<p>From what I remember, the typical grading scale in high school was:</p>
<p>90-100 = A
80-89 = B
70-79 = C
60-69 = D
0-59 = F</p>
<p>This was followed even in honors college-prep courses.</p>
<p>It meant that every homework and test had to have mostly relatively easy questions that D and C students could get correct, with few really challenging questions that the B and A students could tackle.</p>
<p>Then, going to college, tests often had only three or four questions of varying difficulty, often with only one that C students would be able to answer, with the other more challenging questions to separate the B and A students (and each question was “larger” than a typical high school test question).</p>
<p>This may cause college tests to be a shock to many students who were accustomed to cruising through high school tests that were full of mostly easy questions. It may also mean that high school courses are not preparing students for college as well as they could be, in that test questions are biased toward easy “smaller” ones instead of having more challenging “larger” ones.</p>
<p>Should high schools move to grading scales that are more reflective of college practice, at least for college-prep courses?</p>
<p>At my high school the grading scale was often the same as in the OP but tests would be curved so that they would be graded out of less points than you could actually get. A common method which admittedly made little sense was to give the highest scorer 100% and other students whatever percentage they scored of the maximum score (e.g. a test had 40 points possible and the high score was 36. for the purposes of grade calculation the test was scored out of 36). This allowed for tests to have harder questions but did not solve the more fundamental problems associated with grading with a fixed scale. Curving to the highest score also makes little sense when one student is far better than everyone else in the class.</p>
<p>What’s to say the college doesn’t use the same grading scale? The grading scale at our high school is not that easy, bottom for an A- is 94/failing is anything below 75. I think that grade inflation on a scale such as above does give people a false sense of how good of a student they really are. Look at the kids that post here that are 4.0 students but can’t get above a 24 on an ACT. In another school that 4.0 student will be more like a 3.0/average based on that average ACT score. “Good” grades doesn’t always mean you got a good education. A “B” student at our high school was probably challenged a lot more than an A student at a high school that uses the above scale.</p>
<p>I remember in college that most tests were designed so that the median was about 50% correct, in order to get a wide distribution of scores in order to distinguish between A, B, and C students. Instead of a test of mostly easy questions like in high school, the college tests has only a small portion of the test devoted to easy questions, leaving more space for more challenging questions.</p>
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<p>Meaning that an even higher percentage of test questions has to be devoted to easy questions to allow C and D students to pass.</p>
<p>Whether 60% or 75% is the threshold for a D is not a big difference for the purpose of this discussion – either way, it means that a majority of the test questions have to be easy ones that D students can handle, leaving less room for more challenging test questions.</p>
<p>The whole point is that A and B students in high school used to cruising through tests full of easy problems may be less prepared for college tests which may consist mostly of challenging problems. This type of thing may also prevent AP courses from properly emulating college courses in terms of asking enough challenging problems on tests.</p>
<p>Which brings us back to the CA has crappy high school discussions. I’m sure my kids would disagree that tests are full of “easy” questions. There aren’t a lot of D students in the AP classes so it’s irrelevant. College test score averages bear out that our kids are being challenged sufficiently in high school and the success rate kids from our high schools have in college further proves that point.</p>
<p>I remember a number of my AP classes did actually curve a bit, and the ones that didn’t were generally harder than those that did. I remember my finals in AP Physics C, Calc, and Chemistry were made up entirely of AP test questions and our scoring was on a non-curved scale. Not a surprise that so many of us scored 5s on our AP exams.</p>
<p>Given previous descriptions of your kids’ high school (regarding percentage of students going to college, taking AP courses, etc.), it is an academically elite high school that is not representative of US (or any US state’s) high schools in general.</p>
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<p>But they are attending private colleges with big merit scholarships that make them cheaper than in-state public schools, implying that these private colleges are not ones with the top college-bound students, right?</p>
<p>Part of it may be due to the use of Scantron or similar multi-choice gadgets which can’t really make questions harder without resorting to Jeopardy championship level difficulty (how many steps in St. Such-and-Such Cathedral in Northern Elbonia - true question I had in college). </p>
<p>A test should generally have both multi-choice and deeper questions to challenge the understanding of the material. Most teachers do one or the other, but not both. Considering what the stakes are in terms of tuition I’d rather stick with the Scantron approach thru grad school. No point taking “winner takes all” tests if it means that missing a question is bye-bye-A.</p>
<p>And again, it all boils down to the new grading scale: A and NOT A.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus–well I guess it depends on what you consider “top”. Kids here are just more practical. Rankings mean very little as does prestige, however, we have several kids each year get accepted into “top schools”, Ivy’s, etc. Sometimes they go if the money works out, sometimes they don’t. One student from last year turned down Harvard and Yale to go to the flagship because he got a private scholarship that was only good at the U of MN that was a 4 year, full ride. Other kids go to top regional private schools with no issues finding jobs, getting into grad schools/med schools, etc.</p>
<p>Our high school is pretty typical for our area. Most high schools in our area are similar to our school. It’s not unusual at all…we aren’t even considered the “best” high school in our area–one of the better ones but there are schools with better stats.</p>