Comments on Our Loudoun Schools: What Should a B Be?

I agree with the former college admissions officer...

2008-09-02T15:11:00.000-04:00

I agree with the former college admissions officer in regard to grading. As adults we take courses and expect to earn the same certifications whether we take the courses in CA or VA. Our students should be treated the same. SAT scores are not lowered or raised depending on where the child takes the SAT...are they? No location adjustment is fair or warranted in grading students. Think about colleges that receive applications from all over the country. Are they really all creating their own as the experienced teacher suggests? And if they are...the grade change to a 10 point scale will not hurt anyone or change anything except the childrens scholarship chances. Please...make the grading equitable and fair in relation to other jurisdictions.

I am a former college admissions officer and curre...

2008-04-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

I am a former college admissions officer and currently a co-founder of the Fairfax County Fairgrade coalition that has gathered months of research data on college admissions and merit-scholarship. From both my professional experience and my current research efforts, I will state that both the Loudoun and the Fairfax grading scales are atypical and do have a negative impact on their students. The US Dept of Education study concluded that the traditional 100-90=A grading scale is the most commonly used among US high schools. In addition, many university admissions offices have confirmed that they DON'T recalculate GPAs but take it directly off the transcript. In addition, when a public school system has 68% or more of its students going on to 4 year colleges, then at least 68% should have a 3.0 UNWEIGHTED gpa...College bound students working hard should be able to earn at least a B. We have found this is not necessarily the case in Fairfax. Furthermore, Fairgrade has identified 15 school districts in the US that have converted their tougher grading scales to the 100-90 grading scale in the last 3 years alone, because of concerns that students were being adversely affected with respect to admission and scholarship money. The issue isn't grade inflation, it's grade DEFLATION in comparison to other nationally ranked high schools.

Feel free to contact our Fairgrade group at Fairgrade.fcps@gmail.com

This is the age of computers and we have so many n...

2008-02-07T22:51:00.000-05:00

This is the age of computers and we have so many numbers that can be crunched to weigh a prospective students that we shouldn't fret over differences in scale. It is relative not absolute numbers that provide meaning. Out of context a GPA of 3.78 means very little.

An admission officer might use GPA to rank students within a school system but SATs are normalized and are used to compare different school systems.

I like it that we have more AP exams because now we have an addition metric that is standard across the country. An AP teacher can't hand out A's like candy and then have students gets 1's on the AP exam. Likewise a student who receives a C but gets a 4 on the AP exam can clearly claimed to have been cheated.

My experience is that grades are too highly inflated in Loudoun. A grading scale with more than 40% of the students clustered in the A-B range (i.e. the number of Honor Roll students) means that parents can't differentiate how their child stacks up against their peers academically because everyone is getting A's. (Peer comparison is important in deciding if a child will do better in an AP course or an honors course.)

I certainly don't understand the grading scale in ...

2008-02-05T14:52:00.000-05:00

I certainly don't understand the grading scale in Loudoun schools. Having completed my college degree a couple years ago, I can't see where an 82-84 score is a C. The standard grading criteria in my college classes was simple... 90-100 was an A, 80-89 was a B, 70-79 was a C, anything below a 60 was an F. In a Loudoun school, the same score of 70 is given a failing grade.

I love these teachers who try to tell us that colleges "look at the whole student". If this is the case, why can't a HS graduate get into a 4-year school without an SAT/ACT test score?

As was mentioned in the blog, there's also the competition for scholarship dollars. Who's going to get those regional/national awards, the student showing a 3.5 GPA or one with a 4.6 GPA?

It's time to face reality and standardize the grading curves.

As an experienced teacher I do disagree with a num...

2008-02-05T00:04:00.000-05:00

As an experienced teacher I do disagree with a number of the statements that Ms Zuckerman made.

In terms of college admissions, most schools are aware of the issues surrrounding grading. And from the recent college tours I have been on many throw out the provided GPA calculations and create their own (UMD- College Park as one example). They also take into account the level of the course.

The .3 is standard on all grading systems (even in college). I have not seen any system use a .5 differential as she suggests. (Fairfax does weight honors courses, unlike Loudoun)

I don't know Ms Zuckerman, but if she doesn't teach AP and Academic classes then she shouldn't make such broad generalizations. The face of AP is greatly changing, especially in this county.

I also feel very strongly about how people mischaracterize applying to college. Ultimately for most schools, applicants are not just numbers. They formulate an entire application process because they care about the whole student.