<p>Well, we are also keeping a close eye on those grades. There was a thread recently about grade grubbers - I did not get it. Grades are SO important, why look down on someone who cares about them?</p>
<p>Chronic headaches? My younger kid, a daughter, started having migraine headaches two/three months ago :(</p>
<p>I love my DâS music involvement, but in the last two weeks she has had three huge culminating orchestra events with all the rehearsals that go with that and a recital still to come next week. And Friday, she is going to a weekend long strings event at a university about 2 1/2 hours away. At the same time, she has played field hockey and participated on her schoolâs tennis team. State testing is also going on and the push is on toward the end of the year. I am exhausted, but she says she doesnât feel as burnt out as last year.:)</p>
<p>Joining the club. Canât believe Sâs freshman year is almost over. Have learned so much from you all the past few weeks â thank you.</p>
<p>Kelowna, I donât know what thread your talking about, but the reason people look down on grade-grubbers (we have a less-nice name for them at our HS) is because the grade seems more important than the learning.</p>
<p>Youdonâtsay = here is the topic I was refering to
<a href=âhttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/834291-what-difference-between-grade-grubber-top-student.html?highlight=grade+grubbers[/url]â>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/834291-what-difference-between-grade-grubber-top-student.html?highlight=grade+grubbers</a></p>
<p>Very difficult to judge I think. I have always told my kids, from early middle school, to watch their grades and check what the teachers are recording. It is fairly easy nowdays, with online acces to grades for both students and parents. Teachers make SO many mistakes, in large schools they mix up students until they get to know them (usually a few months). As for arguing for grades - my older used to do it in middle school with his history teacher. He would argue intelligently, had kind of open debates with the teachers which that particular teacher LOVED (I know for sure as I have been told by the said teacher).
Of course learning for the sake of learning is more important than grades, unfortunately one with high SAT scores and low GPA is looked down upon.</p>
<p>I read the thread on grade grubbers when it was first listed. I was trying to understand the real issue. My son is a top student in his IB program. As it stands now he will move to #3 after this semester. But as a 9th grader rank doesnât matter. But over the last few weeks here are some issues we have encountered that would effect rank and scholarship as a senior. It is important to note that the difference separating the top 5-7 kids is the difference of one getting a 100 in a class and the other getting 98 or 99.</p>
<p>1)Math teacher entered a grade of 88 for a unit test. Sonâs grade was 100. He e-mailed her and nicely explained that he thought there was a mistake. This grade dropped his average to 97.</p>
<p>2) Son was out of class because he is a student ambassador for the IB program and his math teacher gave him a zero for no homework. She was out that day and had sub check to see if students had their work. S had checked in but the sub didnât check his homework. This reduced his grade to a 99. Teacher fixed after son told her.</p>
<p>3) English teacher accidentally put a zero for homework instead of 100. Son again told teacher to get it fixed.</p>
<p>I donât see any of these situations as grade grubbing. S did the work and wanted his grades to reflect the work.</p>
<p>The last situation S encountered was the opportunity to write a paper for Biology that could be used for EC. The teacher had two ways of calculating to see which would help the studentâs grade the most. S has a 99 in biology and wasnât interested in getting a 100. A couple of other kids did do the EC so their 97 or 98 would go to 100. I think kids could get a max of 5 pts added to final grade up to 100. The 100 was important for some kids just not for S. No hard feelings either way. At the end of senior year could that paper or any EC like that make a difference in being number 1 or 5, of course. For some kids it is important for others itâs not.</p>
<p>I should also mention that there are parents of some of these kids that require their child take advantage of every EC opportunity to hold on to a top spot in the rankings. So I would encourage you not to judge the student because maybe the parent is the "forceâ behind the grades.</p>
<p>^^ absolutely agree.
DS had some classes graded on participation. He would get a 0 for not attending a class, even though he was at an âacademicâ function, like state math contest or receiving an award from a Governor.
At our school it does not matter whether one has 100 or 95 - as long as it is an A you will get 4.0</p>
<p>I am curious DandB - how do you already know that he will move to #3?</p>
<p>I see grade grubbing as arguing for a grade to be raised when it is clearly undeserved or manipulating the system so that you can achieve ultimum results under conditions that are most positive for you. For example, my S was in an advanced class where one top student was absent for every test that was given for an entire nine week period and allowed the six day extension for makeup. Noone ever seemed to catch on. On the other hand, my D has had some of the same issues DogsandBirds S has had. She has had a semester grade miscalculated, grades that were improperly recorded, and many errors found in the grading of tests using the electronic scantron system. She worked hard for these grades and should bring these errors to the teacherâs attention.</p>
<p>Kelowna, my D has had the same problem in a class with participation points. She always has to bring it to the teacherâs attention. She has been told that the computer grading system does it automatically.</p>
<p>Agree that thereâs a difference between correcting grading errors and manipulating the system so as the squeeze out every point possible.</p>
<p>Kelowna - Our state has a uniform grading system so every public school in the state uses this and classes are ranked depending on level. As for how son knows his ranking - final exam exemptions had to be in yesterday and anyone with a 90 or above is exempt. The kids that exempt exams have their final averages and are given their GPA. Also, on final reports ranking is listed but the top kids ranked themselves yesterday.</p>
<p>I guess that the problem I have with the above mentioned thread is that is puts top student against grade grubber in the title.
The true âgrade grubberâ is not a top student when evaluated based on other academic achievements. They can be top based on their GPA, but nothing else.
It bothered me because some of the behaviors listed were the behaviors of my son, and I would never in a million years call him a grade grubber. He is very aware of his grade situation though because he knows it is very important.
Manipulating the system? Well, there is manipulation and manipulation - if you are making an effort to miss tests just to get an extended study time - that is manipulating and teacher should catch such a behavior. When you got a 94.3 on the test for an A- and 94.6 would make it an A wouldnât you make an effort to get some extra points for your work? Maybe the teacher misunderstood your statement, maybe they read something incorrectly. That is why those IB exams are graded by three professionals, not just one.</p>
<p>I guess I am coming from an extensive proof writing in math competition where almost every point has to be argued for ;)</p>
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<p>Interesting. In our HS kids do not share info like that. They are ranked now at the end of each quarter, but this ranking does not take into effect weight of classes. This will be done after the first quarter of the senior year. So it is almost impossible to know the outcome as one would have to look at all the classes the other kids are taking.
When it comes to ranking, I just tell my kid to try to make As in the classes he is taking.
He is going to be disadvantaged anyways due to the college classes he will take.</p>
<p>Kelowna - there are only a handful that make 99 or 100 in every class. My guess is that other than the kids at the very top others would need to wait until grades are mailed. These kids all take the same classes during the same year all are MYP/IB except PE so the itâs very easy to determine rank in the top handful. Being first only matters to a couple and mostly in those two cases it matters most to the parents. One other reason why these kids "shareâ the information is that they are best friends. They have been together since 3rd grade when the gifted program started.</p>
<p>Also, in our system all college classes are ranked at the highest level AP/IB.</p>
<p>kelowna, my Dâs gpa is figured using the point system as well. Four points for and A, three for a B and so on and an extra .5 for plusses. Honors classes and DE are also weighted .5 and AP are weighted 1.0. We are not an IB school. We only have two of those in our system and they are magnet programs you have to leave your home school for. Students donât officially know their gpa or class rank until after first semester of junior year. Therefore, students donât really have anything to compare until then. However, you can easily calculate your own gpa, but most are unaware of othersâ status.</p>
<p>My Ds school gives no credit for +'s so its very hard to do better than the batch of kids who are getting all As. They are all pretty much taking the hardest classes you can for their grade. I imagine there are a lot of kids tied for 1st, 2nd, etc in the rankingsâŠmaybe even as many as 40 kids tied for first or second place after freshmen year?</p>
<p>
How would you know that? By looking at you kidâs ranking on the official report card?
Is it so easy to get an A? It is not here, one has to be really careful not to end up with A-, really careful.</p>
<p>In my S and Dâs schools, students are ranked only at junior and senior year although all the points are accumulated from freshman year. I guess every state and school are different. In my Sâs school ranking is decided on 100 point based system, top ranked kids differ from each other by 0.00x point. #1 kid and #30 student may be just 2-3 points away. GPA is 4 point based though like rest of country.</p>
<p>Iâve looked at many school districts lately (we are moving for the 2nd time in 2 years!), what I have found is that almost every high school calculates GPA differently. Some use a 4.0 system, some a 5.0 system, some weigh APâs, others not, some include all classes in the GPA, some include all classes except gym, others include only the 5 majorâs. If you are in NY, like we are, then the schools calculate percentage GPAs. Itâs all very confusing and relative. Bottom line is that you can only use your childâs GPA to see how your child compares to other kids in his school. Otherwise, I think the higher end colleges unweight everything and only âcountâ major classes - gym, art, music donât count. Just math, science, English, social studies and language. A tier 2 or 3 school might weigh AP classes, or might not. Itâs very college specific. So when someone says that their child has an UW 3.4 avg, that could still mean almost anything. </p>
<p>I decided to âtranslateâ my kidsâ GPAs into an unweighted, 4.0 based system with </p>
<p>4.0 = 100-94
3.7 = 93-90
3.3 = 87-89</p>
<p>as this seems the most common for colleges. It just gives me an idea, but I recognize that each college will determine their own GPA based on their own criteria.</p>
<p>Yep, all schools are different. Ours only reports a final year letter grade on the transcripts, and no - or + are awarded, so a 90 is a 4.0 and an 89 is a 3.0! (Of course, add 0.5 for honors and 1.0 to those for AP) There will be a lot of kids tied for 1st and 2nd place after freshman year, but the school will no longer record rank on the report card. If the student wants to know, s/he has to go to guidance and ask.</p>
<p>My D was embarrassed to walk off with a lot of department awards at our ceremony, because they are not based strictly on grades in the class, but other subjective qualities. So while many kids might have the same high grades, only a few get selected (teacher favorites?) Leaves some good students feeling slighted and resentful.</p>