Why is it “unethical”? If the purpose of the class is to provide real world experience in selling, then it’s perfectly legitimate IMHO. If Yearbook class is just meant to be a place where a bunch of kids with cameras can do arts and crafts, then maybe not.
Did the OP consider this unethical before his daughter received an F?
Although I don’t understand who buys yearbooks if they aren’t students.
Real world experience in selling ads as part of a “publishing” curriculum is a keen idea.
This shit - is not. It’s purchasing a grade.
Ad sales curriculum should involve identifying sales regions, setting quotas, you know, learning how to sell.
Clearly this is just a sad free-for-all where inexperienced kids are told “go sell shit” and “your grade depends on it” with no instruction or learning involved.
Yesterday Catherine said there was a student in the class who did virtually nothing on the yearbook this quarter. But she sold three yearbooks right away, and received an A. Catherine worked her ass off on the yearbook, and spent countless hours at home (including weekends) using Photoshop. But she’s not well-connected (she has very few friends at school) nor wealthy, and didn’t sell any yearbooks.
This shit is really pissing me off.
Next stop: the superintendent and the school board.
I also think you should take up the cause of the other student your daughter mentioned who did not get his/her grade raised. Maybe your daughter just needs to tell that student what happened to her.
Your daughter will remember this (in a good way). When my daughter was your kid’s age she got a disturbing-the-peace citation that was total bullshit. Instead of paying the fine, I got a lawyer-friend to champion her cause. We won, the cop appologized, and she learned about how courtrooms work.
Ten years later she still tells the story and I sound way cooler than I was.
I would be highly tempted to short-circuit the slow, ass-covering response of school administration by mentioning in my communication(s) with administrators just how juicy a story this would be for local media.
This practice is unethical because grades should be based on things that are within the student’s control. The grading system should not reward the affluent over the non-affluent. Grades should not be able to be purchased. The class should be about learning a skill or gaining knowledge. The grade should reflect how well the student performed at accomplishing those goals. Using sales is a poor way to gauge those aspects for high school students.
This is all just the concept here, based on the fact pattern that Crafter lays out the practice actually being engaged in is much worse.
I did find this newspaper articlefrom 2000 from a local paper, the Star News. The superintendent of a Guildford County school is quoted as saying the practice is inappropriate.
Challenging a grade in court is really, really difficult. The theory is usually an equal protection violation and (absent some racial or gender bias claim) the grade assignment gets rational basis review. In practice, it’s essentially an impossible claim to win on. Courts are understandably reluctant to second-guess a grade assignment.
On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe that a public school district does not prohibit the assignment of grades based on financial considerations (particularly given the admission that a student could buy ads himself to get an A.) The analysis is a bit different if a school system fails to follow its own procedures, though I expect there is a grievance process that has to be followed under Ohio law.
I was thinking more along the lines of a due process claim rather than equal protection. I concede both would be exceedingly difficult to prevail. Best case scenario is the school settles. I think the changing grades and using different metrics for different students opens up the school to claims of arbitrariness which could be actionable.
I was thinking about this earlier. Crafterman, do you have a clear end-game? I’m not sure on what it is, although there are several possibilities:
Your daughter gets an A in the class. This one is probably achievable, given the weaseliness of admin so far; but I’m not sure it is where you’re going.
The teacher gets fired/reprimanded. This is a really tough endgame, due to HR laws/policies. If you demand punishment for the teacher, you’ll almost certainly not be satisfied. Even if they punish the teacher, they’re unlikely to tell you that.
The school pays you thousands of dollars. I know you’ve not suggested that, but others have. I think that’s a ridiculous and ridiculously unlikely outcome, but I’ve been wrong before. It’s certainly not, IMO, a good outcome.
The teacher gets arrested. Nope.
The grading policies get changed. This, I think, is a reasonable end-game, and one you could certainly hope for. As the code of professional conduct includes the line about not discriminating based on socioeconomic status, you can ask the school board to adopt a policy that ensures no child’s grades will suffer due to an inability to purchase school supplies or otherwise pay for an aspect of his or her education. I suspect such policies exist in some districts; I’m not sure how to look them up, however.
In a substantive due process claim the standard of review will still be rational basis. And while I agree that this grading scheme is stupid, the problem here is that that the original grade appears to have been justified under the announced grading scheme. We are effectively calling for the student to be awarded an even more capricious grade, though one that is subjectively justified.
Well, it seems this is a lesson learned for Cathy – to bring this sort of thing up to you ASAP. If she didn’t do so at the time.
Good luck on sorting this out. The grading policy is ridiculous. In high school, the yearbook staff did sell, but people signed up to do this, and others signed up to do art/layout/interviews/writeups. This allowed people to play to their strengths.
I was the editor of my high-school newspaper. I didn’t have a car, and it would’ve been difficult for me to traipse around and get ads. I was a really good copy editor, though, and crazy good with layout (which was manual and required mad cut and paste skills with an exacto knife). So, the teacher had the managing editor handle ad sales, and I handled a higher percentage of editorial duties.
