I've been contacted by a parent on behalf of a student. The parent is frustrated that I refuse to say anything about the student's progress in the class. The parent pleads, my child has already told me all about how s/he is doing in your class!
Based on the request that the parent is making, no, I don't think they know the entire story.
My reaction is always the same to this idea: why don't you and your student come by together and discuss this with me at my office (or a neutral location like my boss's office)? I'm sure that if we all sit down together, there won't be any FERPA violations, and you can get the story straight from your student's mouth. I'm even willing to do a conference call - when's a good time?
ReplyDeleteThat usually gets the parent to confront the student about the issues, and the student will (more often than not) attempt to prevent the meeting.
Normally that's my strategy (or a reasonable approximation thereof).
ReplyDeleteHowever, in the current situation, that wasn't available. Let's imagine that the student is on a field trip abroad in a remote village with no email -- or otherwise similarly unavailable.
I absolutely love FERPA. I've been lucky enough never to have a call from a helicopter parent, but if I would, I'd demand a signed FERPA waiver from the student, and I would only talk to the parent in person.
ReplyDeleteI signed a FERPA waiver with my learning disabled son's permission. I never ever went to the community college's disability office to ask about his grades, even though I am on campus myself taking classes.
ReplyDeleteI am assuming he is an adult, and was trying to let him know he was an adult.
Unfortunately he has been suspended from the community college for a year due to low grades. I feel bad, but his father and I did tell him to do his homework, to study for his tests and to take advantage of the disability office (which includes taking time unlimited tests in the testing center!).
There is only so much a parent can do. If he will not do the work, he must suffer the outcome. There is no use in me, a parent of an adult with a learning disability, to go in a beg an instructor for a grade when my son does not do the work!
In reality, I don't know what to do. I have a clinically disabled kid who is not dumb, but he has bizarre expectations. Still, I am not going to be a helicopter parent... what he does is all up to his own self...
... and we as his parents will give him a place to live, and his younger brother has mentioned to me several times he will take care of his brother (the younger brother is going to be taking the AP Calculus BC test in a couple of weeks, he actually makes enough for tuition, books and housing as a swimming pool lifeguard... and has been accepted to a large state university as a mechanical engineering student).