I am currently taking AP Lang. Due to a honest mistake early into the school year. I scored a 50/100 on a quiz. That being my first quiz grade, dropped me from an A to a 79. I would not care that much considering I thought that I could raise my grade. However, due to some wacky grading system, tests and essays(weight:50) won’t even budge my grade. I got a 90/100 on a test grade this week and it raised me from a 79.5 to a 79.7, I know, what a big raise. I am a straight A student usually but this just pisses me off. The whole point of school is to learn and improve but I’m now stuck in limbo permanently with no way of raising my grade whether I somehow get all A’s on tests or not. If I can’t improve my grade no matter what I do, I’ll be stuck with a B and possibly a C if I perform badly on one thing. Should I just drop out?
Can you talk to your teacher about it? Tell him/her how much it matters to you. It doesn’t make sense that one test should ruin your final grade. Maybe they’ll let you retake it; I know when I took AP Lang my teacher graded really harshly, so I often got C’s on essays, but she let us rewrite them to better understand what we were doing wrong. But don’t drop the class just because of your grade.
If all else fails, and you’re a sophomore/junior, when you take the AP test hopefully you’ll get a good score that’ll show you know the material even though your class was difficult. Or if you end up liking your teacher, they could write you a recommendation and mention your hard work, even if your grades weren’t perfect.
@corbeaux It’s not the B that bothers me its the fact that I can’t improve it and it’s so early into the year. It hasn’t even been more than 4 weeks and already I have a permanent grade of a B. This is ridiculous at its’ finest.
This is an FAQ. The answer is that colleges prefer to see you earn an A grade in the harder class.
So your teacher won’t let you do anything at all about it?? That really sucks. But if you have a B only for first quarter, and get an A for the rest of the year, your average will be okay. Really, try not to stress about it. 
@corbeaux Thank you for being positive. Honestly the way they’re doing this makes me more mad than the actual grade. It’s gonna be a stain in my other wise perfect GPA. I’ll probably be to proud to ask for a recommendation from the person that made it this way. Sigh. Thanks for your advice though :).
Of course! I totally understand; I freak out over my GPA too. I had a similar problem last year but it all worked out ok. Good luck.
Don’t drop the class! keep at it and just work as hard as you can to get the best grade you can. AP’s are way more rigorous classes and colleges know that so to have one B may suck but it’s not the end of the world. Also keeping the class will prep you for the AP test in May which although is possible to pass without taking the class (I got a 4 with a few hours of studying the night before) is still challenging.
You sound pretty stressed, maybe too stressed. Weren’t you similarly worried about another class?
And do you need a LoR from this teacher? Probably not, unless you’re a potential language major. Just do your best. In the end, for college apps, your GC can just mention your top record and how one test threw off this language grade, due to school grading policy. Talk to your GC. And relax.
Ask what the grade policy is at your school. At my school, if you drop out of a harder class to go into the easier class, you take your grade with you.