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.

The thing about conspiracy theory approaches to life (let’s face it: my daughter’s teacher has nefariously altered a test mark to discriminate against my daughter on some demographic grounds and won’t give me the ‘true report’; this is motivated by bonuses and career progression in some way I won’t explain’ sounds exactly like that kind of thinking) is that there’s no countering them with evidence.

My guess is that any canvas report couldn’t possibly be the ‘true report’ because it’ll have been doctored to cover up the ‘discrimination’. And to protect the bonus that you somehow get when your students do worse than expected.

@SoggyPaper this is worrying me, too. We have come a long way from thinking about a constructive approach originally.

Nevertheless it would be easy to show the OP an anonymised copy of the raw marks with all changes tracked. The school should be doing this to avoid children feeling discriminated against. The OP should accept scaled marks (‘curving’) as long as they are consistent

OK. If we adopt the premise that the teacher benefits from demonstrating a particular rate of progress in the students - for that, they need a formative assessment to record the attainment at the start of the year and, along with interim ones that would be irrelevant for staff appraisal, a summative assessment to establish the progress in the period.

If the academic year starts in September, now would be the time to make the results look better for all, not worse for some.

If the AY starts in January, they would have performed the formative assessment far earlier than this and it's only an interim, which would make no difference to a teacher appraisal.

Essentially, even if we accept your premise that the teacher can gain pecuniary advantage from fudging data, the suggestion that deliberately downgrading particular demographics at the expense of others is completely illogical. It would make them look less effective - and they won't want that.

Ah, I think you are onto something here.
The school year starts in April in Japan. Is the OP in Japan?
I have only taught in a few Japanese schools for one Board of Education so it may not be representative, but none of the teachers I worked with were on a bonus scheme.

Indeed @NeverDropYourMooncup. There is no way to see how a teacher could benefit from deliberately downgrading one ‘demographic’ in a test.

The lack of any plausibility doesn’t seem to be a barrier to conspiracy theory type logic though.

The refusal to give any detail and general caginess around the ‘demographic’ is classic conspiracy-type thinking too. Can’t give too much away or they’ll know you’re on to them sort of thing.

As is the unwillingness to just go to the school with concerns and address them directly. Setting up a meeting with the school to discuss a child’s feelings they are being discriminated against on purpose would be much more fruitful than fixating in digging for evidence in a ‘true canvas report’ or whatever.

Actually, the way the OP tries to frame this as ‘believing the child’ and showing her that they’ll ‘stand up for her’ is conspiracy logicky too. It would be much better to teach her to address issues straight on in an open way rather than encouraging her to feel a teacher is out to get her.

The thing is, if it really was an issue of clear racism or something, I just don’t believe the OP would be so weirdly cagey and obtuse about it all.

Unless it’s the whole ‘my white, middle class daughter is being discriminated against by marking her down to make the BAME boys look better’ thing. I can imagine a poster would be cagey about that because they’d, quite rightly, be challenged about it.

It reminds me of the flat earthers in that documentary on Netflix trying to prove the earth is flat, getting experimental results that show they are wrong and insisting that the experiment went wrong (and doing it again and again).

Even if it is Japan, the cultural logic is likely to care more about attainment than progress. And the baseline is probably the exams at the end of last year anyway.

Christ. I saw this long thread and thought I'll just go through and read the op's posts and a few others. I can't do it. I'm bored shitless after about 5. Waffle, boring waffle. I doubt the teacher/office staff even made it to the end of ops email still alive.

Do we think the OP is Boris? Lots of words used, but not actually saying anything.

It's possible. Especially as some of his kids are 4 & 2.

@jgw1 you are fabulous

That is all

Laughing so much at this, its now 8 pages and Ive got to the end, what a load of rubbish and why on earth did I read it all and why on earth am I commenting on it. I must have a sadder life than the OP.

@SoggyPaper and others, I am not sure just discussing DD’s fears without evidence would be sensible. It varies by culture - hence our many questions - and can be seen as a rather grave accusation.

We generally teach our DC to step back and look for the facts when they perceive an injustice. That seems reasonable here. I’m aware of the irony

Yes. it is ironic. I guess it depend on whether you are looking to find out the facts or evidence to prove you are right. I’d steer my child towards the former. This is clearly the latter.

but it does depend on how you frame it whether it’s an accusation or not. It could be a DD needs reassurance and understanding - can we need to figure out how to help her thing.

but, as you say, without knowing the cultural context… 🤷🏻‍♀️

Why have I just wasted 15 minutes of my life waiting to find out how old the op’s daughter is and I’m still none the wiser?

I think we concluded she is 9 and from Japan?

Weirdly, this came up on my Trending so Im even more annoyed than the rest of you 😂
Pretty sure OP’s DD is a teenager. Can’t understand why OP didn’t just make appt with appropriate senior staff member at school.

She? Could be a he or a they. I don’t want to press the point because it could be outing……… there are only so many she, he and they in the world you know.