Monday, June 22, 2009

Grade Weighting

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Tomorrow night the School Board will vote on whether to add points to the GPAs of students who take honors classes, dual-enrollment courses at universities, or are enrolled in the Academy of Science. A committee of LCPS administrators, educators and parents met over the course of the spring and studied the question very closely. The Grade Weighting Committee's Recommendations (PDF) are worthy of your time if you are interested in this subject, and judging by the email traffic many of you are. A summary of the issue, including possible motions for consideration, is available on the electronic agenda.

So many who have written to the School Board consider this decision to be a no-brainer, a slam dunk. Many view this as a GPA arms race with Fairfax County. Many think it is a natural extension to the 10-point grading scale. Many just say "these courses are harder, they ought to be worth more." Mr. Ohneiser has an absolute fixation on one AOS course in particular with regard to this last point.

I'll discuss some basic pros and cons here, only briefly, in the hope that you'll read more in the committee's report if you're interested.
  1. AOS Courses. This seems like the easiest of all. Very tough courses, no AP credits, give them the weighting, right? Wrong, say the AOS faculty, who unanimously oppose weighting their own courses. They don't want students who are motivated only by a grade boost. I find it difficult to believe that students who do everything they need to do to get into AOS would do it for an extra half point on those courses. Better to stay at the home school and get the full point for AP. In any case I look at the list of schools that AOS grads attend and know they don't need a boost.
  2. Dual Enrollment. If a student takes a college-level course they should get extra credit for it, right? No, says the committee. Reasons: students already get college credit just for passing the course (unlike AP courses, where students take a risk that they'll get no college credit). In addition, poorer kids don't have the resources to take dual enrollment courses so it's discriminatory. Finally, some college courses just aren't that hard as a challenging LCPS course.
  3. Honors Courses. Discussion of LCPS honors courses in the wake of the committee's report reveals a disconnect between the Administration and community perspectives on honors courses. State law requires a degree of distinctness between weighted and unweighted courses that LCPS honors courses just don't consistently have with their "academic-level" counterparts. Honors courses are focused in social sciences and English courses, which gives some students an advantage over those more inclined toward math, science and arts.
Now, because I list the reasons against weighting doesn't mean I don't favor it. I just believe that everyone advocating needs to understand that reasonable people can and do oppose an increase. The truth is that I favor something more nuanced than a simple yes-or-no. We'll see what happens when the votes come down.
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4 comments:

  1. In a perfect world we would not need to weight the courses because every student would strive to succeed simply for the inherent pleasure of learning.

    In that perfect world all courses from all schools nationwide would be treated equally, and all students would have equal chances at college admissions and scholarships.

    This world ain't perfect.

    The reality is, students in other counties already receive the additional weighting.

    Without matching that system, Loudoun's hard-working, motivated students will still suffer a disadvantage because they will not be "scored" the same way as their counterparts elsewhere.

    So if the eager students are thus discouraged from seeking a challenge, where are the less motivated students going to find any incentive at all to take a "harder" course? They could get an easier 'A' in a "regular" course and end up with a higher GPA than the honors student who takes a chance at a harder course and ends up with a 'B' for the term.

    College administrators and professors (I have been both) would rather have the student who takes the chance. But they don't have the resources to memorize the different grading scales in every school district -- so without weighted grades to put all students on an even footing, they won't be able to spot the individuals who tried harder.

    The aggressive student is thus punished instead of rewarded for her admirable efforts.

    Is that the lesson we want our children to learn? Don't waste time and effort trying harder? Stay safe on the easier path and you'll reap greater rewards?
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  2. Now I see why there is such a push for AP courses for everyone. Those are the only grades that can't be manipulated by parents and regional politics.

    If I were a college administrator (and I'm not) I'd use AP test scores and SAT scores as the first filter and look at high school grades only as a way to rank students within a school for admission consideration in the second and third round. I'd never use GPA to compare students between schools because the comparison would be grossly unfair given how politicized the GPA formulas have become.

    Political support for funding state schools requires that every high school in Virginia needs to be represented in the admission pool at each state college. (What delegate or senator is going to vote additional taxpayer funding for higher education if no one from their district got into UVA?) Thus a student's rank within a school is far more important than numerical comparisions between school districts when it comes to competitive admissions.

    Thus the focus should be on whether the GPA accurately ranks students within LCPS schools. I belive measure of work ethic and the competitive differentiator is the number of AP courses taken and not whether a student took a regular course like Math 9 vs an honors course like pre-Algebra.

    Math 9 doesn't give a student the opportunity to take AP math courses so the hardworking student's cumulative GPA will already reflect a boost because by taking the honors course they were able to take 1 or 2 years of AP math courses (earning an additional 1 or 2 GPA points) versus 0 years for the "regular" course student.

    It is the progression of courses and the weighting of AP versus non-AP that allows us to differentiate students without a need for the complexity of weighting other courses. And by not weighting honors courses we save all the local politics of deciding which courses are hard enough to justify it. We can just sit back and allow the AP committee to set the standards instead of having parents fighting among themselves over whether course A is harder than course B.
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  3. This is total injustice!

    You don't change the rules for class ranking in the middle of a school year. What kind of a message are we giving to our sons and daughters?

    By providing heavier weighting for AOS classes Loudoun County School Board provided biggest injustice to all the other students who did not attend to AOS. I would like to explain why I feel that way:

    1. AOS is a special school - You enter a special exam to attend to that school if you get in that's great you are amongst selected few students who are selected to get special education.
    2. The kids who got in got special education - All of us who live in Loudoun County paid for this special education.
    3. These kids should be rewarded - Yes. But not at the expense of the other kids who did not get in.

    Instead of creating a totally biased weighting system LCPS Board should have adopted a special list for those kids who attended to AOS and send that special list to universities and explain why this special list is created. Not every kid is a scientist and the Board treats all the kids as scientists. This is not right.

    Also we should not reward those kids who dropped out of AOS. What kind of a message does that give to the kids? Get into AOS get a couple of mediocre or good grades and bam! You are at the top of your class you don't even have to finish AOS. Your board is going to take care of your GPA and class ranking no worries.

    What a joke! I am so sad as a parent who has to put up with such injustice. No matter what you do if your dad is a school board member you can get a boost in school rankings because your dad is powerful enough to change the system.

    So sad! So ironic! Because when I called the chairman of the school board today he told me this was necessary because we are in competition with Fairfax School system. The moral of this story if Fairfax multiplies their GPA's with a number in Loudoun we will increase it to make it look better. Wow aren't we increasing the quality of our schools by using bigger multipliers.

    At least Fairfax has an excellent school like Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (number 1 high school in the country) and they don't like play games like our board does. How many high schools do we have in the top 50 as Loudoun County?

    Loudoun Public Schools Board members here is the link to your bylaws next time you vote on something please put the interest of the general public FIRST! As an elected official this is your duty:

    http://cmsweb1.loudoun.k12.va.us/50975518115039/lib/50975518115039/Chapter%202/2-3.pdf

    Before you make a decision read this again and again, and please do not make your decisions retroactive it leaves a very bad taste in the mounth.

    As Carol Turpin said "The world ain't perfect." But, we can at least try to compare apples with apples oranges with oranges and disclose if we have any vested interest in our decisions.

    My son said dad please leave me out of this. Therefore, I will not publish my name honoring my son's request.

    Just a regular LCPS dad...

    Warmest regards.
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  4. Did you know -

    That the AOS grade weighting has had a SIGNIFICANT effect on class ranking?

    If your son or daughter is competing for a ranking in the top 10, or even top 5%, for their respective high school and they do not attend AOS, they need to have the maximum number of honors classes, AP classes, and get an A+ in almost every class just to make the top 10.

    If you have a top student, please call your guidance counselor today and ask them this: What was my child's ranking before the AOS grade weighting went into effect and what was it after. A first ranked student can easily drop 5 slots behind the AOS students.

    It is my understanding that of the 10 Loudoun high schools, there is only 1 non-AOS student in the top 3 of the junior class.

    The AOS weighting has guaranteed that every valedictorian from every Loudoun high school will be from the AOS. Stated another way, the top 10 students from AOS will be "home-school" valedictorians.

    I do not believe that this is what the School Board intended to make happen, but this is what has resulted. Unintended consequences have a huge effect on your child's future and ability to get into highly selective colleges.

    PLEASE verify this yourself with your school's guidance director. DO NOT take my word for this.

    The solution: Separate AOS GPA and ranking from their "home school." Allow the AOS students to compete fairly for their GPAs and rankings within their peers at AOS - after all, AOS is their real home school.

    We cannot (and perhaps should not) reverse the AOS weighting decision, but we can't let such a significant imbalance continue.
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