When the school district declined, she called her lawyer.
PALO ALTO, Calif.—When Weiwei Luo saw the report card saying her son needed to work on “cooperating with others,” the Silicon Valley mom demanded it be changed.
In one recent case, Takashi Kato, the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley artificial-intelligence startup, sued the Palo Alto Unified School District in federal court after AI-detection software flagged an essay his son turned in as “76% AI. Time was when parents disciplined children for bringing home bad marks. That pushback is pushing some teachers over the edge. In Nashville, Tenn., Samira Hardcastle, a teacher of the year, became an internet sensation this year when she quit. Kennedy Middle School. Fueling this friction is the narrow path into a top U.S. university, argues Rowena Chiu, a Palo Alto school board member and mother of four. “I think that does trickle down into nervousness about a particular grade. The district wasn’t persuaded and in March, Kato hired a lawyer. After months of litigation, Kato dropped the suit in September. Kato declined to comment. Also in Palo Alto, the Walter Hays Elementary School strife included a game of tag at recess.
Her resignation letter accused district officials of fabricating a grade to “appease an irate parent” whose child had repeatedly failed to turn in an art assignment in Hardcastle’s class at John F. A spokesman for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools said it wasn’t “accurate to characterize this as the district simply changing a student’s grade at a parent’s request. Sean Braisted said administrators stepped in to give the student another chance to finish the assignment, and independently graded the project. “To get your child into an elite university these days seems more impossible than ever,” she said. The tenth-grade English teacher let him redo the assignment, on Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” but she gave him a D on the retake, bringing his final grade down to a C. In his lawsuit, he argued that an “academic dishonesty” record could affect college admissions and more. A third-grade boy stuck out his tongue at another student who kicked him, and then grew frustrated when his teacher didn’t believe the kick was intentional, according to court filings.
Today, they often take a more adversarial approach, educators say, leaning on teachers and administrators to change grades in disputes that can even spill into court.
