An actual college admission example is the resolution of overall scores of the SAT versus ACT. The ACT’s practice of reporting an average of sections rounded to the nearest integer produces a lower resolution than the SAT’s practice of reporting the sum of sections. Hence the usual concordance of 36 ACT (which can be 36, 35.75, or 35.5 average of sections rounded) to four different SAT scores from 1570 to 1600.
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Exactly.
You also get weird distortions of reality.
For example, who is the better student if the below are rounded to “whole letter grading?”
Student 1
A-
A-
A-
A-
A-
A-
Student 2
A
A
A
A
A
B+
Whole letter grading makes student 1 the winner, but in reality, student 2 performed better.
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What gets me is the ability to retest or get “extra” credit – not in my day.
There were multiple UW 4.0’s in each of my kids’ classes. Ranking was driven by hundredths of a point because of weighting. It was not possible for my kids to be Val or Sal because varsity sports counted as a class and a 4 for athletics diluted their WGPA.
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How are y’all determining whether grade inflation is happening? It’s always been my understanding that in standards/mastery-based grading, every student can legitimately earn an A without that meaning grades are inflated. It could possibly lead to a discussion of whether the standards are too low, but that’s a different question.
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That’s how it was at my high school. Our Valdevictorian had a 4.0 and took 0 APs. Others (like me) took 10+ and got around 3.95 and were not recognized at all. Unfair system not to use weighted GPA.
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I’m sorry that happened to you. It can feel pretty discouraging.
In d22’s case, I think this system actually might work. Yes, she got two B+ grades and was a salutatorian. She is also living her best life at Barnard and thriving.
Our state has a program where the top ten percent of each high school graduating class gets a sizable scholarship to the state university system. Mine was at the bottom of the top ten percent, but there was no way she could use that scholarship. One of her majors is not offered anywhere in our state. A good percentage of the kids offered this scholarship are actually using it and genuinely benefiting.
I like seeing people who might not otherwise be able to attend college having that opportunity. And d22 and her friends all seem happy with their college choices.
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Our school does not have extra credit.
For some classes, you can opt to retake a test if you get a C or D (depends upon teacher) and you MUST retake a test if you fail. Only 1 retake is allowed.
Where it gets odd is…say you take a test, get a C, then retake and get an A. You have now passed people who got a B and who had no opportunity to retake the test. Unfair.
The point about athletes is unfair. I think that our school lets you skip the PE requirement if you have 3 semesters of athletic ECs, but no grades are assigned.
I have two students 6 years apart at the same high school, which does not give out As as easily as some others seem to. D19 got Bs on a couple subjects that she scored 5 on the APs, which seems rare judging by other comments. Average GPA at the school between then and now has increased from 3.55 to 3.71. But, SAT scores have increased around 40 points and ACT by 1. Interestingly, the number of commended NM students is around the same for a slightly smaller class size, but the number of finalists has doubled. Does all that mean the 0.15 increase in GPA just reflects stronger students?
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Athletes are still at a disadvantage. While my kids could and did take Athletics as P/F, it also meant there was 1 less weighted class per semester that they could take vs than non-athletes.
We are the opposite.
My daughter (volleyball player) can replace PE that she doesn’t have to take with an AP course if she wants. Giving her an advantage.
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Ahhh, varsity sports is actually a class in our district, not just an EC.
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We are a private school with about 300 per class. A 4.0 is an 89.51 (which automatically rolls to a 90). An 89 is a 3.9, 88 is a 3.8.
We also weight 2.0 for AP classes, 1.7 for Adv, 1.3 for Honors…most of the electives (even silly classes) are deemed advanced so a 1.7 bump for taking First Aid.
So S24 had a 4.0 and a 5.67 weighted. Clearly, it shows that weighted means absolutely nothing in any context. Kids with lots of B’s and who didn’t take any AP classes would still have well over a 4.0 for weighted. This could help with those colleges which take the weighted grade without any conversion (looking at you Miami of Ohio).
The kids in the top track, with AP’s and Adv classes worked hard but I also think the teachers ended up giving a lot of A’s.
From my memory of what the school put in a newsletter I would guess about 15-20% get a 4.0 each semester.
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delete
This could also explain the “why didn’t I get into School A, this other student had lower grades but somehow got in when I didn’t” questions prevalent on this site.
Admission officers have access to the grades and classes students take. They aren’t just presented with a GPA sans context.
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And relevant information can also show up in recommendations.
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Based on my observation, grade inflation in public schools have worsened in recent years, and it should not be blamed on the pandemic. I teach APCSA in a Texas public high school A (title 1, 80% students receive free or reduced-price lunch) in a big district. I’ve taught in a college prep private school (school C) as well. My own children went through public schools, graduated from a large public school B (not title 1, 30% students receive free or reduced-price lunch). Among these three schools, I see clearly that A has the greatest grade inflation, B is better, while C has very little inflation on grades.
When I taught at school C, I designed my curriculum. As long as it meets the governing standards (not the state standards), I decided my grading scales and rubrics.
Now in school A, it is almost impossible to grade students’ work properly. We are required to not give grade below 30 as long as something, anything, is submitted. Many schools in our district implement “no fail” policy, where a student can retake tests multiple times until they pass. I’m not against the idea of reteaching. I do it quite often. However, it’s meaningless to make and give multiple versions of the same test to the same students who just hope that for once they’ll be lucky enough to pass. If a student truly is not passing (excessive absences, multiple missing assignments, poorly done assignments, low test scores, etc.), the teacher must contact their parents multiple times and document all contacts. Furthermore, some administrators told us that we must receive confirmation from the parents that they have received our “low grade” notification, otherwise the parents can just say “nobody told me my child is failing” and request a passing grade. So, in reality, most teachers just give a passing grade to avoid the extra work. If everyone is passing, logically it’s easier to get 100, hence the inflated grades. I have juniors in my class who don’t know how to compare $8.99 with 15% discount and $9.99 with 20% discount. They are taking pre-calculus.
In school B where my children attended, the grading policies are similar; however, there are way more students getting 100, so the teachers adjust the rubrics to make the last 5 points harder to get. The overall result is that the inflation on top is kind of under control.
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Since passing for the purpose of getting credit toward high school graduation is a D grade, would grade inflation at the bottom of the scale necessarily imply grade inflation at the top of the scale? If students earning F grades got D grades, but nothing else in grading is changed, that would only give grade inflation at the bottom.
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I wonder to what extent the teachers in your School A example don’t want to be the ones to “condemn” these lower income students?
The students in the B school and certainly in the C school are going to be fine, so the teachers are probably more realistic with them.
I taught college a bit. I did have some “A school” grads like the ones that you described who were 4.0 high school students but were sadly just not really prepared for college.
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When nobody fails, those who actually put in some work to earn a D would be treated unfairly (comparing to the free Ds), so the bar for C is lowered, and in turn the bars for B and A. Not all by the same scale though.
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In my opinion, the fact we are here is a strong evidence that we don’t “condemn” our students. Many of my colleagues go way above and beyond to help students. There are cars in the teacher parking lot from 6am to 8pm. But there’s a limit on what we can do. For me I’d rather spend time lifting the students who want to learn but lack the resources than to make 5 versions of a unit test so the two who never do homework can keeping trying to pass.
One thing I do agree with the current grading policies is that effort should be recognized along with results. My grades are inflated too, including the top. Student X who successfully completed one coding exercise in 10 minutes (either because they’re really smart or because they paid attention to my explanation) surely deserved a 100; however, student Y who struggled two days and came to me during lunch to relearn how to trace variables finally got his code working also deserved that 100. From the gradebook, nobody could tell these two apart since they both showed 100 for grade.