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

[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.