s/o Do you think your DC's grades are well-earned or inflated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey all you people demanding extremely incremental grades to distinguish qualities in individuals...

...answer this question:

How are you graded at work?

By categories, you say? Usually 3-4?

Wow, why is that? Do companies not care if an employee is 1/50th more "satisfactory" or "exceeds expectations" than another?

Is that because it makes no practical difference?

I wonder why that is!

We have a production AND quality mid-year and final review at my agency/office. Blind. We are compared by that and you can be fired if you drop below production or have too many quality errors. There is also a financial incentive for higher producers.

There is a lot of attrition the first couple of years for employees that couldn't do the work whether it be low production and/or low quality. There is about a 50% retention rate.

My husband is a consultant. You aren't hired if you do shoddy work or are a low producer.

WTH do you work??

You did not read the post well. The post you reply to explicitly says grades are given at work. But they are not incremental to "rank" employees as those demanding bell curve grades want.

Additionally, the claim in your post supports the alternate position, that there are folks that can do the work, and folks who can't and get fired. Exceptional workers get bonuses. That's three categories. On Commission work is the only one that is rewarded with a bell-curve like gradient.

DP. Rank = who is eligible for promotion, dept head, special projects, etc. at my office.

My spouse’s company has a ranked list of top performers each quarter—in numerical order.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private HS very well-earned.

They were public in middle school and basically just had to show up. Many of their friends didn't even start assignments until after the due date and took retests all of the time...and could attain the same A.

While not great habits, procrastination is hardly unusual and retakes for an A is fine if they learn the material, which is the point (rather than getting the grade first or whatever).

This is what we have come too: low expectations, everyone gets a trophy.

It's fine if they are mentally challenged and need more time, a slower pace, more bites at the apple. They should not be given the same grade. If the standards are lowered and the bar keeps getting dropped, kids will meet the lowest common denominator. We used to distinguish between kids that were prepared for rigorous college course load at the top 10-20 universities. They aren't kids turning in things late and having trouble studying or retaining material and 3 chapters behind. That is fine. They can attend a university which moves at a slower pace and has more students in the same boat. This is equivalent to putting a mediocre football player at best on Georgia or Michigan's teams.

Not every kid is the same. We started to fail when we want every ability to be the same for every child. At some point we stopped awarding merit due to the poor self esteem it might cause in other students and a prime example of that was the hiding of the NSMF at local area high schools--many of them. And now doing away with test scores...and hell you have some advocating for removal of GPAs as a standard too. These are academic institutions, academic success matters. We have thousands of universities in the country, not everyone is meant for a top 50.

Spot on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey all you people demanding extremely incremental grades to distinguish qualities in individuals...

...answer this question:

How are you graded at work?

By categories, you say? Usually 3-4?

Wow, why is that? Do companies not care if an employee is 1/50th more "satisfactory" or "exceeds expectations" than another?

Is that because it makes no practical difference?

I wonder why that is!

We have a production AND quality mid-year and final review at my agency/office. Blind. We are compared by that and you can be fired if you drop below production or have too many quality errors. There is also a financial incentive for higher producers.

There is a lot of attrition the first couple of years for employees that couldn't do the work whether it be low production and/or low quality. There is about a 50% retention rate.

My husband is a consultant. You aren't hired if you do shoddy work or are a low producer.

WTH do you work??

You did not read the post well. The post you reply to explicitly says grades are given at work. But they are not incremental to "rank" employees as those demanding bell curve grades want.

Additionally, the claim in your post supports the alternate position, that there are folks that can do the work, and folks who can't and get fired. Exceptional workers get bonuses. That's three categories. On Commission work is the only one that is rewarded with a bell-curve like gradient.

DP. Rank = who is eligible for promotion, dept head, special projects, etc. at my office.

My spouse’s company has a ranked list of top performers each quarter—in numerical order.

"Top performers" ranked by what metric?

Where I work (tech co), we have two kinds of employees. Those that add value to the company and those that don't work here anymore. The ones that do work here have varied abilities and some are good at some things and some are good at others. The trick for management (me) is leveraging everyone's strengths and minimizing weaknesses. You don't fire a good programmer with poor english skills because he isn't good with customers.

As for college it is the same. You can do there work there or not. And there is no evidence that suddenly the numbers of kids who can't has increased. If I have missed that please show me, but I keep asking and getting crickets.

This is the way the world works, and the idea that there is a universal objective standard that can accurately rank people like the PGA is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

This topic drives me crazy. My DD has absolutely earned her grades. Which are a mix of A’s and A-‘s with lots of honors and 12 AP’s. The amount of work she and others do at this age is staggering and humbling. There is no comparison - none - with how things were when I was in high school. I was the kid that got into every Ivy I applied to and took high level classes in high school. I was well prepared for college. Some of the stuff my DD’s class is talking about in AP physics C, I didn’t actually see until I was in grad school or final year of college. The standards are higher. The incorporation of math into high school curricula is higher. The analysis done for papers in high school is higher. If I were to look on naviance, my kid is one of the higher performing students in her class so admissions officers with the school report will clearly be able to see where she falls. They are not handing out A’s like candy. And if in a certain class, 50% of the class is getting an A - we should all be proud because it means mastery of hard stuff. If everyone in your kid’s class is getting 4’s and 5’s on an AP exam, why wouldn’t those kids all be earning A’s? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the teacher that is able to bring the class to that standard? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the kids who are putting in the time and effort? Why do we spend our time denigrating their accomplishments?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This topic drives me crazy. My DD has absolutely earned her grades. Which are a mix of A’s and A-‘s with lots of honors and 12 AP’s. The amount of work she and others do at this age is staggering and humbling. There is no comparison - none - with how things were when I was in high school. I was the kid that got into every Ivy I applied to and took high level classes in high school. I was well prepared for college. Some of the stuff my DD’s class is talking about in AP physics C, I didn’t actually see until I was in grad school or final year of college. The standards are higher. The incorporation of math into high school curricula is higher. The analysis done for papers in high school is higher. If I were to look on naviance, my kid is one of the higher performing students in her class so admissions officers with the school report will clearly be able to see where she falls. They are not handing out A’s like candy. And if in a certain class, 50% of the class is getting an A - we should all be proud because it means mastery of hard stuff. If everyone in your kid’s class is getting 4’s and 5’s on an AP exam, why wouldn’t those kids all be earning A’s? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the teacher that is able to bring the class to that standard? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the kids who are putting in the time and effort? Why do we spend our time denigrating their accomplishments?

AP exam scores are not required. That's the issue. Plenty of kids getting 2s and 3s with an A in the high school class. Right there tells you there wasn't mastery, but the kid doesn't submit the AP scores so how do they know? We see this where there is a race to add as many as AP courses as possible and no bar to entry for the AP course. Certain high schools have prerequisites (courses or grades needed first) and a teacher rec. Many publics have no such requirement. IF you have a teacher that does allow many bites and corrections--I mean now you know the question so you can look up the answer and change it--doesn't mean there is retention and knowledge behind that.

I agree material is more complex and what we have seen in our school system is that pushing kids ahead and intensifying too early ends up being detrimental as they don't learn strong foundations in the math (or other courses) prior to build off of...and that's exactly why it is so hard for many kids. Just pushing ahead beyond your knowledge base is not always best-but it's the world we created for kids these days.

And there will always be the kids (just like 30 years ago) that can learn and do the same amount of work (fast processors, good memories) in a fraction of the amount of time it takes other kids. I used to think my kids weren't doing homework or something was wrong when parents would complain about the amount of homework in the class and the kid was taking hours each night and mine did most of it in study period and barely did anything at home. They retained most of it just paying attention in class.

I don't know the answer. It's subjective. GPAs are highly subjective. It's why there should be additional academic standards in place to asses candidates for a bigger picture, but we have gone in valuing holistics with increasingly less emphasis on standards/academics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is grade inflation.

But my kid has low processing speed, ADHD and learning disorders and he works 10 times as hard as anyone else to achieve. So yes, he EARNS his grades. Nothing is easy for him.

Same for mine. I do think there is some inflation (we're MCPS), but, OTOH, she is working so hard to get around her ADHD, she has to know the content better than everyone else to compensate for the attention-based errors that will always be there.

Same boat, lots of hard-earned As here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This topic drives me crazy. My DD has absolutely earned her grades. Which are a mix of A’s and A-‘s with lots of honors and 12 AP’s. The amount of work she and others do at this age is staggering and humbling. There is no comparison - none - with how things were when I was in high school. I was the kid that got into every Ivy I applied to and took high level classes in high school. I was well prepared for college. Some of the stuff my DD’s class is talking about in AP physics C, I didn’t actually see until I was in grad school or final year of college. The standards are higher. The incorporation of math into high school curricula is higher. The analysis done for papers in high school is higher. If I were to look on naviance, my kid is one of the higher performing students in her class so admissions officers with the school report will clearly be able to see where she falls. They are not handing out A’s like candy. And if in a certain class, 50% of the class is getting an A - we should all be proud because it means mastery of hard stuff. If everyone in your kid’s class is getting 4’s and 5’s on an AP exam, why wouldn’t those kids all be earning A’s? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the teacher that is able to bring the class to that standard? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the kids who are putting in the time and effort? Why do we spend our time denigrating their accomplishments?

AP exam scores are not required. That's the issue. Plenty of kids getting 2s and 3s with an A in the high school class. Right there tells you there wasn't mastery, but the kid doesn't submit the AP scores so how do they know? We see this where there is a race to add as many as AP courses as possible and no bar to entry for the AP course. Certain high schools have prerequisites (courses or grades needed first) and a teacher rec. Many publics have no such requirement. IF you have a teacher that does allow many bites and corrections--I mean now you know the question so you can look up the answer and change it--doesn't mean there is retention and knowledge behind that.

I agree material is more complex and what we have seen in our school system is that pushing kids ahead and intensifying too early ends up being detrimental as they don't learn strong foundations in the math (or other courses) prior to build off of...and that's exactly why it is so hard for many kids. Just pushing ahead beyond your knowledge base is not always best-but it's the world we created for kids these days.

And there will always be the kids (just like 30 years ago) that can learn and do the same amount of work (fast processors, good memories) in a fraction of the amount of time it takes other kids. I used to think my kids weren't doing homework or something was wrong when parents would complain about the amount of homework in the class and the kid was taking hours each night and mine did most of it in study period and barely did anything at home. They retained most of it just paying attention in class.

I don't know the answer. It's subjective. GPAs are highly subjective. It's why there should be additional academic standards in place to asses candidates for a bigger picture, but we have gone in valuing holistics with increasingly less emphasis on standards/academics.

You really think a application reader for a region doesn't know the characteristics of the school a student comes from? They may not have your kid's AP score, but know that most of the kids from that school that take the AP test get 4's and 5's (or conversely 2's). This is part of their job and also a part of the school report (at our public school at least). Sure this stuff is not obvious to people who sit around comparing (mostly made up) stats on message boards but this is not the global crisis some of you are making it out to be. I matriculated from a PhD program in the most prestigious engineering school in the country. The tippy top kids are better prepared now than they were then. We should take pride in that as a country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private HS very well-earned.

They were public in middle school and basically just had to show up. Many of their friends didn't even start assignments until after the due date and took retests all of the time...and could attain the same A.

While not great habits, procrastination is hardly unusual and retakes for an A is fine if they learn the material, which is the point (rather than getting the grade first or whatever).

This is what we have come too: low expectations, everyone gets a trophy.

It's fine if they are mentally challenged and need more time, a slower pace, more bites at the apple. They should not be given the same grade. If the standards are lowered and the bar keeps getting dropped, kids will meet the lowest common denominator. We used to distinguish between kids that were prepared for rigorous college course load at the top 10-20 universities. They aren't kids turning in things late and having trouble studying or retaining material and 3 chapters behind. That is fine. They can attend a university which moves at a slower pace and has more students in the same boat. This is equivalent to putting a mediocre football player at best on Georgia or Michigan's teams.

Not every kid is the same. We started to fail when we want every ability to be the same for every child. At some point we stopped awarding merit due to the poor self esteem it might cause in other students and a prime example of that was the hiding of the NSMF at local area high schools--many of them. And now doing away with test scores...and hell you have some advocating for removal of GPAs as a standard too. These are academic institutions, academic success matters. We have thousands of universities in the country, not everyone is meant for a top 50.

DP, well this is a whole load of tangential malarky. What do you care if the other kid knows the content but took more time? Perhaps they even have greater depth? Achievement and intellect are not reflected in speed. Turning late or having retention challenges are not the same as being 3 chapters behind. They are just different challenges (or poor study habits if that is the case) that another brilliant student may have. How about you just do you and leave other kids alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private HS very well-earned.

They were public in middle school and basically just had to show up. Many of their friends didn't even start assignments until after the due date and took retests all of the time...and could attain the same A.

While not great habits, procrastination is hardly unusual and retakes for an A is fine if they learn the material, which is the point (rather than getting the grade first or whatever).

This is what we have come too: low expectations, everyone gets a trophy.

It's fine if they are mentally challenged and need more time, a slower pace, more bites at the apple. They should not be given the same grade. If the standards are lowered and the bar keeps getting dropped, kids will meet the lowest common denominator. We used to distinguish between kids that were prepared for rigorous college course load at the top 10-20 universities. They aren't kids turning in things late and having trouble studying or retaining material and 3 chapters behind. That is fine. They can attend a university which moves at a slower pace and has more students in the same boat. This is equivalent to putting a mediocre football player at best on Georgia or Michigan's teams.

Not every kid is the same. We started to fail when we want every ability to be the same for every child. At some point we stopped awarding merit due to the poor self esteem it might cause in other students and a prime example of that was the hiding of the NSMF at local area high schools--many of them. And now doing away with test scores...and hell you have some advocating for removal of GPAs as a standard too. These are academic institutions, academic success matters. We have thousands of universities in the country, not everyone is meant for a top 50.

DP, well this is a whole load of tangential malarky. What do you care if the other kid knows the content but took more time? Perhaps they even have greater depth? Achievement and intellect are not reflected in speed. Turning late or having retention challenges are not the same as being 3 chapters behind. They are just different challenges (or poor study habits if that is the case) that another brilliant student may have. How about you just do you and leave other kids alone.

Thank you! Its not a race. Especially at the high school level, it is learning mastery, and providing lots of opportunities to get to mastery. If kid A and kid B both leave high school knowing the material, why does it matter that Kid A got it without ever opening a book and Kid B had to work through it over and again to get there. In fact, kid B that learns to work through things may actually be better prepared for college than Kid A. And I say that as Kid A myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of discussion on schools having inflated grades.

Do you think your DC's grades are well-earned or inflated?

Just like high schools, college GPA is major and school dependent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This topic drives me crazy. My DD has absolutely earned her grades. Which are a mix of A’s and A-‘s with lots of honors and 12 AP’s. The amount of work she and others do at this age is staggering and humbling. There is no comparison - none - with how things were when I was in high school. I was the kid that got into every Ivy I applied to and took high level classes in high school. I was well prepared for college. Some of the stuff my DD’s class is talking about in AP physics C, I didn’t actually see until I was in grad school or final year of college. The standards are higher. The incorporation of math into high school curricula is higher. The analysis done for papers in high school is higher. If I were to look on naviance, my kid is one of the higher performing students in her class so admissions officers with the school report will clearly be able to see where she falls. They are not handing out A’s like candy. And if in a certain class, 50% of the class is getting an A - we should all be proud because it means mastery of hard stuff. If everyone in your kid’s class is getting 4’s and 5’s on an AP exam, why wouldn’t those kids all be earning A’s? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the teacher that is able to bring the class to that standard? Why wouldn’t we celebrate the kids who are putting in the time and effort? Why do we spend our time denigrating their accomplishments?

Has she already been accepted to her top choice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Private HS very well-earned.

They were public in middle school and basically just had to show up. Many of their friends didn't even start assignments until after the due date and took retests all of the time...and could attain the same A.

While not great habits, procrastination is hardly unusual and retakes for an A is fine if they learn the material, which is the point (rather than getting the grade first or whatever).

The issue with retakes is that you can just memorize the answers or only study those specific questions and get an A. This is, in fact, the optimal study strategy, which is not a good thing since it leads to very little long-term comprehension

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey all you people demanding extremely incremental grades to distinguish qualities in individuals...

...answer this question:

How are you graded at work?

By categories, you say? Usually 3-4?

Wow, why is that? Do companies not care if an employee is 1/50th more "satisfactory" or "exceeds expectations" than another?

Is that because it makes no practical difference?

I wonder why that is!

We have a production AND quality mid-year and final review at my agency/office. Blind. We are compared by that and you can be fired if you drop below production or have too many quality errors. There is also a financial incentive for higher producers.

There is a lot of attrition the first couple of years for employees that couldn't do the work whether it be low production and/or low quality. There is about a 50% retention rate.

My husband is a consultant. You aren't hired if you do shoddy work or are a low producer.

WTH do you work??

You did not read the post well. The post you reply to explicitly says grades are given at work. But they are not incremental to "rank" employees as those demanding bell curve grades want.

Additionally, the claim in your post supports the alternate position, that there are folks that can do the work, and folks who can't and get fired. Exceptional workers get bonuses. That's three categories. On Commission work is the only one that is rewarded with a bell-curve like gradient.

Whenever there is a promotion, all possible candidates are ranked. If there is some sort of performance scale, then they're ranked according to that. If there isn't, or if everyone is at the top, then the promotion goes to the best-connected schmoozer. This is what's happening with college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey all you people demanding extremely incremental grades to distinguish qualities in individuals...

...answer this question:

How are you graded at work?

By categories, you say? Usually 3-4?

Wow, why is that? Do companies not care if an employee is 1/50th more "satisfactory" or "exceeds expectations" than another?

Is that because it makes no practical difference?

I wonder why that is!

We have a production AND quality mid-year and final review at my agency/office. Blind. We are compared by that and you can be fired if you drop below production or have too many quality errors. There is also a financial incentive for higher producers.

There is a lot of attrition the first couple of years for employees that couldn't do the work whether it be low production and/or low quality. There is about a 50% retention rate.

My husband is a consultant. You aren't hired if you do shoddy work or are a low producer.

WTH do you work??

You did not read the post well. The post you reply to explicitly says grades are given at work. But they are not incremental to "rank" employees as those demanding bell curve grades want.

Additionally, the claim in your post supports the alternate position, that there are folks that can do the work, and folks who can't and get fired. Exceptional workers get bonuses. That's three categories. On Commission work is the only one that is rewarded with a bell-curve like gradient.

DP. Rank = who is eligible for promotion, dept head, special projects, etc. at my office.

My spouse’s company has a ranked list of top performers each quarter—in numerical order.

"Top performers" ranked by what metric?

Where I work (tech co), we have two kinds of employees. Those that add value to the company and those that don't work here anymore.

How do you know who adds value to the company and who doesn't? Let's say you have a promotion or special project, and there are multiple candidates, each of whom you believe adds value to the company. Who do you think should get the promotion or special project?

[Anonymous]

My DC’s grades are well-earned but his classmates’ are egregiously inflated.

-DCUM