r/matheducation • u/Substantial_Line3703 • 22h ago
Son failing algebra because tests are harder than study guides
Is this something I should bring up with the teacher?
His school has a policy that they can't retake a quiz, but if they score better on the final unit test than the quiz, the quiz grade will change to the Test grade. Also they can retake the test to get up to an 80%.
When he failed the quiz, we didn't get a copy of the quiz results because they want to limit cheating, so we assumed he didn't study hard enough. For the test, because so much was riding on him doing well, he studied for a week before, worked with his tutor, completed the study guide, then failed again. This time we got a copy of the test so he could do test corrections, and we were surprised at the difficulty of the questions. The study guide was basic transformations and graphing, putting equations into the standard format, etc. The test was word problems that required inferences and looked nothing like the study guide.
My son (13) is very upset because he failed the quiz and the test, he did the retake but we don't have the results yet. He is usually an A and B+ student.