I’m unsure if it’s across all the district’s schools, but this experience was true at more than one school within the same district. But if lots of the students in your kid’s high school were getting Ds or Fs in AP Physics C, it doesn’t sound like your school has an issue with grade inflation.
There was an article in Los Angeles-area news from a year or 2 ago that I remember reading in which they talked about how LA Unified school district was going to eliminate giving D’s or F’s entirely. I thought at the time (still do) that it’s a horrible idea.
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This seems more like a teacher who believes in the bell curve vs. kids not doing the work/putting in effort (just because AP Physics likely has relatively strong students in it). Do you think that is the case?
I’ve heard that the counselors address this in their letters to colleges, and there is also some kind of standard letter from the math department explaining that even very good students may have some Bs and Cs in our math classes. Apparently that is the way that our high school deals with parents’ complaints about grades and worries about college admission due to these grades; they tell the parents that it will be addressed in the counselor letters.
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No, the teacher simply expects a LOT from his students. He gives them a lot of detail at the beginning of the class about his expectations. If all students perform well in this class, they could all get As. If none perform well, they could all fail.
Some students take the class because they want AP Physics on their college applications and aren’t really prepared for a ton of work. These students may do poorly or fail. It is an extremely demanding class at our school that goes beyond what is usually taught in AP Physics C (we learned later).
The teacher is actually amazing and inspiring and my son learned so much in his class… I am so thankful that we have this teacher at our school.
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I imagine also reflected in the school profile? Don’t they usually contain info like average GPA? That might also provide a yardstick for AOs trying to put an applicant’s GPA into context.
Our school profile actually does not include anything about average GPA.
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Huh, I though that was standard, but maybe not!
Ours has this (top line cut off because it contains the school name):
Yes, our school profile doesn’t have that type of information about average or highest GPA. Our school also doesn’t provide weighted grades.
I have been told that the letters are a better place to address it anyway, because when lower grades appear in certain subjects or courses (for example our Math department is notorious for giving out lower grades…), they may not actually affect the students’ overall GPA very much, but may be very worrisome to a student or parent with high expectations. So I guess letters are one way to explain this.
A long time ago on some CC thread I remembered reading that UC at least is able to obtain a certain percentile GPA like 85 or 90th from each school. That GPA is used to re-rate GPA’s within each school. I don’t know where that certain percentile GPA comes from: maybe system-wide applications from each school? Of course they also have past per school data at their disposal as well.
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We have hundreds of students each year applying to the UCs, so I agree that the UCs probably have a much more detailed model of our typical students than what could be put in a school profile.
This is also probably the case for many other popular schools where our students apply. Since it’s a large high school, the pile of applications itself tells a story about what is typical of our students.
I think you might be referring to the information that is used in computing top 9% at the high school (for UC guaranteed admissions). I believe parents need to opt in to this? Not all high schools participate. I am actually not sure if our school participates.
Not every school reports GPA. We have one internally but since it’s not reported, it’s not on the school profile.
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Perhaps, although I have read that the UC schools evaluate applicants within the context of their school. This would be one quantitative way, athough not the only way, of doing it.
We have one of the largest school districts in the country because it is one giant district instead of broken into smaller districts like many midsize cities. But even with 100K students, I cannot name 10 kids who attend public school.
Most of our middle and high schools are just awful, and kids are just moved through the system with little to no education. My hairdresser sent her kids to public schools (and not even in bad areas), and she said they didn’t have assigned textbooks or homework.
We have one well-known magnet high school and those students likely have rigorous classes, but the rest of the high schools are pretty bad.
Our private high school gets kids from about 70 middle schools and our president told my husband the current freshman have the lowest math placement scores in the history of the school.
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They definitely evaluate applicants within the context of everything they know about the school. But not all schools participate in ELC.
Here is information about the ELC program. Local guarantee (ELC) | UC Admissions
How does UC calculate my school’s historic or benchmark GPA?
- UC uses transcripts that your school has submitted for the top 15 percent of your high school’s junior class, after final junior year grades are entered.
- Based on these transcripts, UC establishes a historic, or benchmark, GPA representing the expected GPA for the top 9 percent of the students from your school.
- Schools are periodically asked to submit transcripts so that we can monitor and adjust benchmark GPAs.
I believe that parents opt in to have their students’ transcripts sent to UC as part of this benchmarking process. But I’m not sure about that.
Some schools also do not participate in ELC. For strong schools with many students in the top 9% statewide, there is little benefit for participation, because all of their students eligible for ELC will also be eligible for the statewide guarantee.
However, I think I might be veering off topic for this thread. Hope this isn’t too much info. Just wanted to give you the info about ELC 
Presumably, you mean the determination of the Eligibility in Local Context threshold GPA, or top 9% UC-recalculated GPA for the high school (which is not based on the high school’s determination of top 9% class rank).
My experience exactly, in a large district in Texas, Title 1 campus.
On the day before and the day of the end of each quarter (report card grade due day), several students go to the admins complaining about me not giving them passing grades, then the admins ask me to meet with them and explain the extra steps I have taken for these students - extended time, one-on-one tutoring, contact parents, make-up work, test retake, etc., which I have done and have documentation of all. The question the admins always ask me that annoys me the most is “Is there nothing else you can do to help this student succeed?” My answer is a firm NO. I’m one of very few teachers who hold our ground. I can see my students’ grades in their other classes. Those who complain about me failing them have low grades (30-50) in multiple classes through the grading period; however, on the last two days of the grading period, their grades in other classes go up and they pass. I understand why most of my colleagues chose the easy way but that’s against my belief.
Even after I refuse to bump their grades to 70 (passing), the admins require teachers to give the students alternative assignments. The students have 3 weeks to complete these assignments and their grades will be changed to 70 for the grading period. They can still go to the admins to complain about these alternative assignments being “too much”, “too hard”, “not fair”, etc.
I feel that the concept of “earning”, that one must put in work to receive something in return, is diminishing rapidly.
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Was that related to the pandemic? I did read this 2022 LA times article about pandemic related changes in grading policy, but it sounded like they simply made it more difficult to give Ds and Fs, rather than eliminating them entirely: L.A. students’ grades are rising, but test scores are falling. Why the big disconnect?.
Wow. The public school system sounds terrible. Sorry to hear that it exists.
Is this a downward trend in the math placement scores (for those applying to private school or those accepted at the private school) or is that a function of the Pandemic? If it is the latter, we can probably expect a rebound. I would have thought that with private school applicants, you would be looking at students generally in the upper quartile. Or is the upper quartile score also declining?