Frustrated with SPED/lowered expectations

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Bit of rant, here. Apologies in advance.

Just got the grades... and WTF???

How are Cs "satisfactory?" Satisfactory to who??? And how is it that a kid gets 90-100% correct on every test and quiz but but then gets a C for a class? You tell me all semester that he is doing really well and then show me a "C" in what universe does this make sense?

One day he gets an invitation to the Johns Hopkins gifted program, based on test results, the next they give him Cs based on... not being an ordinary kid in class.

The first line seems to be the usual bovine excretion about class participation. He doesn't participate in class. You don't say? Who would every have imagined a kid with an IEP for ASD not participating in class??? Seriously?

I need to meditate for a few hours before I can even begin to form a plan for responding to this crap.

Deep breath...

How old is your kid?

You're perfectly entitled to query a grade, but calmly - asking how the grade is calculated and how more subjective areas (such as class participation) are assessed.

Adamantium,

I am sorry. It is unfair that parents really do have to be proactive and pre-emptive about everything. We have been out of school a long time and are not fully cognizant of how early certain expectations start these days, and have too many balls in the air to work it all out at any rate.

I would find out exactly what algorithm they use for grades, for each subject. Solve for T, Q, P, H ... where 100%= T% for test grades + Q% quizzes, +P% class participation + H% for homework etc. plus any grade modifiers that have to do with executive function ( minus points for being late navigating the hallways, or forgetting to turn in completed work etc.) and propose reasonable and fair adaptations.

I almost think we need some kind of stickies for what to be aware of and be proactive for with common obstacles organized by sets of grades with similar expectations. It seems very common for certain things to show up out of nowhere, where the professionals are not proactive, and really ought to make parents aware of these challenges and stay on top of what is going on to propose accommodations when/if things go awry and the typical standards cannot be met due to ASD issues..

The most grade deduction I ever got for not participating in class was A- instead of A.

That sounds right. I am glad that you had a better education.

Thanks for the replies ASDmommyASDkid and elkclan.

What irks me particularly about this is that they told us at the start of the year that class participation was not a significant part of the grade and tests were paramount. Then we see A and A- on a series of test (one very bad when there was a B+) and yet the grade for the period is a C.

It seems like some sort of bait and switch at my kid's expense.

All you can do is find out. I once got a bad grade in middle school science because I mucked around with a dissection and was being generally very silly with my lab partner. That was class participation. My overall grade did not really reflect how well I'd grasped the material, the teacher was mainly pissed with me. Looking back, maybe it was the grade I deserved and it sure doesn't affect my day to day life now. Your son may have mucked around during structured class activity or quizzes or something else. It may also be an arithmetic error or goodness knows what. You just need to talk to the teacher and find out.

I would calmly express how surprised you are with his grades, given his test scores are almost all As, and that you were told in the beginning that test scores were the main factor.

(Before you do that, find out about homework, neat notebook checks and any other insidious thing they may be counting. In our district, keeping a neat notebook is also part of the grade, and I believe it is more substantial then it was in the time and place of my youth. They may think if tests count more than 50% of the grade they are "paramount.")

I guess the point for me is that they all know his ASD diagnosis. He has a one on one aide to scribe for him. They told us this program was just right for him and that they all want him to do well, but the teachers then seem to find fault with things that are expected and written up in the IEP. It's as if they just ignore the written IEP once the school year gets going and the meetings we have are seen as pro forma only.

We'll have some meetings this week and find out what's going on, but it's disheartening.

I just wanted to reiterate everyone else's recommendation to ask how the grade is calculated. That will give you the details needed to fight back if necessary. I also wanted to mention that I have been quite surprised that grades are often calculated very differently now than in the past. I recently talked to incoming college freshman and, of the 20 students, only 5 had the A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-... system I had in high school. My son is in elementary school currently (so this might not apply), but he is graded on a 1-4 scale (1 = below basic, 2 = basic, 3 = average, 4 = advanced). My son is in the average class, so he can not get higher than a 3. It is the best score for the averaqe class. He would need to be in the advanced class in order to get a 4. So, its not 1 = D, 2 = C, 3 = B and 4 = A as we would traditionally think.

If there is class participation grade, then there should be a transparent scoring system that says what percent of grade depends on class participation.

This kind of situation may ackshuly improve in high school, as classes become more about academics and less about class participation. On the syllabus of most of my students' classes, there is no class participation grade, but something like 50-70% of grade is based on tests/quizzes, and the rest homework, labs, and projects.

Thanks. It's encouraging to think this may become less important.

What is frustrating is that this (class paricipation) is already in his IEP and it should not have happened this way.

I spoke with his program manager and she agreed that something was amiss, so they have called for a meeting of the child study team to strengthen the language in IEP and remove any ambiguity that may have given the teacher the idea that this made sense.

You should bring all the tests to the meeting--did you keep all the tests?

I'm wondering if this was just bad math by the teacher? In order to get a "C" average overall, there must have been some failed tests.

That happened to me once in college; I managed to get my grade corrected because I was able to point out the error.

That is good that the program manager gets it. Are they going to talk to the teacher/s? I think regardless of how firm the language that someone in authority over there needs to have an actual conversation with the tescher so they can explain what needs to happen. Too many teachers ignore the IEP language.