Sure. And for all we know, this was done. More to the point–what really, really matters–is that they should have called the girl in and let her know she was in danger of failing English and not graduating. I assume that was done: schools want kids to graduate, and a student not graduating should be a very big deal. A kid with an IEP not graduating over one class should be a HUGE deal. It’s quite, quite possible somebody–or several somebodies–dropped the ball.
If this story were about a girl who was misinformed about whether she needed English to graduate, or if her teacher put all the grades in at the last minute and she suddenly discovered she was failing, or any number of other situations which I have seen, I would happily throw the school under the bus. Absolutely the girl’s case worker and teacher should have been in communication and intervened early and often to make sure she was on track. The counselor and possibly the school nurse should also have been in that loop. But the person they needed to be in communication with was the student, not the parent, and if the student was emphatic in those intervention meeting that the parents were not to know, then they acted appropriately.
It seems misleading to make some grades available to the parents but not others, with no explanation. Making all of the grades inaccessible would signal the privacy barrier to the parents. Showing them all of the grades but one gives no indication whether the reason for that one omission is student privacy vs. some administrative error or other problem attributable to the school.
I don’t know the law in this area, but it would seem reasonable for the school to take the position that a request to seal one grade necessarily requires that they all be restricted.
As a parent, seeing an “N/A” on the website would make me think there was a data or systems issue. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that my kid had specifically asked that that grade, and only that grade, be kept from me. Ergo, I would have emailed the school just like the parents in question did, and I sure would have appreciated a response, even if it were just “the data/system is correct, talk to you daughter.” Or whatever response they felt they could give within the confines of the law.
As someone else said upthread, ghosting them doesn’t seem like best practice. I don’t know if it rises to the level of unethical, but I would certainly be upset with the school. I’d be more upset with my daughter, but the school wouldn’t escape my ire.
eta: And the article linked in the OP that encourages the school to skirt the law, that’s an idiotic idea. Who would write that?
Ok, I might be crazy, but can someone point me to where in the article it says that the parents were able to see the grades for other classes or even that she was enrolled in any classes other than the English 12 class she failed? Because I don’t see it - and it’s not impossible that a high school student would be enrolled in only one class for her last semester.
It’s also plausible to me that there was some sort of process where the grade wasn’t finalized as quickly as passing grades were, given the the consequences. The student may have been offered some sort of ‘last chance’ and failed to complete that, for example.
I had the same thought, since English is usually thought of as an easier class by most students, and she apparently passed the others. I think the person who said “by blowing it off” is likely correct. We had to do a research paper that was worth a good portion of our grades during either my junior or senior year (long time ago - can’t remember which). Don’t turn in the paper, and your grade will nose-dive.
ParentVUE and similar programs allow parents to see current grades in all courses–unless, as in this case, the student is 18 and has not granted them permission.
Yes, it’s possible that their daughter was only enrolled in one course, although it seems somewhat unlikely, given that she would have had enough credits to graduate a semester early without having taken the required English course, which she failed. We have no way of knowing, though.
I was actually thinking the opposite - that she might have had almost enough credits to graduate a semester *late *but couldn’t fit this one required class into the fall semester for one reason or another. Which is not all that unlikely.
In my experience, it’s pretty hard to fail a course you need to graduate. Students not graduating on time is worse for the school than for the student. Failing a kid with an IEP is also unisual, becauae you really need to defend yourself absolutely against any claim you didn’t follow it. To fail a senior with an IEP on a class required for graduation is extreme.
But that still doesn’t nean the parents had a right to a heads up.
My wife taught Special Ed for 35 years. When I showed her this she said she had never heard of a student blocking parents’ access when said parents had signed off on the IEP. Then she had the equivalent of an endless loop failure, going into a Tevye-like “On the one hand…but on the other hand…”
I guess it’s possible that the school district, like my wife, had simply never encountered this particular situation before, and decided the safest course was not to respond.
Basically, yes. I don’t think the default should ever be “I told them once, now I never have to tell them again.” That’s just not how people work. Heck, you learn that in school, both in writing and speech classes, and in teaching. Repetition is important.
I would prefer such communication not to be a mere form letter, as I think that you should reward the few parents who care about their kids enough to check, and don’t think you’ll have all that many. But if it must be a form letter, that’s better than nothing.
Now, if they’ve asked the same question over and over, then I could see sending a notice that you’ve already given them as much of an answer as you can, and that you won’t be responding again. But only then would it be okay not to respond…
Otherwise, you should give a response. If the school had done this, their concern/ire/whatever could be directed towards their daughter instead of towards the school. They created a problem for themselves that they could have avoided. Some people are going to side with the parents.
I know that, when I took a class about being a teacher, this was something I was taught early on, that you did not want to upset parents if you could avoid it. And my mom can tell you first hand that upset parents tend to create problems for the school. Why wouldn’t you want to keep the parents as happy as you legally could?
I thought the exact same thing when I read that there was an IEP in place. If I had to guess, I’d say she just wasn’t showing up and the teacher’s hands were tied because, as you say, by failing the kid, it puts the teacher on the defense, and I don’t think that’s where the teacher or administration want to be. Obviously we don’t know but did the IEP cover the English class? I also agree that the schools want to graduate these kids and would most likely provide opportunities for the student to do whatever necessary to make that happen.
It may be different for me, working with elementary kids; I may have a different relationship with parents. Because yes, I’d repeat the information several times, maybe growing a little snippier and a little more passive-aggressive over time (“I guess I’m a little confused–do you have the letter I sent you last month? I’m looking at it right here, and I told you that blah blah blah–does that answer your question?” that sort of thing). I definitely wouldn’t go radio silence if a parent asks me a question that’s been answered thoroughly but in another context.
Keeping parents happy is not your primary job. It’s nowhere close. Nor are there only a scant handful of parents that care about their kid’s grades. There are tons. A counselor has a case load of 300-500 kids. You don’t generally have time to worry about making sure that every parent is happy and satisfied. There are so many other, more important things that come first–all revolving around the student. These parents had other, more appropriate potential points of contact if they were worried about the student’s grade: she has a caseworker who manages her IEP and the English teacher of record. If we take them at their word, all they had time to do was to dash off two emails to a person who has only vague responsibility for their daughter’s current grade and then, when it was ignored, they just assumed all was well. That’s apparently reasonable, but the counselor should have carefully crafted a response and kept responding until the parents got the hint?
The girl was a legal adult. She had a right to privacy regarding her academic records. Her parents were informed she had that right. It’s not the school’s job to repeat that to them. It might have been a nice thing to do, but I’ve seen how tremendously overworked counselors can be–especially in the spring as graduation approaches. I’m not going to pass judgment on whether or not they took the time to extend a courtesy they have no ethical or moral obligation to provide.
I’m open to the idea that some horrible educational injustice happened here. I’m very curious how she came to fail that class. But the problem is that the school may well have failed to work appropriately with the adult student, not that they failed to communicate with parents who, at that point, had no real connection to the school.
I think it’s the difference between 30 kids at a time (elementary), 150 (secondary) and 400 (high school counselor). High school counselors literally spend hours a day responding to emails that they absolutely have to respond to. I probably would have sent a “I can’t answer that”–but I don’t blame someone else because they didn’t. Especially if they felt it would start a rabbit-hole of an argument (“Why not?” followed by more probes that put the counselor on the spot).