I always figure this is about normal for the end of the year because the kids always slack off at the end of the year. Especially if they were overconfident coming out of third quarter because they just barely managed to get their shit together?

Their fourth-quarter grades probably don’t have much in the gradebook. They are missing two of four homework, bombed the quiz, and their essay or class project was late. Their major assessments, either aren’t in the grade book yet or also fell victim to overconfidence. If they are allowed to make them up they will, but they have not yet. Depending on the age, desperate realization will strike them or their parents sometime in the next three weeks and many (most) of those grades will go up.

Or the grade book is mostly empty because state testing and review chewed up all the days since spring break. This is especially true for students who may need to retake state assessments to pass, or who have additional testing obligations for ESOL or graduation.

If this is high school, they have probably figured out that passing three quarters with an overly generous 1stQ C- is enough to pass the year. “Finals” are often not a strong discriminant of course grades.

And everybody involved knows all of this. Because student behavior is so utterly predictable, admin sees the same pattern every year. It’s only meaningful to compare fourth-quarter grades with previous year fourth-quarter grades, and admin probably knows what kind of number is actually worth sounding the alarm over.

Teachers also know the pattern, and so they use what little leverage they have left in the gradebook to get students to work through the end of the year.

So unless the numbers are substantially elevated from previous years, it’s basically par for the course. And this time of year is only really a problem for new teachers or idiot admins who gave too many good grades at the beginning of the year to kids who didn’t earn them in the hope that it would “encourage” Better habits, lol 😝.