Which high schools have the worst grade deflation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:St Anselms, but many colleges know this already. Also, a well written school profile will give indications about mean/median GPA to help an unfamiliar college understand.

Ha. Colleges do not know this … well, maybe three colleges know this and we all know what they are. The school doesn’t understand that they need to communicate the rigor of the school to colleges. They think listing the number of APs on the school profile is all that needs to happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:St Anselms, but many colleges know this already. Also, a well written school profile will give indications about mean/median GPA to help an unfamiliar college understand.

Ha. Colleges do not know this … well, maybe three colleges know this and we all know what they are. The school doesn’t understand that they need to communicate the rigor of the school to colleges. They think listing the number of APs on the school profile is all that needs to happen.

While many top schools are dropping APs. Lots of mixed signals and so many kids applying to college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell.

The English and History Departments’ grading is especially ridiculous! Math 1 to 4 (particularly 3 & 4) is equally ridiculous, and Chem 1A is pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Sidwell parent from 3 years ago. This PP nailed it. Obv I can’t compare to other schools my kids didn’t attend but very tough, honest grading is very real at Sidwell.

My kid and all of their close friends at Sidwell are finding grading curves much kinder at their current colleges, which include Brown, Yale, Vandy, Cornell, Swarthmore. The possible exception is Chicago. Not that these ^^ schools don’t ask a lot of questions- they do - but if you put in the extensive work then college grades seem higher. My kids friend group is balanced between STEM and humanities majors now fwiw

Heard from a Sidwell transfer to our school (isn’t totally apples to apples because the kid obviously didn’t do the exact same grades at each school) that our school is slightly tougher on grading. One anecdote but alas.

Which school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is it at sjc?

Not a problem in most classes, but there is no great inflation in the honors classes- and rarely a curve.

[Anonymous]

There is no such thing as grade deflation. That is how grades are supposed to be in reality.

[Anonymous]

Yep. This is why people send their unhooked kids to public schools. Grade deflation hurts college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yep. This is why people send their unhooked kids to public schools. Grade deflation hurts college admissions.

This article says otherwise: https://bethesdamagazine.com/2024/09/17/where-do-moco-students-attend-college/

Grade inflation in public schools actually hurts the strongest students by making it harder to distinguish themselves academically. It’s much harder to differentiate yourself when you’re 1 of 15 valedictorians. It’s easier when you attend a school like Sidwell or NCS and you’re the only student who graduated with a 4.0 (or even >3.98 GPA).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is nonsense. Grade deflation? In math/science classes the answer is wrong or right. It isn’t subjective. In classes like history and English I can see how it might be a little more complicated because writing style and how well someone communicates is tough to grade. But I never understand why people include STEM classes when discussing how difficult it is to achieve high marks.

Loudly wrong. Grades can differ widely in stem classes regardless or right/wrong answers. Test retakes, weighting scales, curved tests, difficulty of tests, grading for completion vs accuracy, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep. This is why people send their unhooked kids to public schools. Grade deflation hurts college admissions.

This article says otherwise: https://bethesdamagazine.com/2024/09/17/where-do-moco-students-attend-college/

Grade inflation in public schools actually hurts the strongest students by making it harder to distinguish themselves academically. It’s much harder to differentiate yourself when you’re 1 of 15 valedictorians. It’s easier when you attend a school like Sidwell or NCS and you’re the only student who graduated with a 4.0 (or even >3.98 GPA).

That story doesn’t say anything at all about grade inflation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep. This is why people send their unhooked kids to public schools. Grade deflation hurts college admissions.

This article says otherwise: https://bethesdamagazine.com/2024/09/17/where-do-moco-students-attend-college/

Grade inflation in public schools actually hurts the strongest students by making it harder to distinguish themselves academically. It’s much harder to differentiate yourself when you’re 1 of 15 valedictorians. It’s easier when you attend a school like Sidwell or NCS and you’re the only student who graduated with a 4.0 (or even >3.98 GPA).

That story doesn’t say anything at all about grade inflation?

It speaks to the PP’s erroneous hot take:

“Yep. This is why people send their unhooked kids to public schools. Grade deflation hurts college admissions.”

You’ll find no competitive advantage in moving your children to public school. They’ll have to work harder to differentiate themselves from the competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is nonsense. Grade deflation? In math/science classes the answer is wrong or right. It isn’t subjective. In classes like history and English I can see how it might be a little more complicated because writing style and how well someone communicates is tough to grade. But I never understand why people include STEM classes when discussing how difficult it is to achieve high marks.

Uh, no. That's not how grading works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no such thing as grade deflation. That is how grades are supposed to be in reality.

Well, when you admit a class of kids who all had straight As and high standardized scores, and you know you cannot give them all straight As like they all used to have, you need to do gymnastics to make sure the distribution of grades looks reasonable to colleges. For one teacher that may mean a painful curve where 2 wrong is a C; for another it may be giving harder and harder questions so no one can get them all correct; for another it may be a hard pop quiz on the Monday after Prom to catch a few kids out; etc. I've heard teachers say at our school that if more than certain number of students are getting perfects scores on quizzes and tests, they aren't making it hard enough. That's how you get a class average over 1400 on the SAT and yet 25% of the class with multiple C grades.

[Exorciststeps]

Anonymous wrote:

Exorciststeps wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There absolutely a way to do grade deflation in STEM. In many STEM subjects, but especially math, all that is needed is to add 2, 5, 10 or more problems/questions that deal with material not yet covered in class but that can be said “logically flow” from that things that were. My kids get that on every STEM class that take. The classes are hard enough but when you throw PhD level questions on top, 96s become 82s very quickly.

PhD level questions? Pull the other one...

Am sorry your kids are underserved.

My kid is at TJ, but they have yet to report any "PhD level questions" on their tests...

[Anonymous]

Exorciststeps wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Exorciststeps wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There absolutely a way to do grade deflation in STEM. In many STEM subjects, but especially math, all that is needed is to add 2, 5, 10 or more problems/questions that deal with material not yet covered in class but that can be said “logically flow” from that things that were. My kids get that on every STEM class that take. The classes are hard enough but when you throw PhD level questions on top, 96s become 82s very quickly.

PhD level questions? Pull the other one...

Am sorry your kids are underserved.

My kid is at TJ, but they have yet to report any "PhD level questions" on their tests...

That’s because public school teachers have some degree of accountability which does not exist at private schools.

At STA we have teachers who give 1/2 the class C’s by testing on material they haven’t taught. There’s no accountability for bad teaching or bad testing.

What PP is referring to as PhD level problems are stupid questions that go way beyond what was covered in class that the boys are supposed to solve under timed test conditions.

Students compensate for bad teaching by getting outside help. If you’re on FA and can’t afford it, you’re SOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell.

The English and History Departments’ grading is especially ridiculous! Math 1 to 4 (particularly 3 & 4) is equally ridiculous, and Chem 1A is pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Sidwell parent from 3 years ago. This PP nailed it. Obv I can’t compare to other schools my kids didn’t attend but very tough, honest grading is very real at Sidwell.

My kid and all of their close friends at Sidwell are finding grading curves much kinder at their current colleges, which include Brown, Yale, Vandy, Cornell, Swarthmore. The possible exception is Chicago. Not that these ^^ schools don’t ask a lot of questions- they do - but if you put in the extensive work then college grades seem higher. My kids friend group is balanced between STEM and humanities majors now fwiw

PP. edit to say these current colleges ask a lot of their students, not questions. My kid is assigned 1000 pages of reading per WEEK some semesters. Which he can do, because Sidwell 🤣

But when he does it and does it really well and better than his current classmates, he doesn’t always get a B because the DSA female must always be given the lone A in that class

Explain?