Our daughter (Cathy967) is 17 years old. She is a junior in high school.
Catherine is an extremely talented artist in both fine art and graphic design. She has won numerous awards and has taken private art lessons for many years. She plans on majoring in Graphic Design in college.
One of her classes this year at school is “Yearbook.” Being the excellent artist she is, she got a “A” in each of the first three quarters.
It is now the end of the fourth quarter. And her grade thus far for this quarter is… an F. :eek:
According to the teacher’s grading criteria, a student’s grade for the fourth quarter is heavily dependent on two things: 1) The number of ads they sell, and 2) the number of yearbooks they sell.
Catherine did poorly in each of these. For starters, we live in a very rural area, and (unlike each of the other students in class) she doesn’t have a driver’s license. This makes it very difficult for her to sell ads and yearbooks to the public. She at least tried to sell some yearbooks to fellow students, but at $70 a pop she was unsuccessful at selling any.
I feel really bad for her. I know she worked extremely hard in the Yearbook class, and her work is outstanding. But she doesn’t have any talent at selling stuff, plus not having a DL makes it very difficult.
Yesterday I emailed her teacher about it. He wrote back and said he would change her grade (for this quarter) from an F to a C-.
What is your opinion on this? To be honest this is pissing me off. I feel like calling the principal, school board, etc. and making a bunch of noise about it. I guess it just pisses me off that a student’s grade is dependent on how much stuff they sell.
A) Making the grade dependent on how much ad space & yearbooks the students sell seems to me shady practice, and shouldn’t be allowed. I think raising your concerns about this with the school board is justified.
B) That said, your daughter took the class voluntarily (I’m assuming Yearbook is an elective and not a required class), and knew what the requirements would be. So this is a lesson on fulfilling requirements, even stupid and morally-questionable ones. She could have found a way to sell more ads, just as we expect students not naturally talented at math to find a way to get their math homework done, if they choose to take a math class.
So by all means bring up your concerns, but I think the C- grade is reasonable.
That does sound like it’s screwed up to me. As you rightly point out, it puts people in a rural area at a disadvantage, and also gives an advantage to students with a large, wealthy family (if they could afford 10 yearbooks for themselves, they’ve essentially bought an A).
I think it’s worth mentioning this to the principal. Be calm and polite, but point out how unfair the criteria is.
I’m with Ulf. This is an incredibly unethical practice. I stress about giving students homework assignments that require parental involvement because I don’t want to disadvantage kids with two-jobs-single-parent homes, and this asshole allows students to buy grades?
Most times I hear about questionable teacher practices I can think of a way to defend it. But in this case, the teacher deserves a formal reprimand and oversight of future grading practices.
Even if the teacher offered an alternative (e.g., “Sell an ad for 10 points of your final grade; lay out a section for 15 points of your grade; multiple ads/sections allowed”), it’d still be allowing rich kids to bypass work by using family wealth or connections, and that’s bullshit. But that’d be less bullshit.
The only legit way to incorporate salesmanship into a class is through mock sales or monitored sales calls. The student can be graded on professionality, number of sales attempts, ad mockups, etc. But grading on actual sales? In. Sane.
Edit: Hell yes, contact the principal and go up the chain.
I’ve never worked in education, but otherwise, I agree this is nuts, and I’d raise hell about it. Principal, PTA, School Board, State Department of Education, and any damn body else that would listen.
I’m in sales and to me this is just nuts. First I don’t understand the “selling yearbooks” thing at all. In my HS graduating class in the mid 70’s the students were allowed to buy yearbooks and they printed about as many as they had graduating students with a few extra for relatives and archival purposes. Putting a 17 year old kid on the street to sell $70 a pop yearbooks and grading by sales is (to me) somewhat bizarre and borderline inappropriate. Who is supposed to buy these expensive, very narrow interest books other than the graduating students themselves and maybe some relatives?
Normally (in my day) all this yearbook stuff would be handled by an extra-curricular yearbook committee supervised by a teacher not a class giving letter grades. The students in these committees may in some cases sell ads but they are usually self selected and enjoy taking this on.
Having said all this regardless, of how nuts I think it is it’s apparently what they do in your neck of the woods, so different strokes. Did she understand she would be graded on ad and year book sales? Was the description of the class clear on this? If it was take the C and move on.
The grade was based on actual sales, not documented sales attempts, right?
There was no list of prospects for ad sales, right? That is, she wasn’t given folks who’d bought ads in the past and who could be relied on to buy ads going forward, given a phone call?
There was no alternate assignment, right?
If I’m misunderstanding any of the above, this isn’t quite as egregious. It’s still pretty bad, but if sales attempts are allowed to count, if prospects are given, or if there are alternate assignments, it’s just shitty, not insane.
I am with HR on this one. If the grading criteria was on the board, and Cathy bought into it, she gotta play the game.
But, I would work to change the grading criteria for yearbook students in the future. Maybe the marketing students could handle the yearbook sales. Let the art students be artists!
I’m going to take back my “let it go” advice. The more I think about this the more odd it seems. Raise a fuss the local newspaper should love to dig into a pack of nonsense like this. Definitely use RealityChuck’s “What is this “Glengarry-Glen Ross”?” line.
Not only is this a totally invalid grading criterion, but it makes me strongly suspect unethical activity on the teacher’s part. Does she have any financial ties to the yearbook company? If she does, she needs to be fired.
I can see students having some part in selling yearbooks, but if so, it should be motivated by pride in their work, not by a letter grade.
On the one hand, how ridiculous is it that any course, in any high school is, in any part, hawking ads and yearbooks, to make the grade? Must be an ‘only in America’ thing, I’m thinking.
That said, if the criteria was laid out for her before she signed up for the course, I reckon she’s gotta play along now. The other kids have to, not all can be urban, some others must also be in the rural areas, have no DL, etc., and so should she.
If she’s being blindsided make a fuss. If she knew this was the deal going in, she has no complaint and you should both accept the C graciously.
Has it occurred to you that other parents may have driven their kids around to sell, and the no DL excuse is really going to rub them the wrong way?
I am even more perplexed that one phone call is enough to change a grade from an F to a C. That more than anything else proves the grades aren’t based on merit, but rather on the whims of the teacher.
I completely disagree with this. If the system is unfair, the fact that he announced an egregiously unfair system in advance is no defense for him. The entire point of grades is to show that students have mastered the subject material. This grade has nothing to do with that.