My school's considering changing its weighting policy

<p>At my school honors and AP courses are currently given a +1.0 weight, making it out of a possible 5.0. The positive effect to this is that it encourages students to take challenging classes even if they don't get as high grades. The negative effects are that it discourages students to take unweighted classes for fear of hurting their weighted GPA (and for what it's worth, my school doesn't rank).</p>

<p>My opinion is that the weighting either needs to be changed or honors classes need to become more difficult. In many of my honors courses I have seen students who really shouldn't be there (e.g. students who don't do any work, students who aren't competent with the course material and would be better off it a lower level class). Our school has a very high amount of students in honors classes and the number of students in them has increased significantly over the years.</p>

<p>Has anyone else had this type of situation in their school?</p>

<p>what are they considering changing the weighting policy to? the title of your thread doesn’t match with what you posted</p>

<p>Oops. I forgot that. There are a couple ideas that have been pitched. One is to to completely abolish the current weighting policy and for all classes to be unweighted. Another is to allow students to take some unweighted classes without it affecting their weighted GPA. There are probably more that have been thought of, but these are the only ones that have so far become public.</p>

<p>well, then it depends on acouple of things:</p>

<p>1) what is the goal of the school district? do they want students to challenge themselves or do they only want the top kids in honors and AP’s? there are schools around the country that are on both ends of the spectrum</p>

<p>2) if all classes are unweighted, the school should provide not only a detailed school profile, but also a grade distribution for all classes…that way, a college would be able to see how the student performed in comparison to peers…</p>

<p>3) if all classes are unweighted, what is the status of class rank? in my opinion, you can’t really rank in an unweighted system; kids could be getting straight A’s in remedial classes…</p>

<p>4) many districts have implemented programs where certain electives do not affect weighted GPA’s. Our public permits students to take non-academic electives pass/fail up to 10 credits a year (the equivalent of two half year, or one full year elective)</p>

<p>In my (humble) opinion, if a student wants to challenge themselves, they should be permitted to; if their grades are lower so be it; but the classes should not be “dumbed down” to address the population in the class…</p>

<p>About the honors classes having the undeserving people, yes, I see this happening to me too. I get really annoyed in a bunch of my honors classes and hope the same thing won’t happen in AP. However, AP - lot of people setting themselves for failure. For example, in AP Chemistry, most of the people chose to take it for college, which irked me. In the end, they received B’s and C’s. Only a very few received A’s. Moreover, there were only 40 people in the class and only seven signed up for the exam. However, it’s quite understandable since AP chem class didn’t finish everything, but it’s the student’s responsibility to self-study the rest if they’re so motivated to take the class in the beginning.</p>

<p>However, I don’t think abolishing the weighting system is a good idea. Colleges would like to see both weighted, an indicator if the student took a bunch of honors/AP classes, and unweighted GPA, an indicator if the student is maintaining A’s or B’s without the weighting.</p>

<p>Step 1. Get Rid of Ranking
Step 2. Adopt the 10-point scale
Step 3. Get Rid of Weighting
Step 4. Encourage those who apply to schools not making decisions purely off of SAT+GPA to take SAT Subject Tests and practice for the SAT Reasoning Test. </p>

<p>I don’t think any other system works as effectively–if only we’d do something like this in my area.</p>

<p>The “dumbing down” of honors classes is happening here too. My schools does not offer Standard courses–only honors–unless state policy does not allow them to offer a course as standard. Teachers teach and test at an honors-level but many give an amazing amount of extra credit and, as a result, students in honors classes aren’t doing well on the SAT (try 1000/2400), state tests (Failing the standardized test, but made an 85 in the class), and are “acting up” because they pay attention.</p>

<p>My state recently removed the words “higher-order thinking skills” from the definition of an honors class–with the idea that honors classes should be available to everyone. In order to open honors courses to everyone, the only difference between them and standard classes as become the amount of work and the pedant, petty grading.</p>

<p>My school doesn’t even have a weighting system, and it sucks…there’s a girl this year who’s 9th in the class of about 105 kids and she’s in all special ed classes.</p>

<p>What my school does I think is that rank is determined by first 210 credits with required graduation credits counting first then highest grades in others(230 is needed to graduate, but 210 is taking at least 6 classes a semester)</p>

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<p>But doesn’t not offering regular level courses completely defeat the purpose of honors courses?</p>

<p>That’s interesting, (the situation of “dumbing down” honors classes) and I don’t see it as severely in my district as many of you do. Although I do see students who aren’t “dumb” but merely, unmotivated in honors classes. </p>

<p>It does defeat the purpose of honors level classes. Students should be able to challenge themselves… but can they handle it?
In my opinion, getting rid of the weighting system won’t do much to help students, and if you think about it, there may be a lot of students who depend on weighted classes…</p>

<p>My school district doesn’t have a ranking system, although it is very competitive in general… rodney is right though, in the sense that every school district has different aims.</p>

<p>At my school for there are Regular, Pre-AP, and AP classes. Pre-AP and AP classes will give you a +10 weighted points for that class so maximum of 110. So for history classes you will have an option of taking Pre-AP or AP U.s. or World History (etc) and the AP will be far harder than Pre-AP but still weighted the same. So basically I took all of the Pre-AP for class rank. I am in the class of 2011 and the classes of 2012 and later no longer have a choice between Pre-AP and AP. So basically for History they take either AP or regular. Pre-AP classes now only exist for subjects that can’t be taken as AP. (ex. English 1, 2 or any Math before Calculas)</p>