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My brother, who is in high school, told me about what his math teacher did in an attempt to motivate her students. I'm very upset because I find it a violation of privacy and immoral (and also because we waited until now to speak up).
They had assigned seating, that she changed every week. She would seat the students with the lowest grades in the front and as you go down the row, the grades got higher and higher so that the students with the highest grades would be in the back.
It doesn't really seem like a FERPA violation. Embarrassing, yes, but interesting to bring the lower grades up to the front as it's a better place to learn.
It's a terrible idea, sure, but how is it different from a teacher having a student hand back tests, or openly discussing grades out loud, which I saw colleagues all the time?
I'm not sure it would be a FERPA violation mostly because she is not disclosing information. She's not saying "Josh has a 99.7 so he's in the right hand side corner at the back of the room."
Embarrassing sure. But teachers don't work to make students super comfortable all the time. Personally I would've been mortified. And I also agree with the other 2 posters as far as strategic placing and other methods of testing and such.
Class rank falls under FERPA, and that would be disclosing class rank. Of course, it is possible that the teacher is saying they are seating by grade order when they are not really....
Stupid? Yes, and probably counterproductive. I have known teachers that did this without telling the students as it made them able to hang out in one area of the class to help kids instead of running back and forth, and it seems to have been more common in math teachers. I personally preferred to mix them up so they could help each other, especially with labs. I had tables of 6-8 and when I made the charts I always made sure one of my top students and one of my bottom students was at every table. Then I divided the leftovers with even distribution of the top half and bottom half at each table. Every year a couple of them commented about it even though I never said a word, did the chart at home and merely tacked it up, and switched the kids around so the same combos didn't happen. The kids know where each other stands in the class, no matter how much effort a teacher puts into keeping it private. They talk to each other and about each other, and class grades is one of the those subjects. So it is not like the teacher is letting out any great secret by doing this, but she is asking for complaints like yours by being open about it. The kids also know she is breaking what in their minds is some unwritten common teacher code of behavior, and they don't like that. Students get upset when teachers don't act they way they think they are supposed to.
I don't remember if sitting in the back had a real correlation unless it was not being able to see or read. Perhaps the teacher actually means that they want to watch the student more closely because they may need more attention and help that they do not want to look to get through office hours/extra help.
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