Teachers often do what they can to ensure students are able to pass their classes, even if the students’ actual performance is lacking.

What would you do if you bumped a child’s grade up to help them pass, but the parents misunderstood what happened and started complaining?

That is what happened to the teacher in this story, so he entered the exact grade the student earned, which caused him to fail the class.

This one is definitely worth the read.

“Score it Accurately!!”? No problem. Let’s just fail Algebra.

I truly did think this day was going to go on without incident, as boring as the previous forty days.

And then it happened…. I get a message from a parent, demanding that I “accurately score” the final exams I graded for my Algebra 1 class, taught to the upper echelon of 8th graders, along with students whose’ parents won’t shut up about not being allowed to take the course.

This is an expected call, in a way.

The district I work for gives students a final exam that’s 42 questions long.

The final is entered as a raw score out of 42, as a final grade (heavily weighted).

About eighty homework assignments equals to the same value of the 42 question final.

Exceptions need to be made.

I’ve been teaching this subject for years, under the same administration (most of the time), and they’ve allowed me to give some grace during the grading process.

This grace comes in the way of not entering a final score lower than a 60 percent, regardless of what score they received.

The only way I score it lower is if somebody just doesn’t take the exam. It then has to be a zero.

One particular student, Juan, we’ll call him ; ), scored particularly poorly on the exam.

There are plenty of people like this in the world.

Juan is the type of student who always puts things off until last second, rarely completing homework assignments, etc.

Behavior-wise, Juan’s a saint.

He’s really a good kid otherwise.

He just puts very little effort into paying attention to the instruction during class or even showing up.

The rest of the class, 90 percent or so any way, score anywhere between a 25 and a 35 out of 42.

Entering the raw score at a weight of 80 percent is difficult, but it gets done.

For those who score less than a sixty percent on the test, or about 25 or so, I enter their score as a 60, whatever your raw score was.

Meaning, if someone scored a 13% or 31% on the test, their score would read 60.13 or 60.31 respectively.

I don’t advertise this to the kids, but they’re aware of the system.

I have done this for tests where students truly bombed it.

There’s no retakes for the finals, however, and Juan scored a 15/42, roughly 35.7 %.

Pushing kids who don’t know the material along is a bad idea.

I entered his score as a 60.36 and went about my semester.

His parents saw his grade change significantly.

At first I was unsure how he, who didn’t do homework, had his parents thinking he scored an 80% in the early parts of the semester.

I found out that he had screenshot a grade from like week 1 and used that to show them.

So when the dad called he said “He you messed up grading Juan’s score on the final. You’re supposed to be a MATH teacher man”.

He then continued to berate me pretty handily until I tried to interrupt him to explain the grading process.

I finally got to explain that he scored 15/42, and explained that the score of 60.36 wasn’t his score, but much much worse.

He didn’t seem to understand (and no, language wasn’t a concern for him. He painted the phone call with many vibrant colors).

He finally said to me after cussing me out:

I’m not sure he knows what he is asking for.

“You need to score this test ACCURATELY!! Change the grade now!”

Well, seeing where you put it that way.

Enter MC

I knew that taking a final grade and changing it from a 60.36% to a 35.71% was going to result in a failing grade in both the overall course grade as well as the obvious final grade.

And it did.

I took pictures along the way to show how the scores affect the grades.

I pressed delete five times, then entered 35.71 as his percentage score out of 100.

The class being failed became a major major issue for everybody.

The principal had to get involved to communicate with the parents (with me there to meet as well), and only then did they seem to understand what I was saying all along.

“He was trying to do Juan a favor, here. But what it comes down to is that Juan has not proven by any means that he’s mastered any of the Algebra 1 content so he’s going to have to retake the course”

Juan’s Dad seemed very apologetic at that meeting.

So now kids actually have to know the material? That’s a good thing.

He wound up ruining the process for every future final grade.

It also wound up shining a light on the whole process, and that if the “Proficiency bar” was 55%, why was any other student required to score higher than that to be considered passing?

The district notoriously waited to set the measure of proficiency on the exam until after students have taken it, and not surprisingly the proficiency level was very close to what the average score was districtwide.

Over time I realized that this district, the whole education system, and especially ME…were nothing more than a mere joke. “Living in another man’s dream” as Dave Chappelle so eloquently put it.

Sorry Juan

Why would you want to give a passing grade to someone who didn’t know the material?

Read on to see what the people in the comments say about it.

This person benefitted from this type of policy.

It is a messed up system, that’s for sure.

I’m not sure how this is helpful either.

This commenter thinks the system is a joke.

This person thinks it is a mistake to pass kids who should fail.

How is this type of thing helping anyone?

Apparently, no one in this story has learned the right lesson.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.