<p>By all accounts I should be superintendent.</p>
<p>We already have a rank system called class rank…
Think of things like this though.
For example, in PE, nearly 100% of students get an A, ok now apply grade budget, they will now have to apply certain guidelines on how to get grades, most likely in PE, they will give the A to the people with the best athletic ability instead of ones who just participate, fair?
Now the meaning of an A is to exceed the standard instead of actually being the best in class.
For instance if a class of Algebra 2 get 100% A’s and also get 100% A’s in Pre-Calc, then 100% A’s on Calculus and 100% gets 5’s on the AP exam. Is it a broken system? No, its just that the standards are very high and the students either worked really hard, or they are naturally very bright.
Applying Grade Budget to that class will most likely make the students lose hope and just slack off because they know they can not get an A.
Now if a second ALgebra 2 class got 100% A’s but then get clobbered when they go to Pre-Calc, then the Algebra 2 class did not prepare them. So what would be applied, grade budget, or raising the standards? In grade budget, there will be a few people who will get an A and some B students will be fghting for the A spots, but then that leaves the C students out there, whle raising the standards, every student has the opportunity to get an A as long as they work for it. </p>
<p>So if people attend above average schools, shouldn’t they be expected to get above average grades as long as they learned a lot more than they needed to know? My answer is yes. If the standards a so low that when students are promoted, they are not prepared enough for the next level, then raising the standards to ensure the students who did not meet the standards repeat the course until they do. </p>
<p>While in grade budget, the standard can either be very low, or very high. That is a chance that should not be taken.</p>
<p>Getting an A with a very high standard is a lot better than getting an A in a lower standard. Of course a lot of people get A’s, that is what is meant to be, but even more people get Bs,Cs,Ds,and Es. The number of students is a lot larger than just a small classroom. The value of education is A LOT more than the value of the letter grade. So if the education is at a high standard, then students who exceed the standard should get an A because that their work is also at a very high standard.</p>
<p>I can’t make head or tail out of that.</p>
<p>I don’t know… I’m all for if you deserve an A (such as it’s A quality), then you should get an A, etc, etc. I don’t get why if a teacher already gave 5 A’s, they wouldn’t be able to give someone else an A with similar quality, as well. It’s not fair.</p>
<p>A system of grade budgets sounds logical when you look at an “average case” scenario: a class full of students who do the bare minimum of the work necessary to get an “A” or “B” or whatever a student’s particular goal is. In my school, I know that people strive for an 89.5, the cutoff for an “A” – and I admit, at times, I’m guilty of this, too. A “C” is definitely not “average” in my classes, and I wouldn’t even consider my school a victim of grade inflation. Were a grade budget system implemented, the grade distribution would award the highest grades only the students who go above and beyond: not to the kids going for the 89.5 or 79.5.</p>
<p>But let’s look at a worst-case scenario: a class full of unmotivated students. In order to get an “A,” a student would only have to do the bare minimum of work necessary to stay at the top of his class, which could involve just striving for a, say, 75%. This takes far less work than getting an “A” according to a school’s original grading system.</p>
<p>And now, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum: a class full of bright, motivated students. Maybe the majority of the students in this class study their butts off (lol @ people who study) to achieve the best grade possible – not just the “A,” but a personal best. These students all deserve an “A,” in my opinion. Yet the grades would come down to who has the most retentive memory, or who has the most time to sit at home and memorize stuff, or who has the best natural grasp on the subject. It wouldn’t be fair to give the person with the lowest grade an “E” (lol my school doesn’t have “F” grades) if he or she did the best work they could and only pulled off, say, a 91.</p>
<p>There’s already a system in place to account for students “striving for the 89.5 (or 93.5 in my school’s case)” - it’s called “every once in a while something goes unexpectedly wrong and a student who has left himself/herself without much leeway misses the mark by a tenth of a percent.”</p>
<p>When a student receives an A, it simply means that the work that the student has done in the class is high quality. If all the students in the class are turning in high quality work, then all of the students should also receive A’s.
I feel as though the people on CC that actually want these “grade budgets” are people that think that they would be one of the people that receives an A so that they can feed their ego’s and feel good about themselves. They should know that other people in this world also deserve to be successful sometimes.</p>