<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/education/25cards.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/education/25cards.html</a> </p>
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<p>This isn’t anything new to my school district. My little sisters have been receiving report cards with this distinction (1,2,3, and 4 grading system) for years now (North Carolina).</p>
<p>I agree, however, that this would be a terrible idea for junior high and high school students though. There isn’t enough distinction with the four-tier system.</p>
<p>Nice article. :)</p>
<p>Nothing new around here - that was my grading system back in the mid 70’s</p>
<p>4 = A
3 = B
2 = C
1 = D
0 obviously is an F</p>
<p>I totally with this idea. It leaves way too much and does not signify the difference between a high 4 and a low 4 etc.</p>
<p>While we are way too far into minutiae in grading and there is already an obsession with gpa’s and class rank, I have long proposed a national consistency in grading or at least a statewide consistency. Some schools only give out either an A or a B etc with no in between grades like A- or B+. In my kids schools the teachers submit a numeric score of, e.g. 84, but the school system computers round that either up or down to a C. Not a C+, but a flat C. There is NO distinction on the transcript between a high letter grade a median letter grade and a low letter grade. That is a grave disservice to students and colleges alike. </p>
<p>I think it should either be a consistent numeric system or if they move to letter grades with a numeric value, then give out an A- and B+, to help differentiate between the level of scolarship. </p>
<p>Further, many schools use a 10 point grading scale while others use a 7 point grading scale. They state that they inform colleges of their grading system, but frankly I have very little confidence that college admissions directors pay that much attention. They have too many applications to read and so they just focus on the gpa, the class rank and a cursory review of the transcript for AP classes and Honors classes. And then they move on. Next application. Many high school teachers could care less whether their students get into prestigious colleges. In some public schools the teachers and guidance counselors actually have a certain hostility to private and prestigious colleges and drive kids toward the state flagship or another state school. I have seen it hundreds of times.</p>
<p>So any improvement in clarity in the grading would be beneficial to students and colleges.</p>
<p>I like our system. Scoring is 1-100 and appears on the report card as such. They tell you that 90-94 is an A, and 95-100 is an A+. No A-. (I always translate the lower end to the minus grade anyway, and I’d guess admissions officers do too.) GPA both weighted and unweighted are given with numberical grade out to four decimal places. I have no idea how our system translates to 4.0 scale, but figure the colleges can worry about it.</p>
<p>It never made sense to me that a teacher would add up all the work for the quarter, come up with say a 93, then convert this exact figure to a less exact letter grade of A- for the report card.</p>
<p>My high school kind of has a combo. Grades are A, B, C, NC (no credit), while effort is 4, 3, 2, 1. Both appear on the report cards. GPA is a pretty normal 4.3 scale, and we don’t have weighted grades at all.</p>
<p>We have had this since 2002. It stinks. We only have it in elementary and that is where it should stay.
The reports never show growth,granted, each teacher’s way is very subjective.
One teacher low graded everyone based on her previous experiences of expectations, and a kid grew from that point. Other teachers think the same kid is a super star from day one and gets all 4’s compared to his/her peers.
As a parent, if the kid is getting all 4’s, has he/she shown any growth? The school grades all written work from the 1-4 rubric of standards, yet math spelling etc. all get number grades 0-100.</p>
<p>Thankfully, our HS is strictly 0-100 scale, no disputing the test averages, they are what they are.</p>
<p>Our elementary school kids use the number system. So did the middle school, until parents complained loudly enough that they dropped it. The problem was that a “4” meant “Exceeds the standard,” while “3” meant “Meets the standard.” Different teachers had very different idea about the definition of “meets” or “exceeds.” In reality, a “4” was usually the equivalent of an A+, while a “3” could mean anything from a low B to an A! Very frustrating for the kids.</p>
<p>This seems exactly like GPA
A=4.0
B=3.0
C=2.0
D=1.0
I see know difference in this than the standard high school GPA.</p>
<p>I’m currently a high school senior and like many above have stated, my elementary school also used a 1 to 4 grading scale. This scale accessed skills across four subjects rather than compiling one grade for one subject. It makes sense in the elementary level but not on the high school level. Here’s why:</p>
<p>In elementary school the report card is mostly for the parents. It serves as a diagnostic tool for the parent to understand in which arenas his or her child excels or lags behind. The parent can provide some focus for the child. Elementary school performance is not crucial unless the child is applying to a different school (e.g. Middle School), and even then test scores or recommendations are likely to have equal if not greater sway. The elementary school report is geared toward growth and it’s a friendlier means of assessment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean much in that most of the grades are essentially effort-based. I got 4’s across the board from kindergarten to fifth grade just because I did my homework…I don’t recall any challenging tests because most of my grades were based on homework, which was not truly graded but only ‘checked.’</p>
<p>In high school, such a diluted grading system takes away partially from the student’s drive to perform well. The elementary grading systems may be a means-based systems, but high school grading systems are stricter, ends-based or results-based systems. As in the real world, results are more important to most people than the processes by which they are obtained (but high school never teaches use that good processes are more important in the long run!). Unfortunately, this high school results-based grading system has lost some of its rigor as a New York Times article earlier this year pointed out (students apparently expected too much for doing the minimum amount of work in many high schools, leading to a gap in expectations at college). Nonetheless, single grades definitely give students more impetus to either master the material or work an authority’s system (in this case the teacher or the administration), two rather valuable skills to have later in life.</p>
<p>I agree with raiderade. I don’t understand why this is a big deal. My school has unweighted GPA, so pluses and minuses don’t matter.</p>
<p>Renaissance’s post illustrates my point - in that school’s system, “4” just meant that homework was completed. In our school, “4” means doing even more than the teacher expected, at least in most classrooms. In neither case was a 4 equivalent to an A. </p>
<p>In our district, I’d say a “3” was more like a high C or low B! The gap between 4 and 3 was huge.</p>
<p>^^^^ Exactly the problem with it.
One of mine "appeared’ to be doing all 4 work, never brought home a book to study. Got 105 on every single exam in 5th and 6th grade. As the parent I know kid is bright, but not a super achiever but a tendency to be a slacker.Lower the bar I will hit it, raise the bar and I’ll hit that too. I knew the … would hit when in middle/high school no study skills were ever developed. Teacher believed was working above and beyond peers, meanwhile not reaching his real level of 4.
Knows better now, brings home the books to study.</p>
<p>The other thing that has been driving parents crazy is the number of WORDS on a report card. For each project my 5th grader does, there is a whole sheet of rubrics - each one is a long paragraph. She might get a 4 on one, a 3 on another, and a 3.5 on a third. But there’s not a combined score, so you’re left with a jumble of STUFF. Very confusing.</p>
<p>I detest the number system we have in elementary school, mostly because all the teachers do not use it the same way.</p>
<p>1) For some teachers, a grade less than 4 simply means that the class hasn’t covered enough material yet for the child to have mastered the subject area completely. In other words, no one had the possibility of getting a 4 because the subject hadn’t been taught in its entirety yet. The next marking period, almost the whole class gets promoted to 4’s. The phys ed., music, and art teachers tend to give most kids 3’s the first half of the year, and then move them up to 4’s, irrespective of actual knowledge or performance (They see too many kids each week to want to truly assess that and so just give everyone the same numbers. I laugh that my 2 older kids, who had taken music lessons for several years prior, based on their grades supposedly did not understand basic musical concepts. Didn’t keep them out of advanced band, though!)</p>
<p>2) Other teachers use the 4 to mean an A, the 3 a B, etc.</p>
<p>3) Lastly, some teachers assign those numbers based on effort. My special ed. kid gets great grades. I’ve complained to the child study team that if we were to change disticts, I’d have a hard time justifying services for D since she’s getting all 3’s and 4’s! This method irks me the most. I’ve asked if D’s 4’s are equivalent to the 4’s of other children, and they’ve admitted that they aren’t. How stupid is that?</p>
<p>This USED to be the process in our middle school. As the new head said, kids make the conversion regardless as do their parents, why the charade? Except an A was a 5 and so on down the scale.</p>
<p>Our school district has been in the midst of a grading controversy all year. Teachers calculate grades based on percentages and the report cards show A,B,C,D,F. The central administration (with the approval of the union LEADERSHIP, not the union members) decided that no grade below 50% should be recorded because it is not fair. If an A is 90 -100, than an F should be 50-60%. The high school kids immediately figured out how to play the game and don’t do some of their assignments because they won’t get less than 50%. Of course, the competitive students aren’t playing because they are not aiming for C’s, but they will more than likely be hurt by the overall grade inflation of the others. Parents and teachers are outraged.</p>