I thought this would be a good place for Loudoun parents to comment on how/if grade inflation in Loudoun is making it more difficult for their kids to get into competitive colleges such as UVa?
I spoke with several Loudoun students who said that midterms and finals were done away with a few years ago. I simply could not believe this (I live in a non-NOVA county in the “rest of Virginia”). So I did a little research and found on the Loudoun Times website that indeed it was found that big tests like mid terms and finals were stressful on students and were done away with. Personally I was floored - students need to take mid terms and finals in COLLEGE!
So my curiousity got the better of me. I went onto the VDOE (VA Dept. of Education website) which publishes a report card for every single school. You can also look on each school webpage for the “profile” which gives the exact same info. What was quite shocking to me was that almost every Loudoun high school had the senior class student body with quite a majority with a 4.0 or higher. One school reported that a whole 70% of students had a 4.0 or higher. Wow! I started to wonder if that made the Loudoun county students much smarter than our “rest of Virginia” high school. So I dug deeper. The particular high school my children attend had only 20% of the student body with a 4.0 or higher.
But…and this is a big but…I then looked into the average SAT, ACT, and AP pass rate at the schools. Loudoun county school’s SAT scores were LOWER than ours. AP Pass rate? LOWER. So, they had lots and lots of kids with A’s, but lower standardized test scores and AP pass rates (obtaining a 3 or higher on the exam).
So the data reflects the grade inflation.
I have seen alot of Northern Virginia parents upset that college offers are going to “rest of Virginia” students when they should be going to talented NOVA students. But, if a 4.0 in Loudoun County is really equivalent to a 3.0 in a county in Central VA - and the SAT score is lower, do you really think that it is the grade inflation that is keeping the students from having a higher acceptance rate?
Curious as to thoughts. In our “rest of Virginia” school, if you fail a quiz there is no retake. There is no extra credit. And also we have not noticed any decline in our acceptance rate to top schools such as W&M and UVa. Curious as to what your take is?
My kids went/go to one of the big competitive Nova HS, but in Fairfax County, not Loudoun. Fairfax County is still much bigger than Loudoun, though Loudoun has grown much more quickly over the last 15 years or so. Both of my older kids got into UVa, - both had excellent stats and earned their spot. The older did not go, the younger is a senior and still deciding. He will likely go to UVa. Sometimes I think we do have grade inflation in here - certainly compared to when I went to school when my 3.4 was in the top 10% of my class. My kids can’t believe that. But I think places like UVa know these schools so well that they have a great idea of what it means to get certain grades in certain classes and they adjust accordingly. My kids can take retakes of tests, if they meet certain guidelines…and the retakes are usually much more difficult and they have to do extra homework, etc. to earn the privilege to do the retake. That was not true a few years ago. The thinking was that if a kid failed miserably one test, they would often blow off the rest of the quarter because there was no way they could get their grade back up. It would cause some kids to stop challenging themselves and drop back to safer less hard classes. My kids have taken advantage of the retakes at times and sometimes it has helped and sometimes it hasn’t (because they are harder and the teachers can and will take the retake score even if it is lower!). I don’t see much extra credit at my kids’ school.
I would say there is a general thought around here that it is easier to get in from the “rest of Virginia” - but that is because around here it is so hard to stand out. Almost everyone has smart, successful well educated parents who are fully engaged in their kids’ lives and education and it shows. These kids work really hard, take often 12 or so AP classes, along with sports, ECs, etc. That’s what is needed to get in to places like UVa from my experience from our HS (Dean J will probably say that isn’t true!). I think they have certainly proved that they are ready for the rigorous classes at UVa and almost all do well there. I’m not sure we have had any decline in kids getting in to these great schools…but if you have a C or two or decided to take Stats instead of Calculus, well then you may be that one that just happened to not get in to UVA. Also this year at least, every single kid in our neighborhood who applied to UVA, got in. They all deserved it.
I am a senior at a high school in NoVA and my school does not have grade inflation at all. Students who earn an A for the final year grade are exempt from the FINAL, but we still have to take the midterms and semester exams. Our SAT average is around the 1110 mark, but we are a very small public school (1000 students) with not a lot of funding.
Not all of NoVA is what your description is… I mean, even if there is grade inflation, it applies to all students from that school, so that data is still pretty comparable within that specific region. NoVA students are compared with NoVA students, and the “rest of Virginia” are compared with students from those areas. In fact, the grade inflation would make it more competitive - most students here are going for 4.4 to 4.5 GPAs. For example, out of 200 students in my graduating class, 60-70 students have a weighted GPA above 4.0. Again, there is no grade inflation here - just insane competitiveness. Fortunately, I am valedictorian this year.
I’d also like to add that I have finished 12 APs in high school (including what I am doing this semester in senior year), and am also done with an Associates in Science from NVCC. My SAT was in the 99th percentile when I took it (March 2016). I still consider myself an average student compared to my fellow NoVA peers.
kkmabo, have you been to high schools in places like Charlottesville, suburbs of Richmond, Williamsburg, Roanoke? An overwhelming majority of these kids have highly involved parents and are taking multiple AP Exams. I’m sorry but NoVA doesn’t have a “lock” on all the talented students.
12 APs is not typical in our FCPS applicant pool. I know there are kids racking that many AP courses up, but they aren’t really the norm.
We had to splinter Loudoun off a couple years ago because the population has grown too much for me to handle Fairfax, Arlington, and Loudoun schools, so I an not an LCPS expert anymore.
I don’t know if grade inflation in Loudoun makes it harder for students to get into schools, but I think it might make it harder on students because of expectations.
My D is a senior at a Loudoun school and her end-of-year grades have all been A-, or A, or A+. She’s in the top 10% of her class, but hasn’t been anywhere near the top, where presumably you need to have everything A or A+. Which is perfectly fine, as she was accepted at UVa and W&M, and two other competitive schools, and class rank doesn’t really mean that much of anything.
But I bet there are a lot of Loudoun kids out there who think they are doomed at getting in anywhere competitive if they get a B+ sophomore year. I’m going to predict Dean J would say they are wrong about this, and I agree, but you can’t blame someone for thinking that if there seems to be 30 other kids in their class who have never gotten a B+ at all, and they see how hard it is to get into somewhere like UVa.
So if we really do have a system where an A- is barely acceptable and a B+ is doing poorly, that doesn’t seem right. And I suppose it could make it a little harder for admissions officers to make meaningful distinctions among students with very similar records.
I have taught in NOVA and also in ROVA (lol) and I have to say that my regular students in NOVA were of the caliber of the honors students in ROVA. You could tell who was from NOVA at UVA, or rather, who was from ROVA. I was tutoring my rova friends in things I learned in middle school. The education is just not as good in other places. These people were valedictorian, salutatorian, etc of their high schools. Sorry for the honesty. Just speaking from experience. The reason I would say is the intensity of the helicopter parents in NOVA. There are entire schools designated as gifted up here. It’s an intense crazy world.
As far as the AP exams are concerned, my NOVA county has open enrollment and pays all AP test fees so it’s not a fair comparison to a school that doesn’t do this. I would say SAT would be fair to compare.
This is an interesting topic as I think it touches on several different areas and the perceptions they many have about school quality and college admissions.
As far as Loudoun Co goes, I am not a resident, my kids do not attend school there, but I do know teachers in the county that have also taught in my home county in VA. I realize that anecdotal accounts do not necessarily represent the whole picture, but they can be interesting.
The general feelings of these teachers is that in Loudoun, more so in schools in eastern Loudoun, that they cannot hold the students accountable for anything, bad behavior or bad performance. It sounds like parent intervention might be a problem and that school administrators put pressure on the teachers to make sure the students “earn” the grade the parents think their kids should “earn”. This article from 2014 hints at this and in the comments section there is a very interesting post. http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/grades_in_loudoun_county_are_on_the_rise234
Grade inflation is everywhere. The valedictorian in my NOVA high school had a 3.92 GPA back in the pre-grade inflation era. High schools want to help their students get into top universities because it makes them look good. State U’s know which high schools have meaningless GPA’s. They also know NOVA is a fertile area for well educated, diverse, and well funded students.
I have not been to high schools in different areas throughout Virginia. And no, I do not think Nova has a “lock” on smart students and involved parents. Of course not. But it is the overall concentration of them here - we are just so much bigger in population than the rest of Virginia. Places like Charlottesville, the affluent suburbs of Richmond and Tidewater area are similar, they are just much smaller overall in population. But I really don’t think that the HSs in the more rural areas of Virginia are the same as Nova or the few other areas listed. I went to college in Virginia, although I was not from Virginia, and believe me, the kids from Nova and the few other areas above were head and shoulders better prepared than the kids from rural Virginia. (There weren’t many from those areas). I suppose that could be different today, but I doubt it.
There is grade in inflation, but like @exoheat11 said, when it happens it happens overall at a school, so the AOs know since they get that school report. It’s just extremely difficult for these kids to get into UVa…their 40-50% acceptance rate IS (I’m pulling this from memory), isn’t indicative of how hard it is to get in, because there is such high level of self selection to apply. I don’t think I know of one kid from our high school who even applied who didn’t have at least a 4.0. It’s just too distant a chance to get in (unless something extraordinary). I don’t think this grade inflation is hurting or helping kids from Nova or from anywhere else in Virginia.
Glad to hear that the 12 AP classes isn’t the norm for Nova…I guess my son’s Rodman scholar letter is just in the mail! LOL
Well all I can say is this is a fact. My son took ap physics 1. The class GPA he was in was a B- but only 3 people in his class failed the ap exam. He got a 4 (and had a b- all year)
My niece in Loudoun took the same class and had an A all year. My sister told me that they were very smart and her peers all had As too. But yet she failed the AP exam.
So no, grade inflation does not occur everywhere. And we are in rova.
I’m rather surprised, hazelorb, that with the affluence and brilliance of nova kids that you would even consider uva, since as you say the rova kids at uva were on a middle school level. Why would you consider a college with students of that caliber?
NOVA is so competitive… The reason so many people have a 4.0 gpa or higher is because an A+ is weighted as a 4.3 and everyone takes AP classes which weights classes a point higher.
I took 11 APs and have a 4.3 weighted and have gotten all 4s and 5s but I’m considered average and am barely in the top 10%.
Getting into UVA from Loudoun County is one of the hardest things to do because you have to be the TOP 10 (top 10 people not top 10%) which is higher than a 4.5 at my school.
Bottom line: Grade inflation isn’t a thing; it’s only that people take so many APs.
Grade inflation IS a thing. If you are allowed quiz retakes that is grade inflation. If you have extra credit its grade inflation. My nieces in Loudoun said most people have an A because their parents complain and ask for quiz retakes and extra credit. That Is NOT earning an A. Our high school policy in central VA is no retakes no extra credit. If you don’t hand your homework in on time you get a zero. Hand it in a day late? Still a zero. My son got a zero for handing in homework 5 minutes after the bell rang ( he forgot to put it in the online Dropbox).
My point here is when everyone all has As because of retakes and extra credit, the As don’t mean very much which is why it may be harder for an A student to get in from Loudoun.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why test scores should be weighted more than grades.
The college board and the ACT are cold and unfeeling. No amount of ingratiation allows anyone any advantage. I was a teacher’s pet. I was allowed privileges that others were not. My grades were bumped at the end of the year. That is unquestionably unfair.
That doesn’t even factor in cheating. Cheating in FCPS and LCPS is rampant, and there is virtually no way to catch students participating.
Standardized tests have neither problem. SAT and ACT scores are not subject to county rules, nor are they subject to favoritism.
