Another Post! Grading Standards...

[kybearfuzz]

I was reading a Yahoo story about grading standards being challenged in Virginia. The school there has the grading scale as being 94 to 100 being an "A" versus the usual 90 to 100.

When I went to elementary school and high school, our grading scale was strangely more rigid than the schools around. It went like this:

• 95 to 100 = A
  
• 88 to 94 = B
  
• 77 to 87 = C
  
• 70 to 76 = D
  
• <70 = F

I have no idea why it as this way, though I've heard it's different now. It does burn me up a bit, as my 3.795 GPA would have been a 4.0 in any other school around my hometown. Any opinions out there why this is good or bad? Any educators have an opinion?

Comments

[userid1999.livejournal.com]

I think it's fairly irrelevant. There are so many ways that you can grade - on a curve or not on a curve - weighted or unweighted - etc.

For example, if you do well on all of your homework assignments and such and they have a ton of points assigned to them but bomb all of the tests, you still might land an A or B despite not really learning anything because you worked with your friends on all the homework assignments.

I think if you're looking at grade inflation you need to examine how points are allocated in various classes (homework, tests, quizzes, and projects) and then examine whether those points are then converted to percentages raw and used to assign a grade or weighted, curved, or both to do so.

Just playing with the conversion table from percentages to letter grades does not really get at underlying causes.

Of course, this all presupposes that letter grades are the right thing to be doing at all. Would it be more informative to directly report percentages in classes and have some uniform practices for reaching them within a district or state? Does grading even matter any more with the proliferation of proficiency and standardized testing?

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say grades are irrelevant. While they may not be an accurate measurement in learning if the schools curve things in such a way that any idiot can get an "A," they are benchmarks for students who look to succeed at things. Some strive for the A, some look to the future and see the good grades as the stepping stone. I was that way, many of my high school friends were that way too.

I can see why some students would be upset if they were judged on a tighter scale than a student at a neighboring school. I was always told that our grading scale was sent with our transcripts. I only hope that they did look at them.

[userid1999.livejournal.com]

What I meant isn't that the grades are irrelevant but that just rejiggering the scale to combat grade inflation is irrelevant. That's what I was trying to get at (ineffectively) with my examples. If teachers curve their percentages before assigning grades or assign 500 points worth of homework while the exam is only worth 100 points and there's no reweighting, then just changing your grading scale from a 90-100 for an A to 95-100 for an A is like attacking the problem at the end rather than the beginning.

With all this in mind however, college admissions professionals might not look as much at grades as those SAT and ACT scores because they are far more controlled for comparisons of students between schools. That might be the part where the grading is really becoming irrelevant. If there's grade inflation and a such variability in grading practices, then the admissions folks might be looking more at the test profile and less at the grades.

Doh! I feel like I'm contradicting myself. I'll shut up now. :-)

[boobooirl.livejournal.com]

Wow!
The irish system is totally different, but we still had very few A grades awarded. I had the 2nd best results in my final year and I only got 2 A's.

85-100=A, 70-84=B, 55-59=C, 40-54=D, >40=Fail

I suppose the system is irrelevant if everybody is playing to the same rules, but once one school changes theirs it will mess up things for everybody (unless it is clear to everybody what they have done). I can imagine you feel hard done by!

[prisonbitch.livejournal.com]

that was the grading scale in kentucky when i was a kid. i forget what year they changed it to a range of 10's, but it was done so that more could actually graduate high school as drop outs surged.

[spatts5.livejournal.com]

Back in the olden days, the scale was:
90-100 = A
80-89 = B
70-79 = C
65-69 = D
below 65 = F

Sometimes if you were in the higher end of the scale you got a + (plus) and the lower end a - (minus). IE: a 98 would be an A+ where a 91 would be an A-. To figure the GPA, A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

I heard from a guy on my softball team who is a school teacher about a school that called 96 to 100 an A+, which I think is completely wrong. To me, an A+ means you got a perfect score, i.e. that you didn't miss any questions.

Alternatively, a Catholic co-worker of mine said that when she was in school, no one every got an "A+" or a "100" on a test, even if the student did not miss any questions, because no one was perfect except (the Virgin) Mary. The student could only hope for a "99," which I felt was ridiculous, as it derailed a student for striving for the perfect score.

[spatts5.livejournal.com]

Gotta love the thinking of a good Catholic school!

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

The reasoning just was silly to me.

I remember vividly checking the average of my grades in a class when I was teetering on the edge of an A or a B (or worse a B or a C) and one point lost due to some nun's fouled logic would have thrown it.

[squirreltot.livejournal.com]

Hey we had the same grading scale as you did. It wasn't until college that our grading system shifted to the 90-100 A, etc. Hope you are keeping warm up there!

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

That was the same for me, college had many blessings.

I am doing well here, though the cold and ice are a pain :)

[kay-bee17.livejournal.com]

so berea college CLOSED...3 hours before the power came back on...

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Berea closed??? Wow... that rarely happens. It only happened once in the four years I was there.

[kay-bee17.livejournal.com]

yep they did

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

When I was in grade school, the standards were as you laid out above, the more rigid system.

[kay-bee17.livejournal.com]

...i just now read this...our grading scale was like yours until our senior year and they changed it to the 90-100 and so forth....my GPA woulda been a 4.0 as well had they changed before i started....

[cincy-dave.livejournal.com]

Our system was
A = 92-100
B = 84 - 91
C = 76 - 83
D = 86 - 75
F = 74 and under


And in high school for final grades you could not get 100. The computer system only had 2 digits for the grades. I can attest to this in my geometry class, I received perfect scores on everything, but could only get a 99 on my report card.