<p>I’ve had one Prof who had a separate rubric for determining point deductions for various types of spelling, grammatical, or punctuation errors. His reasoning was he felt students who had 4 years of college prep HS and fulfilled the college’s writing proficiency requirement should be proficient enough to proofread their papers so such errors were absent in the final draft. </p>
<p>As for some former employers, they just didn’t want employees who could leave a bad impression with senior executives or more importantly, large corporate clients through written communications or ad/web copy with spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.</p>
<p>And it’s not a recent phenomenon, either. One former supervisor who was an engineering major in the '70s recalled his entering class being required to take much more English writing and writing intensive humanities/social science courses than previous classes because the Engineering dean received a barrage of complaints from regional employers about the poor written communication skills of their recent graduates. </p>
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<p>Most likely word of mouth. While there may be teachers/Profs who don’t believe in giving As on principle, they are few and far between. Most of them are also politically astute enough to not advertise it on the syllabus or mention it themselves. </p>
<p>Most of the time, it’s really shorthand for the subjective “this Prof is unusually harsh in his/her grading”. </p>
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<p>My urban public magnet had teachers notorious not only for harsh grading, but giving really odd grades. One older math teacher whom I had as a math substitute teacher was infamous for giving -√2 as a grade on problem sets, quizzes, and exams. </p>
<p>When I was in college, my school did not participate in grade inflation. The average grade given was a C. At some point, the administration sent out a notification that there was no such thing as an A+, which was greeted with general hilarity by the student body. I recall the first English class I took: on the first paper (15 students), I received the sole A-, no one received an A.</p>
<p>Even in this context, there was significant variation. One Poly Sci professor was renowned for her hard grading. Someone I knew did an honors thesis with this prof as her advisor. She was awarded High Honors for her thesis by her committee, an honor that was given to very few students per year, fewer than five, I would guess. Prof Miller gave her a B+. :D</p>
<p>I took a music course where we were graded by our section prof. When picking up one of my papers, looked through the returned papers boxes of some of the other section leaders. Lots of Bs, some As. In my prof’s box, all Cs.</p>
<p>The only time I get upset about tough grading is when the grade is important for next year’s placement in a class. And especially when there are more than one teachers grading. For example there are 2 teachers in 8th grade algebra and the one gives partial credit and a fair amount of A. The other maybe one or 2 As. So 10 kids from the one class are thought worth moving up to honors geometry while only 2 from the other class. This happens every year in our middle school and drives parents bonkers. And yet no change. </p>
<p>My son, who’s an excellent math student, has struggled somewhat with a teacher who is notorious for tough tests and harsh grading. He still has an A average but it’s much lower than he typically gets. I’m actually sort of glad he’s struggling a bit because school has typically come easily to him and I want him to learn how to handle frustration and pick himself up after disappointment. That being said, I also got him a tutor. </p>
<p>Teachers are way off- base and arrogant. Yes, it’s a higher class with harder material and more work–that’s why an A in AP is worth more. To give a B and say it’s equivalent of an A erases any advantage of excelling in the class. Take the dumbest down class available and save yourself the work and get an A. It’ll be better for the GPA. And GPA is important–you are competing against schools who don’t have weird teachers.</p>
<p>The only things that should be a factor are completion of work, grades on a test. and maybe participation depending on the class. Grading criteria should be spelled out in advance. If you master the material to the A level, you should get an A.</p>
<p>A HS can’t tell colleges “Well, our teachers don’t give A’s!” Tough. The college computers (they don’t listen well) only calculate GPA–You got a B and not the A that you may have earned at another school. Someone else got an A–you may get kicked before adcom ever sees your application.</p>
<p>College may be different depending on department etc. Within a college department sometimes certain professors are known for hard grading that others will give you added value for. But not between a HS and outside college.</p>
<p>Curving grades is ridiculous in my opinion–In Pharmacy school my long time “pharmacy math” professor duked it out with the new dean (in front of a few of us). The new dean wanted him to curve grades because EVERYONE in our class got "A"s.
His answer–“Would you consider ever trusting a pharmacist who DID NOT make an “A” in pharmacy math? Nobody will ever leave this class or graduate having earned less.” He was a GREAT teacher.</p>
<p>Likewise my medical school was pass/fail. We all know some students will learn more than others but taking away the pressure of grades and instead requiring sufficient knowledge to pass is good. After all, you address the person last in the class “doctor”, not just the top half of the class and expect competence from all. Likewise in Pharmacy and other professions. You do not admit students to fields with limited places available only to wash some out because of a grading curve. Instead, you have standards to be met and teach the course so most can learn what is needed.</p>
<p>I remember the curved grading system of my youth yielding to the meeting certain criteria/percentage yielding grades. I remember a substitute teacher for my son’s HS class using a grading rubric on a paper that yielded lower percentages that automatically translated into Cs where an A- would have been appropriate. Subtracting points for problems instead of choosing a letter grade for merits would have been more logical. I also remember a college Honors general chemistry class that was wonderful for presenting far more than one could be expected to absorb. The blue book tests (meaning essay responses and showing your problem solving work) often yielded one person getting a score perhaps in the 80’s, several in the high 60’s, most bunched together and a few who were far behind. It would not have been fair to the students to grade on a curve as this smaller group was hand picked- we could have chosen a lesser honors course. The professor would have had to severely limit the test difficulty to yield standard percentages equaling standard grades. Instead our minds were stretched to the point of losing any arrogance that we knew a lot about chemistry and allowed all students to be challenged. We learned a lot from going over the test answers.</p>
<p>Do you dumb down tests so that a standard percentage means an A or do you offer a test that every ability can find their limits? Rigid rules on grading courses instead of allowing the teacher/professor to use exams as teaching tools, inspiring going beyond the necessary is good to me. Giving a grade based on the percentage of material offered and learned is so dependent on how much is offered. The teachers refusing to give A’s are not doing their job if they won’t offer enough for students to be able to learn enough to meet the standards for an A.</p>
<p>Whenever I hear one of these stories of teachers who deviate significantly from the grading patterns at their school, I think that the administration is weak. This is something that should be corrected in training and monitored at the school level. The teachers are not permitted to follow their idiosyncratic preferences in many other respects, and they shouldn’t be allowed to do so in this respect, either. There will always be teachers who are tougher graders than others, but schools should not allow significant outliers to continue, any more than they should allow them to ignore the curriculum.</p>
<p>I walked out of an English class on the first day when a teacher announced that he has only given one A in his 15 years of teaching. I, too, thought this was the fault of a weak administration to let a teacher have an ego trip with students grades.</p>
<p>This rarely happens, especially within the last few decades as average GPA trends, especially at the high school level has been reportedly on an upward swing due to pressures from students increasingly inclined to challenge lower grades and admins/parents willing to support them. It’s an issue commonly discussed/bemoaned in Chronicle and Inside Higher-Ed. </p>
<p>In the vast majority of cases, curves are only used when the tests/curriculum is so fast-paced and rigorous in relation to average HS academic preparation that not curving grades would mean the vast majority end up with Fs with top students getting grades in the low B to C- range. This was the case in the two intro CS courses for majors I took along with my friends’ experience in their STEM classes. </p>
<p>This. Now, I fully understand holding kids to a higher standard in an advanced course. However, to assume that there is no student capable of doing A work in an advanced course and have an automatic policy of no A’s is ludicrous, and I would not want someone with that short-sighted, silly policy teaching my kids, because if they have that ridiculous and unfair policy with respect to grading, who knows what other stupid policies they might have. Are you quite sure that the teacher has a policy of no A’s, or are you going on anecdotal evidence? </p>
<p>Cobrat–I hope you read the rest of the pharmacy school story-- the why of we all earned A’s. Nothing less in such an important subject would have been acceptable to pass the class. I didn’t say it was an easy class,</p>
<p>Long ago when I was in high school I was assigned to an honors French class for advanced students. On the first day of class the teacher said that we would be covering more material than the on-level classes, and to a higher standard. During the year, he would be grading relative to his expectations for this class. He was aware that we were all accustomed to being “A” students, but some of us would be seeing "B"s and "C"s on interim report cards. This would give us some feedback on where we stood in a more competitive group, and what might be required of us to succeed beyond high school. However, in the interest of fairness for college admissions etc., at year end he would make the final grades relative to “normal” expectations, so that if we put in a reasonable effort all year, we’d likely end up with our usual “A”. He would be happy to take calls from parents who needed to have this policy explained to them personally. I think that was a very reasonable compromise between a “tough” teacher’s desire to not coddle superior students, and an appreciation of a fair grade for external purposes - class rank, college admissions, scholarships, etc.</p>
<p>My reply was to point out that if everyone’s earning high 90s on exams or demonstrated understanding/knowledge to demonstrate that proficiency without curving, only the most sadistic and thankfully exceedingly rare Profs would feel the need to use a grading curve in such a situation. </p>
<p>Then again, it is also exceedingly rare for most/all students to demonstrate such a high level of proficiency in a given class unless the curriculum has been watered down considerably or the class is stacked full of hardcore nerd* geniuses. </p>
<p>Then again, many STEM Profs/teachers(especially old-school ones) and even some such students feel that if a given instructor ends the term with most/all students earning As or even Bs, the course’s academic standards were set far too low in the first place. However, even among them, most would just opt to make the curriculum/exams harder for students in subsequent terms rather than implement a curve to enforce what in this case would be a sadistic bell curve grading distribution. </p>
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<li>At my HS, nerd was a label most would be honored/proud of, not something to be ashamed of/scorned as is common in many mainstream US high schools or even some parents here on CC.<br></li>
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<p>This sounds like the practice of an elite U Professor I read about who officially reported what he felt were inflated grades in line with other Profs in his department and yet, also wrote what he felt was the invariably much lower “true merited grade” alongside the reported grade. </p>
<p>A college professor is likely to be making up their own problems. Keeping the level of difficulty constant and appropriate from exam to exam can be hard to achieve. Thus the curve. A high school teacher is likely to be using canned materials provided by the textbook publisher. These materials are usually somewhat more “cookbook” problems and written at a level of difficulty where it’s reasonable to expect the students to have a high level of mastery, and the difficulty level will generally be much more consistent. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s appropriate to hand out A’s to every student in an honors high school class who would have earned an A in the regular level class. They didn’t take the regular level class, and that A represents to colleges and employers that they did “A”-level honors work, not “A”-level regular work. It certainly wasn’t the practice in my high school.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to be necroing this old post, but I find it important to remember that colleges often look at class rankings in order to see where the student stands, so if everybody got Bs, then it would be ok, since the class ranking wouldn’t be affected. For example, last year in my school, the valedictorian got a B or 2 in a couple AP classes, but still was the top of the class because nearly everybody else in her grade got multiple Bs. Just a side note, however, the same teachers are teaching my year, too, but everybody is infinitely smarter, so much so that everybody up to the 15th or 16th ranking has straight A’s. I for one, have had 8 APs (going to 12th after summer ends) so far, and straight A’s, but only ranked 6th. Just remember that class ranking plays a pretty big role, too.</p>
Most students who are admitted to highly selective colleges do not submit class rank. For example, the percent that submitted class rank as listed in the most recent CDS for some highly selective colleges is below. Some selective colleges go so far as to claim that they do not consider class rank in their CDS, such as Harvard. </p>
<p>Princeton – 27%
Yale – 28%
Cornell – 29%
Penn – 29%
Williams – 31%
Hopkins – 31%</p>
<p>I expect the high rate of non-submitting HSs relates to the growing degree of grade inflation in high schools. If you have a heavy grade inflation school where a good portion of the class has near a 4.0, submitting class rank would hurt more students than it helps in college admissions. That said, colleges can get some idea of how harshly the HS grades from a variety of other sources besides class rank, such as the school profile and application history.</p>
<p>Data10, yes, many schools aren’t ranking students any more, officicially. But many schools will still give enough information so that colleges can figure out the rank, or they’ll at least give a range for the rank. For schools that do rank, it’s hugely important. My younger son was a B+/A- student. I really don’t think he would have been admitted where he was if it hadn’t turned out that he was in the top 6% (missed 5% by one kid!) </p>
<p>I have to admit I’m surprised by the colleges that say they don’t consider rank - that may be because some schools base rank on unweighted grades and of course they consider rigor even more important and an unweighted GPA won’t reflect that.</p>
<p>My D went to a high school where it says on its profile page that in its 45 year history, something like less than 20 students have graduated with a 4.0 GPA. That said, they get into some of the top schools in the country including the Ivies and the West Coast “ivies”. Her APUSH teacher was known as never, ever giving out A’s, and true to form, her straight A transcript took a hit with his class. It was the hardest class she has ever had. Well, long story short: she got a B+ in the class, she got a 5 on the AP exam, got in SCEA to Yale, and is attending Yale this fall. (Did I mention that he is an alumnus of Yale and wrote her recommendation?).</p>
<p>My daughter believes that this one class taught her more than all the classes she got her A’s in - and I mean more than just history. It taught her how to study, how to be pushed to the limit and survive and how to take a class on a college level. She is confident that this one class alone has prepared her the most for the rigor of Yale.</p>
<p>So, while I understand the angst some parents are expressing and I know everyone’s story is different, I just wanted to add my perspective.</p>
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