<p>This morning North Carolina State Board of Education approved a 10-point grading scale which will impact over 438,000 high school students. Are there any states not on a 10 point scale with the exception of TN and SC? </p>
<p>Perhaps 90=A, 80=B, 70=C etc. may give teachers a little more leeway to have harder problems on tests, etc. than 93=A, 85=B, 77=C, etc… But it still means that most assignments and test problems will be easier ones so that C students can get 70% of them correct to pass the course.</p>
<p>The argument in favor of changing was that so many other states, or schools in other states, use a ten-point scale that it puts NC students at a competitive disadvantage in out of state admissions. People against argued that going from a 93-100 A scale to a 90-100 A scale would “dumb down” the grading system. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or another.</p>
<p>NC already has a runaway weighting system - regular A=4.0, honors A=5.0, AP A = 6.0. Why not make it more ridiculous? Although I am poking fun at my own state here, this creates some crazy numbers. Any if you are not paying attention, you may think a college is full of geniuses when they talk about the freshman class having a 3.9 avg HS GPA.</p>
<p>Each school district in Virginia decides its grading scale. For example, my son’s high school is on the 10-point scale, but there is no rounding up or extra credit. He had an 89.5 in BC calculus. He got a B. Same thing in APUSH. So when our college counselor sends out information about our school, she explains the rigor in all classes. </p>
<p>@Decide, agree that NC had a “runaway” weighting system. NC State Board of Education recently amended its weighting system on August 7, 2014 that will go into effect the 2015-2016 school year in which an Honors course will receive .5 of a quality point and an AP/Dual Enrollment course will receive 1 QP. (Policy ID GCS-L-004) </p>
<p>Louisiana is not on a 10 point scale. 93 is the lowest A. That was imposed statewide a few years ago. Before that each district set its own rules. </p>
<p>This should be a wake-up call to parents that if their school system is not on a 10-point grading scale that they need to change it. Universities that ignore GPAs (UGA and Virginia Tech) and only consider transcript letter grades have no way of knowing that a 92 “B” on a 7-point scale is now an “A” in North Carolina. </p>
<p>I thought the 7-point scale was put in place as a reaction to grade inflation. It was to much trouble to rethink the difficulty of the expectations, it was much easier to simply draw the line in a different place.</p>
<p>Back in the dark ages when I went to HS, there was a 10-point scale. Did any parents here have a 7-point scale in HS?</p>
<p>I wish I had a 7 point scale. Ours was 100-95, 94-88, 87-80, 79-70</p>
<p>Yikes!</p>
<p>West Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana are on a 7-point grading scale. Tennessee has a 7-point Uniform Grading Scale but that is for Hope Scholarship purposes only; although I wonder if the parents of those school systems realize that they can have a secondary grading scale for college admissions purposes. </p>
<p>@Decide which school system are you in? Have you considered requesting your school to amend their grading scale to put your student on an even playing field with the majority of U.S. high schools? </p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand the point of this. If I were a teacher, and was forced to change from a 7-point scale to a 10-point scale, I would just grade harder, so at the end of the day the same people are getting A’s as before.</p>
<p>@kmwjes - I was answering the question of what I had “back in the dark ages.” Getting to college and seeing a 10 point scale (and curved grades!) for the first time was an eye opener.</p>
<p>@warbrain I agree, that teachers should and can grade according to the rigor of the course no matter what the grading scale, which should eliminate any worry that the school system is “dumbing down” the grading scale. Without adding the discussion of student effort, if my student makes a 92 in a regular Geometry course as an example, it is a '‘B’ (in our school system, while 438,000 NC students letter grade will now have an “A”. My student is assigned a 3.0 value while a NC student is assigned a 4.0. This is a significant disadvantage after 4 years in high school multiplied by all his/her courses.<br>
I am saying that any parent that has a student in a school system not on a 10-point scale should give serious thought to the disadvantage it is causing the student for college admissions, merit-scholarships and honors college admissions.
If you peruse OIRA, it is obvious the rising GPAs for college admissions, </p>
<p>I think some people are reading too much into this. Even at the same school, grading policies will differ. Many teachers are handing out extra credit like candy. (My daughter currently has over 100% in 2 of her academic classes–that was impossible at my high school). Some teachers allow “exam corrections” (also unknown at my high school). And there are many other ways in which grades get propped up all the time. A 90 in one school simply isn’t the same as a 90 in another school, so I don’t think it makes much sense to wring hands too much over what the exact letter grade translations are. </p>
<p>Our school uses this 10 point grading system. Some may look at that and say it’s not fair. My response would be that we don’t have any nonsense of kids taking AP classes and the bulk of them scoring 1’s and 2’s despite doing well in the class. Yes, the grades are inflated, but at least the accomplishment is also there.</p>
<p>@mathyone, nothing in your post is incorrect if you are comparing students scoring 1’s and 2’s on AP exams while their letter grades reflect otherwise. But consider schools like ours which does have a rigorous AP sampling of classes and students have a record of high AP scores? Our top 10 high school in the state (US News World Report) uses a 7-point scale. Students choosing the “unified math” program (geometry as an 8th grader) average an ACT math sub-score of 32-34. To achieve a 90, 91, or 92 is excellent in these classes but will show as a B on the transcript. Yes, I know that the university can see that our school has a 7-point scale and may take that into consideration. But why leave it up to a stranger at college admissions? The value of the 'B" is not transparent (yes, you can provide the numeric value) Is it a 92 or an 85? All I am saying is level the playing field with other schools so that our kids are in the driver’s seat with their letter grades and leave nothing to be misinterpreted by college admissions counselors who are overwhelmed with 35,000+ college applications each year. </p>
<p>NY has no letter grades on public HSs.</p>
<p>All I am saying is that there is no way you can “level the playing field”. If teachers at school A hand out extra credit points for dressing up bears (or something to that effect I read about on this site), drop low exam scores, and allow kids to make exam corrections for a new exam grade, and teachers at school B don’t allow any of that, what does it matter whether they both use the same conversion? Garbage in, garbage out.</p>
<p>A 10 point scale is a mixed blessing. It makes it a lot harder for kids who excel to stand out when everybody applying to college from your school is a straight A student. It turns “top 10% of class” rankings into a charade where grades are now meaningless so all that matters is “rigor” and study halls have amazing “rigor”. Be careful what you wish for.</p>