<p>Our high school doesn’t have “+”'s or “-”'s. It’s A(90-100),B(89-80),C(79-71),D(70),69 or lower is an F. However they use a computer program called infinite campus. The teacher enters all the individual grades for the semester and if at the end a student has a 89.51% the computer rounds it up so it becomes a 90 and so on. That seems fair to me since they don’t have the “+” and “-”'s.</p>
<p>Since they do have "+'s and “-”'s at the school in question a B+ really isn’t going to negatively affect the GPA that much so I can see why they don’t round up.</p>
<p>I am shocked that the grade wasn’t rounded. Absent a policy, I guess there is nothing you can do, but the squeaky wheel does get the grease. In our school, the grading scale was 94 to 100 for an A. A kid got a bunch of B’s and his dad found out that many districts do go with the 90-100 for an A. State KEES money is based on your GPA and so his point was that “our” kids were not getting as much state money because of the different grading scale. They didn’t change grades retroactively but did change the grading scale to 90-100 going forward. Perhaps there is a case to be made for a policy or for standard rounding. I would think final grades would need to be stated in a whole number, not a fraction. Good luck.</p>
<p>Individual teachers choose rounding or non-rounding on grade programs like Infinite Campus. As someone else suggested, there is a lot of grade fluff in high school, designed to placate parents and students. If a student completes homework or classwork, they get an artificial 100%, for example. This is probably fair, as it allows teachers to offset rigorous assignments and allows honest grading of those assignments.</p>
<p>It’s students are proactive, they maximize those points. Students who fall below the mark are generally deficient in either academic talent or work ethic or both, because the actual scale in most classrooms exceeds 100%, for better or worse.</p>
<p>Hapened to my kid as a HS freshman. She an 89.8 or 89.9 in Geometry (H). In her school 90 is an A-87-89 is a B B +.</p>
<p>She earned a B+ for the year. Lesson learned about not missing homework assignements etc. The dfifenece between a B+ and an A- will amount to about a 0.02 GPA difference after 4 years of HS.</p>
<p>mathmom alluded to a point that I think is relevant to the issue, before you get into the relative generosity or stinginess of the teacher: How many significant digits are there in the average, really?</p>
<p>I tend to doubt that there were enough assignments, with enough points per assignment, to yield five significant figures in the average.</p>
<p>A way to test this: Suppose that the student got one more point (or 1% more) on an assignment that was weighted the least. What would the new average be? And does anyone really think, even in mathematics, that the assessment could be that accurate? Particularly if partial credit is possible?</p>
<p>My (university) grading policy is to set score cut-offs for each grade. A student who meets the cut-off is guaranteed the grade. Then I look at the overall pattern of student scores, to see whether to shift any cut-offs down. I never shift them up. I tend to look for natural breaks in the scoring, so if a student has an average slightly below the announced cut-off, but there is a significant gap between that student’s score and the next higher score, I will almost always bump up the grade of the student who scored just below the cut-off.</p>
<p>Our local district had the same scale (apparently) as the OP’s. 90-92 was an A-. Whether 92.51 (or 92.9999. . . ) was an A- or an A depended on the teacher.</p>
<p>In my opinion, it would make sense to look at the student with the highest A- score, and then to ask whether there was a qualitative difference in performance between that student and the student with the 89.9+. If not, then the 89.9+ should be rounded up, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I also like the 100-point scale, with no conversions to letter categories. My high school had that. It prevents the magnification of slight differences in performance.</p>
<p>I do agree that nothing can be done about the teacher’s policy, though.</p>
<p>Just to add: I am surprised that students who are going for grades of A or A- have missing assignments. That is a sure way to torpedo a grade. I wouldn’t assume that a student with an 89.9 had missed any assignments.</p>
<p>This is why I always encouraged my kids to stay on the good side of their teachers–don’t be annoying, don’t gab in class, show respect even if you don’t feel it, etc. Teachers have so many opportunities to give or not give a student the benefit of the doubt. The rounding issue is the most obvious, but what about all the times a paper gets a B+ grade instead of an A- because the teacher is just not favorably disposed–even subconsciously–toward the student? I bet if OP’s friend’s kid had established a positive relationship with this teacher, the rounding would have gone the other way.</p>
<p>I am not surprised that an all A student will occasionally have missing assignments. Kids these days have too much to worry about. It is an unfortunate that the teacher did not want to round it up. My D had two borderline As this semester. Luckily both teachers rounded them up. </p>
<p>Teachers usually describe the grading as well as how they do rounding if they do it all all.
If they don’t, students how care about these things, should ask.<br>
In our HS there was no consistency. Some teachers rounded, some didn’t, seems almost everyone had a different cutoff for an A (seen 95, 93, 93.5). </p>
<p>I think it depends on the school. Our school rounds, so 89.9% would be a 90%. However, a 90% may or may not be an A. The scale is established by the teacher. I could be a B in some classes and an A+ in others. It depends.</p>
To me, this idea is akin to the zero tolerance and minimum sentencing, three-strikes, etc. policies. It doesn’t allow for wisdom and judgment on the part of the instructor in deciding what is most appropriate for a give case/student. It’s just “no brainer”. </p>
<p>leftrightleft…if I had a thousand bucks for every 92.9 my first son had I’d be a millionaire and probably not have as many gray hairs. He was the king of the B+ in high school and was voted “Most Laid Back” during the senior mock elections. But happy to say he graduated college just fine a few years ago and did in four years so in the long run it doesn’t matter much. </p>
<p>These days, course syllabi now run into the tens of pages and detail every possible scenario that might conceivably occur in ridiculously legalistic terms. If you’re lucky, you get a prof who can be flexible and see each student as an individual, but they’re getting harder to find, especially among younger faculty. IMHO.</p>
<p>It is nothing like that at all.
This is a math class.</p>
<p>The teacher has complete wisdom and judgement in grading fuzzy things like class participation or a final project if those were part of the grade.</p>
<p>If the kid went to the teacher and the teacher said no, then the teacher utilized wisdom and judgement in not making an exception.</p>
<p>My DC had an 89.99 in one semester of an AP class and was adamant we not embarrass her by being one of “those parents” who talks to the teacher and also made it clear she would not be talking to the teacher on her own behalf. She owned that B+. </p>
<p>I got annoyed at my 10th grade history teacher for giving me a semester grade of 97 when I’d earned 100. He said he didn’t believe in giving 100s, so tough. Class rank was based on numerical GPA, so I didn’t think it was fair. That’s life!</p>
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