How to deal with bizarre situation with teacher, affecting daughter’s grades?

[gw186]

Summary:
Teacher of my daughter gave her a C on her final exam (all multiple choice, done on Canvas). My daughter asked only to see her Canvas report, the teacher refused, saying the exam questions and answers are confidential. Sch admin says they “checked”, but they can’t show us the report. What to do now?

Background: my daughter loves science and takes it seriously, and we were surprised when she told us she got a C (after studying for weeks) on her final exam. As the exam was all multiple choice and administered/ graded automatically by Canvas, it should have been straightforward to see the Canvas report.

But when my daughter approached her teacher about her score, the teacher refused to show her the Canvas report, saying that the exam questions and answers are confidential.

My daughter then asked if she could see her Canvas numerical score (not even the whole paper). The teacher also refused.

So after some back and forth, we approached the school admin.

The school admin said they “checked” with the teacher and everything is correct, but they also can’t show us the Canvas report, or even the Canvas numerical score.

What do you reckon is our best course of action right now? Not to put too dark of a picture on this, but my daughter tells me she thinks several of her and her classmates had their scores pushed down, and maybe the school is trying to cover things up, because if they change the score back for her, they probably have to do the same for others as well when the word gets out, and then it’s going to be a messy PR situation.

No idea why the op won’t answer the very reasonable questions about
a) how old is the DD?
b) are you in the UK?
c) is this an internal test?
Without these answers any advice is pretty pointless.

In the UK, an internal test won’t matter a damn to your DD’s future. We do external national exams that the teacher doesn’t mark.

In the US, there aren’t national exams and the school’s marks are much more important.

OP, please answer.

I mean, it is not that hard to print out the Canvas score sheet, showing just the numerical scores even.

Instead, the teacher just verbally told my daughter the score, and muted the automatically generated computer score on Canvas, which would have shown up otherwise.

The “checking” the school admin did so far was to literally email us a reply saying they “checked” (no Canvas printout, which is specifically available by the way, for the numerical score), and they left it at that, saying they “checked” and nothing was wrong. No documentation or Canvas printout of the computer scores, which we specifically asked for.

Sure, most people mean well but are we to assume everyone means well all the time, and that the teachers are wholly incapable of any kind of human fallibility

If the Canvas score sheet matches/ or even is close to what my daughter was told verbally, why is it so hard to produce

OP, are you in the U.K.? Is this a secret?? I'm not sure why you haven't answered this?!

It's weird asking for advice but providing so little context that most people can't help.

It isn't a GCSE as they aren't letter graded anymore. It isn't an A level as they wouldn't do any meaningful exam as a multiple choice computer test.

The way data and information is handled differs depending which jurisdiction you live in so people telling you to use GDpR or other methods if you aren't under EU law would be pointless etc.

Likewise how grade boundaries and scores are assessed can move each year depending on the results and again would differ depending which country you are in.

So basically it's all becoming a bit meaningless about what advice people can give

You can approach the school again but they are unlikely to give a different answer. How are other parents feeling? Maybe if you all requested it they might give them under pressure? Maybe approach a more senior member of staff with your concerns, but you also have to consider there is a chance your daughter did just get a C grade

What exams is your DD studying for?

I guess there are 3 things you could do:
1 Approach from a "help me learn" point of view where your DD and others sit down with the teacher and ask for specific help on why they didn't get higher scores. Was it lack of specific topics, was it lack of depth, was it the way they answered questions - that sort of thing. Be confident that as it's not the teacher who grades the external exams it'll be ok.
2 Contact the head of school and tell them you suspect there is a race issue. Investigate the Local Education Authority and see how they deal with this too. Then go from there. It would be useful to do this as a group I think.
3 Data access as suggested above by PP.

I hope you sort something out soon OP!

OP have you ever had a printout of a final exam score before?

How are you going to feel if she did get a grade C?

OP, I hate to say it, but I think the only answer that will satisfy you is to take the school to court.

OP, I hate to say it, but I think the only answer that will satisfy you is to take the school to court.

None of this make sense. Are you outside the UK?

What year is your daughter in, and what is Canvas?

I think OP is a bot. It only repeats the same old stuff and doesn't answer any questions

OP, repeating yourself over and over again while ignoring questions that would help posters give more meaningful answers doesn’t do you any favours.
I’m going to therefore conclude you are ‘that parent’ and offer you a well earned biscuit.
🍪

None of the advice on here can be worth anything if you won’t answer basic questions OP.

It doesn’t sound strange to me that they won’t give the other information, and you sound like you’ve got something personal against the teacher the way you keep blaming them as an individual instead of recognising it’s the decision of senior management in the school.

I don’t believe it can be that ‘sensitive’ or identifiable that the OP can’t tell us how old the child is, what country they’re in or whether it was an internal
school test or an external exam.

Fixating on the canvas report isn’t going to solve anything for anyone.

If you think there’s a discrimination issue then you need to raise that with the school formally. A print out from the VLE isn’t going to prove or disprove anything much.

Or if the issue is your daughter’s poorer than expected performance, then fixating on the report isn’t helpful either. You’d be better off talking to the teacher about areas she needs to work on and resources and strategies to support her.

Pm to see the thread go poof!
that or the op admits she’s 7

Canvas is a virtual learning environment.

other examples include Google classroom, blackboard, frog, and so on.

OP,

If you are in the US, confirming this won’t compromise you. A number of MumsNetters know the place and can help you better if we know that. Education works differently in different countries

The most useful thing you have said is that the true numerical score on Canvas has been suppressed. I don’t like that at all. I think a group of parents or if necessary just you should approach the teacher, dept head or head teacher (principal) for this information. A justification is that the children need to know how much they got wrong, since they thought they had done better

It calls itself a ‘learning management system’ in its online guff. www.instructure.com/en-gb/product/canvas/schools/lms

The OP is talking about an online multiple
choice test here.

Yes, I think it's honestly gotten to the point where it's not "how we feel" but the facts

Sure, is it cringeworthy as a parent if we get to the bottom of things and we were indeed overreacting a little, yes, but if that's the price to pay in order to settle for once and all whether the suspicions are true then what's there to be embarrassed about

If I backed down now and told my daughter we're not going to do anything even though she really thinks something is wrong, what am I teaching her?? That even though she thinks she wasn't treated right, with the likelihood that the issue would persist into the future if the teacher does the same thing to the same students in that demographic next term, she just needs to take it?

For one thing, I would rather my daughter be overly bold in this world than be overly timid, she'd probably have fewer regrets that way

This with bells on.

Why are you constantly just repeating the scenario? We get it! Stop just saying it over and over.

And wtf is Canvas? (teacher of 27 years here and never heard of such a thing). If you're in another country we need to know.

You seem WAY over-invested in a test which doesn't count towards anything. Are you always this over-invested in every assessment?

If you think it is the facts then make a formal complaint.

And look to move schools. You obviously have no confidence in this one.

fixating on the canvas report isn’t going to help your daughter to stand up for herself or take necessary action in future. It’s teaching her to behave like a conspiracy theorist rather than taking assertive action.

If you are not going to explain what country you are in, how old your child is and wether this exam actual has any impact on anything then no one can really help.

I have over my time teaching met a variety of parents.
Some of them definitely find their parents cringeworthy for very good reason. It is sometimes a mystery how students can be perfectly good and functioning given what their parents are like.