Would you, or any teachers you know, do this?

My accelerated math class (meaning we take math one year ahead of our grade level) recently took a quiz on system of linear equations. The class average score was 53%, and the quiz was out of 36 points with 10 problems. One person got 100%, and one person got the extra credit problem the teacher put on the quiz. My math teacher decided to keep all the scores on our grade, she seriously considered redoing all of our high school reccomendations, and the day we got our quizzes back, she gave us a 20 point worksheet that would be graded on accuracy, and she said that we could use the worksheet to help our grade. How wre we supposed to use the worksheet to our advantage when the whole class failed the quiz, and when the whole class fails (except for a couple people), usually it's not the students' fault for not studying or learning the material or working hard. I know I shouldn't be expecting flexibility in high school (i'm in 8th grade right now), but doesn't it seem unreasonable on how my math teacher just gave us a worksheet to do, and not explain or reteach anything at all? Half the time, she just gives us the lesson straight from the book, gives us examples from the book, and explains it like the book does, then gives us hw and leaves the classroom with the teach assistant there.

Public Comments

1. its weird but teachers dont get payed much these days
2. that's HS 4 u.....lol i gt stuy and like its sooo hard the teachers are lazy sh--s....they can't even control the class much less teach anything so what do you do? i cheat....i admit it i've cheated on every music and french test there was, even in bio i cheat cuz ur gonna have to find a way to get by...so if u find conventional methods of being an A student unfair.....try to find ways to get by
3. Im in 8th grade too and im taking Algebra, which i wasn't spose 2 take till next year and my teacher really sucks at explaining stuff, she expects us to already know it and then we try and ask questions she says that there is not enough time left, so almost every1 in that class is failing it really bites :(
4. she sounds like a crummy teacher, I had them too, we all have. as for the bit about re writing your recommendations, she's just blowing smoke. If she did that over one test, a lot of the parents would be up in her face. for your future reference, teachers like to threaten kids with "its going on your permanent record" or "you'll never get into college if you dont pass gym". Its all baloney!
5. I've had teachers like this before. They think that because u are in the accelerated class that u should know just about all of the information. And I agree with u that if the whole class fails that its usually the teacher. All of the accelerated classes that I've taken in the past, the teacher would give us a test like the first day of class and we would go over the things that we were having problems with. But most teachers who teach accelerated classes don't do that because they expect u to know it already. But heck you're in high school and when summer comes u forget half of the stuff u learned and u have to freshen back up.
6. That is not a teacher, that is someone just trying to get through a day. I had a teacher like that in 9th grade in world history. The whole class failed because he was the worst of the worst.I have to agree with you on the unfairness of that.
7. Now you know how in college level physics class I had a 60% average on my tests but an A in the course; his tests were just that tough and I was lucky to get 6 questions out of 10 right. I only did that because I had a tutor, a serious attitude and some maturity (I returned to college after 4 years in the US Army). It’s called a curve where the law of averages plots the grades in a bell shaped curve putting the average grade as a C and assigning the other grades based on that. In that case the average student would be lucky to get 3 out of 10 questions right. As far as college teachers go I have to admit he was a good one. Physics has always been a little tough for me and this was a 4 credit hour class so it was hugely important. You got two curve busters in your class and the first question you have for them is how did they bust the curve? Are they just that good, that knowledgeable, did they have some extra help, or did they cheat? Before your teacher rewrites your high school recommendations based solely on one test she needs to answer that question. Is it fair to judge everyone else when those two had tutors or some sort of extra help that you didn’t have available? Now a test where you show your work is darn hard to cheat on. When you use a real life situation where the formulas needed are provided (face it you can look them up in books and on the Internet easily) then you have a true test of what you can do. In my physics class the test was multiple choice graded on one of those darken in the dots forms so the teacher had no idea of how we did the work. He did allow us a "cheat sheet" with the formulas on it because no self respecting engineer is going to be without his or her text books. You can use the 20 point worksheet by adding its raw grade to the raw grade on your test and then adjusting the curve based on that. Of course THAT isn't up to you, but the teacher. If it is done my way then the test can’t hurt you, even if you only get one point that is one more point than what you had on the test. The fact that she is giving you a second chance tells me that she suspects something is wrong and that the test is not a true showing of your classes performance. You need to point this out to her before she re-writes your high school evaluations. Everyone is allowed one off day, and it could be that she was on hers when she wrote the test making it harder than it should have been. As for it being the teacher's fault that you didn't learn, that is a point to be brought up with her boss (through a petition signed by everyone who felt the test wasn't a fair way to re-evaluate their high school evaluations sent to the principle). In High School and below it is up to the teacher to actually teach the course and the good ones make sure their students actually know what they are doing. In college though the students are expected to be responsible enough to almost teach themselves; so you are only getting a taste of your future. This is why grade school and high school teachers have to take teaching courses and get a teaching degree before they can teach, but college professors don't need that. Was this test unreasonable, well two people will might claim it was not (I am assuming that they were honest and just somehow understood the material better). However, the true test is how the majority of the class performed, if they performed substandardly then the test could have been deceptive or that section just might not have been taught well. Regardless of what happened in a classroom with multiple students the entire classes performance has to be taken in account before the letter grades are assessed. If the majority of the people made a score in the 50% range then that should be a C and the other grades should be based around that. You can’t escape the responsibility to learn the material though. Sometimes we have bad teachers, it happens in real life more often than not because only in grade school do we require a teaching degree. If you didn’t understand it then you needed to have gotten the extra help to learn it; that part is on you. With that said I went into a survey test with almost the same results you had. We had one curve buster who aced the test, the rest of the class averaged somewhere in the 50% range and I thought I knew the course material well enough. It was the first test in that class and it was a huge surprise. This tells me that fault lay with the teacher for either not giving us enough warning, for making a deceptively harder test, or for just not teaching the class right. The second choice would put the blame on me for assuming the class was easy and the other two choices wouldn’t be something that his department would hold him responsible for; either way we all lost on that day (except for that darn curve buster). Personally, I would ask the teacher on what basis she plans to use on re-evaluating the entire performance of the class for the whole semester based just on the results of one test. Does that mean that all the other tests didn’t count, or weren’t fair evaluations of how you did? How does she explain that the students were honestly trying and past test performance shows that, then suddenly all but two of you decided to take time off and horse around? Was it some grand conspiracy by the students to blow off the test or is something else going on here? Since she is threatening to put you all on the spot here you are justified with asking her some pointed questions and putting her on the spot in front of the entire class, and if she continues then you are justified to use that petition idea and pose some of these questions to the principle; unless of course the majority of the class did somehow decide to blow off the test. You do need to ask her how she is going to use that 20 point additional test.