While I agree with you on this, the idea of middle class jobs supporting a good, middle-class lifestyle is pretty much disappearing, especially on one income. And high tech is different from previous technology industries in that it’s pretty much winner take all. The top 1 or 2 companies get most of the money, the rest not much or go bankrupt.
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Another possibility for other companies is to get acquired, which is sometimes good financially for the employees, though often less so for a competitive market for those buying the products or services.
However, businesses concentrating and markets trending toward oligopolies (or oligopsonies for what they purchase, including labor) is not unique to any one industry in the US, so the more competitive “winner take all” situation for employees selling labor to them is becoming more common.
My kids lived through the 1-4 grading system. It was insane. Most kids were in the 3 pile. Good enough for parents not to complain and not high enough to make anyone else “jealous”/question it. No one ever got a 1 or even a 2. You needed a perfect 100 to get a 4. So every kid thought they were doing great. Until they hit high school. Sad reality for about 85%. Most were not doing as well as they thought.
I’m the kid of a teacher but I think many teachers have opinions which as a parent I don’t share ( mainly that kids self esteem is the highest factor above truly grading where they stand). We moved to private schools. My kids actually know where they stand. The friends who stayed in public still have to deal with lots of stuff around teacher ego, original grading rubrics and all the rest. Honestly, I think it comes down to a disservice for the kids A few can figure out various rubrics for many classes. Others just flunk or do poorly. What a mess. Have a grading system make it undertandable and make the classes more or less difficult according to level. I was never interested as a student ( and college student) in “figuring:” out a rubric and my kids want to focus on learning not unique ways of grading.
A 99% in a class? That just is not a thing here. We have 90-100 is an A. 80-89 is a B. Etc. I don’t think we have any classes where a 99 is even possible. Tests just are not written for kids to get all of the questions correct. Maybe in some non-honors classes, kids could get close to that but not in an honors or AP class.
And this is going to rock everyone’s world - in some AP science classes an 80 and up is an A. You know why? Because the tests are flipping HARD and they write them so that a certain number of problems are nothing like the kids have seen in class at all and need to use what they know to figure them out. Many times, they need to use info from prior chapters as well for those problems. The teachers believe that , in college, kids are not getting above 90% on tests and want our students to start understanding what college exams look like. Still, in these classes, maybe 1/4-1/3 of the kids in the class get over the 80% hump and get an A. Those are typically the kids who really apply themselves and put a lot of extra work in when they study going over and above by doing a lot of unassigned extra problems from the textbook. In those classes, when S19 pulled out an A, he spent twice as much time on that class than any other even when his other classes involved APs in all other subjects.
We have maybe three or four kids who end up with a 4.0 with maximum rigor (all honors and AP classes) out of 700 or so kids.
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You’re overgeneralizing the use of these unique rubrics, in high school anyway. My point was more on grading and curves, that each teacher has his or her own grading but the grades (A, B or 99, 98 are still standard. Most kids in public high schools know where they stand. And it’s the private schools that do the bending so the parents that pay all that money don’t get upset.
That what I was trying to say, one is that if there’s a curve on the test, it’s the teacher that sets it, not the school or even dept, at least in public school. And there are teachers in hs anyway that will assign 5 or 10% of the grade to homework or projects so getting an B or B+ would be sufficient for an A, assuming the student get the full 10%.
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If the range of UW GPA is so compressed near 4.0 for so many, what’s the point of having a grading scale that starts at zero?
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Depends on the schools. In high SES area where we live, grades are inflated and not real. In the private schools my kids attend only a small % are accepted ( less than 20%) grades are not changed, modified and extra work is not given to pull up the grade. Kids with low B’s at this private are still going to excellent colleges. Only a very small % of kids maybe 5-10% would have above an A- ( those kids are attending top 10 schools). No one has a perfect GPA. At least last years top student did not ( was in my kids advisory and told my kid about the number of B’s (6).
There are public and privates who inflate and it really depends on the school not whether they are public or private. Colleges know which schools are “inflationary”.
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Lots of ways to cut the same pie. In your case, the school has stretch questions which only the top kids can meet. Like college, they will have to not only learn the information but be able to look at it in different ways and apply it. That’s great in one sense, preparing for college.
Sounds like the 4.0 is also almost unattainable. My kids are at schools like this. The only issue I would raise is, when the top score in a class is 60 and that’s an A or 80 and that’s an A, the teacher might be off a bit. I have no issue with stretch at all ( should be for the last 5% imo). But sometimes there is so much stretch that no one gets it. My kid is taking AP physics and this is often the case. So kids are really competing against the highest score in the class rather than mastery of the material. Ok, as long as they know it.
I don’t think anyone in my kids grade has a perfect 4.0 school is smaller but it’s relatively impossible to get a perfect grade in every class. Tests are not dropped and additional work is not given. Even top students often have a quiz, exam or report that isn’t perfect so the grade reflects the whole semester.
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At my D’s high school, many of the AP class tests were graded on a curve so if the test was extremely difficult, they would “reset” the grading scale.
Regular classes were on a 4.0 scale. AP and honors classes were on a 5.0 scale. Interesting enough, only the honors classes counted for the “bump” up in GPA if taken junior and senior year. An A- was the same as an A+ (90% and above) in gpa. So it made a big difference in GPA getting a 89 (B+) vs a 90 (A-). A 3.0 v 4.0.
We had several co-vals and co-sals. To be a valedictorian you “only” needed a 4.2 unweighted GPA and a certain number of AP/honors classes.
Out of a class of 500, we had at least 30 vals and another 25 sals. My D had straight A’s all 4 years and a 4.7 uGPA which was probably not even in the top 10 of seniors.
Definitely think that grade inflation was commonplace at her public high school.
Sadly with that many kids with those grades, colleges will have a hard time discerning who is really strong from who is in the top 5% ( or who can ideally transition to the top colleges they likely all are applying to).
I don’t see that as a value to any of those Vals/Sals. IMO, diminishes their work esp if school outlines how many are cal/sal.
our low SES school has a crazy grading scale. Again it’s to get kids graduated.
every single assignment is graded on a 1-4 scale. 3.25 - 4 = A; 2.5-3.25 = b; C = 1.25 - 2.25; D is below 1.25. NO FAILING.
so a 3.25 = A; which is a 4.0 to colleges. Pretty crazy! No minus grades, again, to help the GPA. That’s why a huge portion of the kids has a high GPA; but average ACT score is 18.5.
They do add points for honors/AP as well. and the kids don’t really know what unweighted GPA means, or care. So top 10% is based on weighted GPA. Whatever. Every school and situation is different, and this has been fascinating to me to read - all the variances.
After 18 yrs straight in this low SES district of 50K, we moved our daughter this year. She wants to go back sort of.
Don’t forget the other ways an app package conveys strengths. LoRs, the sorts of activities and impact, the writing (choice of what to write, how relevant, how written.)
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Yes, all of those are so important. I’m old school in terms of grading ( and old) so I like things which are granular. Rather than lumping everyone into the you are an A student pile, I like the idea of kids earning their grades and getting some B’s and gulp even C’s. So that when they go to college one day they actually realize that there are many talented people in the world and they won’t be great at everything. There’s a great life lesson in doing your very best and getting a C.
I know I’m in the minority here as something like 50% of high school kids have an A average.
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In our North Texas school district, high school transcripts have 3 sets of GPA listed:
Unweighted (all classes on a 4.0 scale)
Weighted (on a 4.0 scale, only core subjects and foreign language counted)
Weighted Numerical —this is used to calculated class rank. Since we have the top 10% rule for auto admittance to texas publics (6% for UT Austin) this is the important one
These are the weighted calculations for grades:
Level 0- (courses with modified content like course recovery, night school, anything decided by an ARD committee)
Level 1- on level general ed courses have a 1.1 multiplier
Level 2- Pre Ap (what we call Honors) 1.2 multiplier
Level 3- Dual Credit, AP, Academic Decathalon, IB courses (for students transferring in with IB credit, our district doesn’t offer IB)
Unweighted Grade calculation:
90-100 4.0
80-89 3.0
70-79 2.0
69 and below 1.0
All 3 of my boys have only taken AP or PreAp classes for all their core. My S21 has usually ended all his AP classes with a 89, while my S23 twins are pulling 90-95 in their AP classes (so far AP Human Geo, AP World Hist and AP Bio)…they both finished PreAp (Honors) Alg 2 with a 99. We’re on a 4x4 accelerated block schedule so they only have 4 classes a semester and cover the whole year course in one semester.
There are certain classes that are known that no one (or very very few) will get an A (Mostly the sciences like AP Physics, AP Env Sci, AP Bio, AP Chem and APUSH).
We only have one valedictorian and one salutatorian. Playing the GPA game to ensure a top 10% class rank is rampant. Most kids here stay instate and strive for the two flagships, UT Austin or Texas A&M.
This is pretty similar to our PA public school as well.
They report unweighted and weighted GPA and UW and Weighted NGA (numerical)
Our regular classes have no weight.
Honors classes are NGA x 1.05 ( so a 92 becomes a 96.6)
AP classes are NGA x 1.1 (so a 92 becomes a 101.2)
Those are how weighting is done so tippy top kids end up with a 105+ NGA but kids who have 92 and above also show a weighted 4.0.
Our “rank” is done with the weighted NGA. The class of ‘22 top 10% decile at the end of Soph year was 102.15-96.64.
Our school does not permit many AP classes prior to Junior year so the very best GPAs are not generally higher than a 4.3ish weighted.
Are you sure the official transcript sent to colleges includes all that? (As opposed to an info copy for the student.) Usually, it’s the letter grades or numerical. Somewhere, there may be rank (or test scores, etc,) but that’s district or state dependent.
Yes, Our official transcripts include all three sets of GPA. If you’re outside the top 10%, you can choose if you want your class rank on the transcript or not, we have to make that selection towards the end of junior year. By state law, anyone in the top 10% must have their rank on the transcript due to our auto admit rules.
I don’t know if it’s all over Texas like that or just our district, but that’s how it’s done 
There are many vals (don’t think they award sals) in local high schools but they’re announced at graduation and not used in college applications. Being named a val even if there’s many is still a source of pride to these kids, they didn’t take fluff courses to get the val, they worked hard and took tough courses. I talked to a sal from my hs and she is still proud of that accomplishment, 30 years later. I didn’t come close to val/sal, but I respect the work they did.
Our school weights AP and honors by adding 10 to the quality points
If you net out to an A in the class you typically get a 5 on the AP exam, or at least a 4.
I think they stick rank in there no matter what.