We're required to notify parents of any senior who may not pass our classes and, hence, is "in danger of failing". Of my 90 or so seniors, 5 are in danger of failing.
The devil, though, is in the details. In my statistics classes the final exam counts for 20% of a student's overall grade. Thus, any student going into the final exam with a grade under 75% has a mathematical possibility of failing. If I remember correctly, though, 4 of those 5 have grades between 70 and 75%, which means they would have to score less than 20% on the final exam in order to fail the course.
But I still had to send out those emails today, to the dismay of the parent who emailed me back almost immediately.
It amazes me with online gradebooks that offer parental access how many parents are utterly clueless at how their kids are doing in school. Of course the problem is that seniors tend to slough off the last term and many of mine have drifted from A to B to C by simply not doing the work or worse, just not turning it in. I'm not sure how to address this with seniors who are supposed to be heading to college in weeks.
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