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Schools are always making changes to the way they do things with the hope of providing students with a better education, though that does not always work.

When the school in this story changed the way they graded students, one kid realized that he never had to write a report again and he could still get an ‘A’ in the class.

His teacher kept trying to adjust the way he assigned the work, but the student would adapt in order to avoid doing any actual work on the reports. In the end, the school had to revamp the grading standards again next year to avoid this problem.

While the student should not have done this, it is really on the school to ensure that students have to do their work. Read through the full story to see what the student did, and how you feel about it.

MC battle with high school teacher

Background:

As I started high school, a new principal took over and decided to overhaul how everything worked.

Schools are always changing the way they do things.

My freshman year, they got rid of finals, sophomore year they turned classes 100% test based grades, (also letting students retake tests 3 times since grades dropped fast), junior year they made all tests graded on a 1-5 basis instead of A-F where class grades were still A-F. “5” was given a 95% or A, “4” was 85% or B, “3” was 75% or C, 2 was 65% or D, and “1” was 55% or F.

You could not go below a 55% since 1 was the lowest grade (and the only failing one).

I assume the teachers are doing their best.

My AP physics teacher my junior year was one of the people in charge of curriculum changes, and he definitely thought he was doing a good job and helping the students. After all, grades were getting better – especially for athletes.

He had helped redesign the entire curriculum, but hadn’t changed much about the way he graded his class. He intentionally made his tests on the harder side and used a flat curve for grading.

Reports are always difficult to complete.

With letter grades, he marked a 70% as an A, 60% B, 50% C and so on. He decided to maintain these percentage cutoffs when he transitioned to the 1-5 scale.

If any of you have taken an advanced science class, you know lab reports are typically a big portion of the class and likely caused you many hours of work, mostly doing tedious things like formatting equations in Microsoft word. I hated doing lab reports.

Why do the report at all?

Thanks to my teachers new curriculum, lab reports could not be part of your grade without being part of your test. His solution was to make lab reports equal to 10% of your test grade, but it was graded independently also on a 1-5 basis.

The lowest score you could get was a 1, or 55%. I quickly realized that even if I turned in nothing for my lab report, I would be given a 55% instead of a 0 and would still get 5.5% of my test grade when I only needed 70% for an A. Losing 4.5% of my test seemed like a worthy sacrifice.

Cue MC:

The teacher figured out what he is doing.

For the first few reports of the year, I turned in nothing for my report. He would give me a 1 and scold me, but after the 2nd or 3rd time in a row, he realized I was getting As on his tests anyway and I was doing it intentionally.

He then made the requirement that test scores would be “inconclusive” until lab reports were turned in, instead of just giving us a 1 and moving on.

This kid is not going to do any work he doesn’t have to.

When the next report came around, I simply turned in a piece of paper with my name and “lab report” typed on it and turn it in.

He begrudgingly gave me the 1 on the report and the A on the test since I turned in “my report”. When the next report came around, he announced reports must have each section in them.

Why doesn’t the teacher just change the grading standards?

I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I turned in a page with my name and the title of each section, with no words under the section. Once again he gave me my A.

Next time around he announced each section must have at least a paragraph, 3-5 sentences, in each section to be considered complete.

What else did he expect?

In my MC fashion, I gave him three short sentences in each paragraph that went something like “This is my introduction paragraph. It must be at least three sentences long. This is three sentences.” Got my A.

The last time he changed the rules, he announced with a smug face while looking in my direction that there was a 5 page requirement and text had to pertain to the subject at hand.

This is just plagiarism, though. He should get in trouble for that.

I proceeded to Google a wiki article pertaining to the experiment, copy and pasted 5 pages of text, and cited Wikipedia to not get hit with plagiarism.

I got my A and he either gave up coming up with more rules or realized he wasn’t going to win the battle.

“Fallout”:

It seems unlikely that a school would let students get away with this type of thing.

The next year, he changed the entire schools curriculum to include a system of “obedience” scores to punish students for not completing work, even if the work isn’t graded.

I have another MC story bending those rules to fit my agenda for anyone interested.

While funny, this isn’t helping the kids learn. If the school really did this, they failed the students by letting them get away with passing without actually learning anything.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

Here is a student who loved cutting corners.

Some modern teaching techniques are just silly.

Well, that was an easy class.

This teacher loves what he did.

Why do any homework at all?

Schools should know that students will work hard at avoiding work. Creating weird grading policies is a sure-fire way to get kids to take advantage of any loopholes they can, but schools keep trying it.

If the school had just stayed with the tried-and-true method of grading, this could have all been avoided, though.