A high school student is suing her school district over an F.
The failing grade came after the student’s chemistry teacher found notes accessible to the student during the exam. But when it comes to zero-tolerance policies, what should the review process be? And where do we draw the line?
According to a Seattle P-I article published Wednesday, the teen from Renton, Washington, received a failing grade on the test in June when she was caught with notecards in her pencil pouch. The student had access to the notes during the test, but was not seen using the notes, her attorney said.
In addition to the “F,” the student received a detention. She appealed the decision to the Lindbergh High School principal and eventually the Renton School Board. The board dropped the detention, but upheld the failing grade.
“After careful review, the council finds that the final grade submitted by the teacher, with the reduction for the academic infraction, is upheld by a preponderance of the evidence submitted,” school board member Al Talley wrote in the board’s decision.
The student, not content with the decision, has decided to take matters even further: She’s appealing the board’s decision to the King County Superior Court. She has no intentions of seeking monetary compensation, her lawyer said. She is simply concerned the grade will hurt her chances in applying to college.
The student does have a legitimate case: She is an honors student, with no negative marks on her disciplinary record. In all likelihood, she could have been studying right before the test and shoved her notecards away so they were out of sight. If the notecards were not visibly out on her desk, the chances of her intending to cheat were very slim.
Schools very much have a preconceived notion that students are out to cheat, that they are out to do bad things. It’s an idea that carries all throughout grade school up until college — students are inherently bad. Given that many students have, indeed, done bad things in the past, it’s not completely irrational for these low- or zero-tolerance policies to exist.
In Detroit, a student was caught with a pocketknife at the base of her backpack during a football game. She claims to have forgotten about the knife — her grandfather had given it to her for when she was walking home from her summer job late at night — but the school expelled her. They have since backtracked on their decision, deciding to allow her to take online classes and graduate with her class in 2015.
This is arguably, too, an overreaction on the school’s part. Whether it be knives or pepper spray, many people, particularly young women, carry some sort of self-defense mechanism on their person. Often they do so with no intention of harming anyone, and forget about the contraband item until it becomes necessary to use.
The school needs to draw the line somewhere, though, and it’s understandable that they would feel the need to crack down on violent items. But, as the Detroit student wrote in an open letter to her school board, “These policies disproportionately target pupils with impoverished histories of abuse, neglect or learning disabilities. Due to the No-Tolerance Policies, there have been severe punishments imposed on many students…regardless of circumstances.”
Students are not all bad. Whether it’s cheating or violent implications, just because you have any sort of opportunity to do something bad, that doesn’t mean you will actually do anything bad. It’s unfair to assume such a thing. At the very least, we need a more productive review system and more understanding at an administrative level.
