam in hand. The tutor has access to the textbook and therefore can determine specifically what the student is responsible for. I’ve been tutoring for four years, at all levels of math K-12. It does not take long at all to figure out where a student needs help.</p>

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<p>NJ_Mother, It sounds to me like the math teachers are using the tests that come with the teacher’s manual and not making their own assessments. It’s definitely not a best practice, but it explains why they’re holding them so tightly.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, I don’t see a solution for you other than to do an end-run and arrange for your child’s math instruction yourself. With the nationwide shortages for math and science teachers, many districts are reluctant to exercise much supervision over poor teachers for fear they’ll just walk away from their contracts and can’t be replaced. </p>

<p>Is it possible for your D. to take math at the community college, either after school or in the summer, and get high school credit for it? Community colleges (at least the ones I’m familiar with) usually have teachers who want to teach and can do it well. </p>

<p>And ADad has a good point about asking to see the exams. The school has to let you, if your child is a minor.</p>

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<p>fpfan - I call, I write, husband calls, husband writes, we get ignored by supervisor, by prinicipal. they act as if they as answerable to no one.
ADad, husband went in repeatedly to look at tests. Very time-consuming. When we are not teaching, we are conducting experiments in our labs - we have to be here at work! Our salaries are generated by our grants, so if we don’t do our research, we will lose our jobs (we do not have tenure). When tests are every 3 weeks or so, it is just not feasible to miss most of a day to look at tests. The same is true of quizzes.
The tutor we hired last year told us she needed the tests in order to see what to address. The tutor said that her assessment of our daughter showed that our D knew the math so the tutor did not know why D was getting a bad grade. This was borne out by our D’s score on the state standardized test; she scored 87th percentile. And this year D has highest grade in math class and is nominated for national honors math society. In the end, the tutor saw the final - D was marked wrong for correct answers. We called and wrote the math supervisor, the principal, the district supervisor. The math supervisor finally called my husband back (I checked with him about this) and said the scandal was going to be ignored.
We’re sick of the whole thing.</p>

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<p>IMO - time to call the local newspapers and tv stations to try to get them interested in this - they love scandals. Send them a copy of the test - showing that she was marked wrong on correct answers. Ask them to investigate. It’s worth a try…
Sounds like the leadership in this school district should be fired…</p>

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<p>Toneranger, if I could get a copy of the test I’d be dancin’ in the aisles. “Leadership” in this district just pats itself on the back and does what it wants. Even the mayor has no say over the budget. Why the huge budget increases pass year after year is beyond me.</p>

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<p>I too, could have written an identical story. You cannot win. After two
sons, one of whom I had to remove from math for a year and home school,
we are sending our youngest to a private high school. </p>

<p>The cost is outrageous but I couldn’t deal with the public high school for a third time.</p>

<p>It is interesting how teachers defend other teachers, almost uniformly. </p>

<p>The best solution in math is to get your kid out and home school, with tutors if necessary to salvage both knowledge and grade. You are not alone; math
education in many high schools is deplorable.</p>

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<p>When they don’t do this, nothing is done anyway. Other teachers and administration are well aware when a teacher is reading the newspaper, or online shopping rather than teaching. So…We had one teacher who never read papers and kids tested out that theory. So…they remain in their positions until retirement.</p>

<p>BTW, I agree with the quote above. Most often, teachers want students “to accept responsibility”. I have found that teachers don’t do the same, but there is a lot of finger pointing at parents and students.</p>

<p>I do want to add that my children were also blessed with some very good teachers in their public schools. There were, however, plenty of poor ones too.</p>

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<p>Looks like you’re saying the D was a result of incorrect scoring on the test. If this is true, you have every right to get that grade changed. Don’t give up if this is the case. Just stay calm and be persistent. If the supervisor doesn’t respond, go to someone else. Are you at the point where a lawsuit might be the way to go?</p>

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<p>Well, NJ Mother, if you were to follow me around for a few weeks, I think you would call me exhausted rather than lazy! I got stuck with another new class at the semester, so now I’m teaching five different classes, three of which are honors/AP track and have mandatory weekly asssessments. So if I were to write a completely new test each time, I’d be writing one at least every other day rather than “only” once a week for the new class. As for essay questions, yes, I give students a list of possible topics ahead of time, and there are no surprises there. But thankfully, I’ve built up a bank of good multiple choice questions; they are really time-consuming to write well, and they are only valid as a representative sample of what has been taught if students don’t know all the questions and possible answer choices ahead of time…and that type of question makes up half of the AP exam students will be taking next week–it is an appropriate type of question for the classes I teach. Oops, sorry, tried not to get defensive, but a one-line explanation wouldn’t have explained my valid testing practices, which include giving students the opportunity to write down and keep anything they want to while they are looking at graded exams.</p>

<p>But the real issue for you is your daughter’s education. From what you’ve told us, I think her math achievement is quite good in spite of the problems you’ve detailed. I do understand your frustation, which (I think) is because you believe she has been unfairly graded. I like the words “calm and persistent” in another post. Does the school have a formal appeal process? In my school, by contract, grading is up to the teacher, and the teacher cannot be required to change the grade. However, and this is important, the PRINCIPAL can change the grade. He/she only has to inform the teacher in writing that the grade has been changed and is not required to give a reason. Try to find out if there is some kind of contract language or policy like that in your school, and if so, go after the principal…calmly and persistently–if you turn into one of those parents the entire school staff hates to see coming, that won’t help your daughter’s case. Take in everything you can to substantiate the reasons you believe the grade was unfair–midterm progress reports, a letter from the tutor who saw your daughter’s final, etc., and ask for a re-evaluation of the grade. Oh, just thought of something else–in my school, we have to turn in ouir grading records at the end of the year (gradebook or printed computer grade program reports). I imagine that’s a common practice, since it was required in the three different districts where I’ve worked in two different states. Ask the principal to personally examine those records–that is especially important if the teachers are no longer there or it has been a year or two.</p>

<p>Is the problem of your daughter not getting math tests back still happening this year? I’m not sure I understand that part–are students SEEING the graded tests at all? That is so important, and I can’t imagine a reason it would not be allowed. Maybe you could try this–after every test, have your daughter request after-schoool help from the teacher. Have her ask the teacher to go through the test with her problem by problem so she can make sure she thoroughly understands any errors. This would be a reasonable request on your daughter’s part (provided she is doing her part in class–homework done, bringing materials, paying attention, not using class time to socialize, read, do homework for other classes, pass notes, fix her makeup, sleep, etc.). Since math is so conceptually sequential, she needs to be sure she gets what they’re doing now in order to confidently take on the next concept. Yes, it will cut into your daughter’s time, and it may create transportation issues for you, but it will be worth it–either she will get the help she needs or (if the teacher refuses) you will have even more basis for your concerns when you talk to the principal.</p>

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<p>I don’t understand this from your OP:</p>

<p>“The next year, the new math teacher has “personal problems” and so is absent 3 days out of every week. There is no substitute for math teacher. Yet she’s back in time to give a final on what she never taught - and of course your kid can’t do well when she was never taught the material.”</p>

<p>Are you saying the kids were left in the room without a teacher in front of them? Surely not. My guess is they had a day-substitute who had a lesson plan in front of her and the other kids gamed her so mercilessly she could not teach.</p>

<p>Think about this when you say your kid was “never taught the material.”</p>

<p>You will never solve the institutional problems of this school district in time for your own D’s math education.</p>

<p>On the test that was mis-marked: consider this alternate possiblity: The math tutor might have also seen “a correct answer” but insufficient supporting steps written down. Schools sometimes mark these wrong BECAUSE if a student does this on a state exam, they’ll get marked wrong for not showing the work.
Or, more to the point, if they DO show their work (and simply get a wrong final calculation) they’ll be given partial credit for their reasoning.
So h.s. teachers are dragons and mark the test answer wrong if the kid gets the “answer” right without writing down any intervening steps, to break this habit and teach them to show their work.</p>

<p>Finally, consider your own call-back windows. I have had experiences when trying to phone back a parent where their line is busy. </p>

<p>Are you sure the emails you wrote were received by the teacher? Some schools block teachers’ e-mails now b/c there’s so much spam it wastes the teachers’ time. So a parent writing in gets blocked, message lost; and without notification to the email sender, either.</p>

<p>I am only scraping here to find possible explanations for flaws in your town’s schools. It is probably unresponsive and awful, as you say.</p>

<p>Find a tutor who does NOT depend on the school tests. The D can identify the chapter of the textbook she’s working on. Get a smarter tutor. </p>

<p>When I faced this (and we had more responsive teachers, but my S just wasn’t getting the math) I went onto Craisglist (he-he) and found a Harvard graduate who tutors for the SAT’s. I paid him $50 instead of the region’s norm of $35 per hour.
Then, I felt I could ask the moon of him.
I drove my S to him (40 minutes each way, in cold of winter, and i was working fulltime merciless schedule). It’s just TOO IMPORTANT not to fix.
It was worth every penny. The regular suburban tutors were just the same teachers, taking in some afterschool money.</p>

<p>PS I’m a teacher, so I’m trying to neither bash nor defend. Or maybe I’m doing both.</p>

<p>Either way, get BEYOND the teacher, the whining, the politics.</p>

<p>Pay through the nose and get just the math piece tutored. Sounds like you don’t need a private school, just the maths.</p>

<p>Not every Harvard grad isnecessarily a great tutor—but this one was, and had had expeireicne while on campus tutoring other students. I called for a reference and felt pretty cool calling Harvard. He saved our kid’s academic career, and while he only went up a few grade categories, it absolutely saved him.</p>

<p>I sympathize. You are hardworking and deserve much better from New Jersey taxes. But I think youhave to buy your way out of this problem.</p>

<p>OVERPAY the tutor and demand the best service. This person prepared lessons, researched on the 'net, whatever it took. He could diagnose what my son didn’t understand because the tutor was SO smart (and nice, and a big brother himself from a factory-working dad).
At the end of each lesson, they played a few riffs on their guitars together.
So it was motivating.</p>

<p>But the tutor was brilliant, and he could see from working some problems with my S from their textbook where he didn’t have an understanding. He was efficient, not a hack. He didn’t make more busywork for the kid. He never needd to see any schoolwork, but when we brought in some homework it just confirmed what he’d already figured out from working with my kid. THAT is smart and it’s worth a differential of $15 for the hour’s tutoring.
It was fixed in half a year. NOt fixed, but patched up enough for the kid to have a life.</p>

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<p>p3t, This part is so important. This is the kind of thing that kept my son engaged too. His tutor was less than 10 years older than my son, and they could relate to each other. This is really what made my son like being tutored, and my son really looked at him as a role model. At the end of the tutoring they spent a few minutes talking about “gaming”. </p>

<p>I paid a small fortune for the tutoring, but he did throw in a few “freebies”…forced timed SAT practice tests in a quiet room while he tutored others. He then reviewed the wrong answers with son during the tutoring time.</p>

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<p>paying3T: there was a babysitter, not a teacher, in the classroom. no lesson plans, no lessons. it was honors, it was assumed kids were smart enough to teach themselves. how a kid could get help after school when teacher is absent - someone please enlighten me.
Renee, after a few years of teaching you must have a cadre of questions you can recycle now that a HS generation has passed. After all, in college old exmas were and are kept on file for all to use as study aids. And shuffling the order of multiple choice questions helps test kids who otherwise will rote-memorize a,b,d,c, all of the above, … instead of learning the material.
I teach the same part of immunology from year to year and I don’t ask the same questions.</p>

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<p>NJM,
I think we can agree as educators that a student who memorizes the one correct answer of a multiple-choice question and can pick it out even if the distractors are reordered might know the material only marginally better than one who relies on rote memory and recalls 1-a, 2-d, 3-b, etc. My point is that I can be confident that the questions are really testing students’ knowledge and understanding because they haven’t seen the questions ahead of time. And I can have confidence in the reliability and validity of the questions themselves because I have used them (selecting from the bank of questions I have established for each topic–not necessarily the exact same set each year but chosen from the set I have built up over time) and I have statistical data of past student’s performance on each one. I also use that data to guide my instruction and give more attention to topics students have misunderstood in the past. I stand by my sound testing practices and will continue to devote the majority of the many extra hours I work to preparing high quality lessons rather than writing new exam questions for three or four hours a week. </p>

<p>I regret using my own practices as an example, because I certainly had no intention of it turning into disagreement about your preferred methods vs. mine. I have no criticism at all of your approach. Like P3T, I was only trying to think of any possible explanation for the policies you are encountering. I am the one who suggested requesting after school help, but it was based on misunderstanding the situation–I thought it was a teacher from a previous year who had the frequent absences, not this year. So I see that suggestion won’t work. I think P3T is right. You might get some emotional satisfaction and possibly help future students by pressuring the school (and it would be more likely to get those results if there are other parents who share your concern), but I don’t see a way to get help for your daughter this year except by finding a highly-qualified tutor like the one P3T describes–someone who can diagnose and assist independently without depending on the tests your daughter took at school. I hope the situation improves one way or another.</p>

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<p>in our district- which will be in the news in a few weeks (after the Supreme court announces its decision regarding assignment to schools by race)</p>

<p>it is very uneven-</p>

<p>Ironically our experience has been that at a “small family oriented school”, many of the teachers never set up their voice mail, let alone return email, and even when I was in the school everyday & placed pleas in their boxes myself- I rarely heard back.
IMO- the administration either has communication as a priority or they don’t, and when they don’t insist on it-much falls through the cracks.
Contrast that with her comprehensive inner city school where she has had teachers give her their home phone or even cell number, so they can be contacted for questions.
When I email the principal- or most anyone- I am contacted within a week, at her other school, sometimes I never heard back after multiple attempts.
At her first school, we had to pay for tutoring ( that we couldn’t afford), even though she had an IEP and legally they were required to measure her progress ( I had gone as far as state office, but not to the point of hiring an attorney).
Her 2nd school- same district, the teachers meet with her after school for tutoring regularly- no charge to me.
Huge difference- plus the teachers then know, if she is getting what is covered in class.</p>

<p>But such a disparity.
If parents are able, to tutor their own kids, or if parents have a priority of educational success and are motivated and able to find outside help for their kids, then the students do much better than the children of families who are perhaps immigrants without much english, or too busy and exhausted to realize that the kids aren’t learning what they need to during the school day, or even if they do- don’t know what they can do to teach them.</p>

<p>I don’t blame them- its pretty overwhelming and frustrating sometimes.</p>

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<p>ReneV, it actually is a violation of district policy for teachers NOT to hand exams back to the students to keep. I only found out this week. The teachers had been lying to me and DH saying it was district policy NOT TO give back the exams. Now that the truth is out, we hope to effect some positive change. We’re talking to the subGC about writing a “mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” letter from the HS about how they were asleep at the wheel over the honors math teachers for 2 years, and D is taking the ACT next month for the 1st time. I hope and pray that being a double legacy will help her a lot for gaining admission to her dream school- that and being a bit of a musical phenom. Dream school has a conservatory.</p>

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<p>NJ-mother,</p>

<p>If your daughter is interested in attending that dream school’s conservatory as a music major, the math will not matter very much (except at a couple of conservatories that are attached to extremely selective schools). The admissions decision will be made mostly on the basis of an audition.</p>

<p>If she wants to major in something else, her music is not likely to be much of a hook at a school with a good conservatory because they will already have a bunch of kids who are more than a bit of musical phenoms.</p>

<p>Either way, there are several threads over in the Music Major section of this board that I think will interest you if you have not already seen them.</p>

<p>Good luck with the teachers in your district. We have had some great ones and some that we were glad to see the last of.</p>