Odd Grade Numbers

[Anonymous]

DS is in 6th, but it's his second year of middle school. However, this is the first year I am seeing assignments and tests with the most random numbers. For example a 38 was a 100%, a 17 was a 100%. I could see a 10/10, but what happened to just 100, 90, 80 out of 100? It keeps on messing with me, like when he got a 78 the other day and I said "hey Larlo, how did you end up with a C+?" He looked at me like I had 2 heads because it was an A+ (78/79). The grading program only shows what you earned, not what it is out of. I KNOW this isn't that important in the scheme of things, I am mostly interested as to why the big change, is this happening at other schools and could this actually have more to do with grade inflation or something else?

[Anonymous]

Most likely the teacher gave an assignment where, based on the number of points allocated to each question, there were 79 total points possible. Did you never have teachers in your academic career who did things like this? I certainly did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most likely the teacher gave an assignment where, based on the number of points allocated to each question, there were 79 total points possible. Did you never have teachers in your academic career who did things like this? I certainly did.

OP, not random numbers like this. Maybe out of 20, 100. It makes me think of when places do a speed limit of 19 instead of 20 so people pay more attention. Maybe that is the reason!

[Anonymous]

It is likely being implemented as part of a new racial equity grading system.

Equity grading is commonplace now.

[Anonymous]

It's because the rubrics have that many elements of interest.

[Anonymous]

I worked at a school that had an online grading portal. I entered grades as percentages and weighted my categories (homework, quizzes, tests, projects). However, I was told that weighted averages were “too confusing” because children and their parents had a harder time calculating what the child would have to earn to meet a target grade. Most school admins are now pushing for points-based grading systems where lower weighted assignments are worth fewer points. Depending on who designed your school’s ed tech, sometimes you can see the total points available, and sometimes you can’t.

[Anonymous]

My 7th grader gets those but the teachers complete it so it’s 37/40. It makes sense that way. These are tests and quizzes so I think it makes perfect sense to show the scores that way.

[Anonymous]

By 7th grade they should have the math skills to interpret those grades pretty automatically.

[Anonymous]

My kid recently got a score of .19 out of .22. Not sure why it was scored that way.