I hate FCPS A minuses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d consider it a bonus that the A- didn’t go into SIS as a B (3) which has been the case in some of DCs classes when they were using a 4.0 scale and teachers wouldn’t “round up”.

Kids have enough to worry about. Extra points for an A+ is unnecessary pressure.

OP here.

An A- in Fairfax County is 90-93%. And it is counted as 3.7 instead of a 4.0. So even if your kid gets legit As, they only get a 3.7 if they are at 92%.

It should be counted as a 4.0. I am not obsessing about the GPA- I don’t I think it’s unfair that a legitimate A (say 92%) gets punished, whileas all of the other grades get pluses.

Get rid of it completely. It’s unfair. Your kid has no idea that their GPA is not a 4.0 even though they are getting a solid 92% in all of their grades. That should be an A. The whole plus and minus thing is BS. Colleges don’t adjust because everywhere else there are A plusses. So we end up having kids with grade deflation.

Either give the option to get an A+ or get rid of the minuses and the pluses. Or use a % number instead.

And yes: you would be obsessed if your straight A student has a 3.7 GPA. It’s bs.

A 92% was a B+ when I graduated from my FCPS high school. Should they just go back to that to make you feel better? Or if you just tell yourself an A- means your kid is no longer a straight A student?

I mean this is like saying calling a grade below D an "E" so that it's not "F" for failure matters. You're arguing with the school system about semantics! A 92% isn't a 4.0. That's how it's been for a long, long time.

Correct!

When I was in FCPS HS:

94-100 = A
90-93 = B+
84-89= B
80-83 = C+
74-79 = C
70-73 = D+
64-69 = D
0-63 = F

There were no retakes, no late work allowed, and no 50% minimum required.

Honors classes got a 0.0 boost (AKA "no GPA boost") and AP classes got a 0.5 GPA boost.

CLASS OF 2002, main difference was we were not soft like our kids now days. We were told to lighting up. We won't given everything like our kids now days. If we had this same grading scale now we would be having 50% graduation rates since they don't do any work.I blame TikTok

[Anonymous]

Won’t be long before everyone is getting As. If not for results, then for effort, or for showing up occasionally, etc. Grades are so inequitable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d consider it a bonus that the A- didn’t go into SIS as a B (3) which has been the case in some of DCs classes when they were using a 4.0 scale and teachers wouldn’t “round up”.

Kids have enough to worry about. Extra points for an A+ is unnecessary pressure.

OP here.

An A- in Fairfax County is 90-93%. And it is counted as 3.7 instead of a 4.0. So even if your kid gets legit As, they only get a 3.7 if they are at 92%.

It should be counted as a 4.0. I am not obsessing about the GPA- I don’t I think it’s unfair that a legitimate A (say 92%) gets punished, whileas all of the other grades get pluses.

Get rid of it completely. It’s unfair. Your kid has no idea that their GPA is not a 4.0 even though they are getting a solid 92% in all of their grades. That should be an A. The whole plus and minus thing is BS. Colleges don’t adjust because everywhere else there are A plusses. So we end up having kids with grade deflation.

Either give the option to get an A+ or get rid of the minuses and the pluses. Or use a % number instead.

And yes: you would be obsessed if your straight A student has a 3.7 GPA. It’s bs.

Oh, I see what the problem is. You misunderstand the situation. You don't have a straight A student. You have a straight A- student.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd rather just report numbers. Kid got an 89.4

If we did that, I wouldn't have 14 emails asking me to "please just bump up the grade a little" or "can I please have some extra credit?" at the end of every year.

But at the end of the day, colleges all recalculate anyway. If it's that important, the year isn't over yet, work towards getting it up to a 92.5 so it rounds up to an A.

Why on earth would you round up? The threshold for getting an A is 93%. Did the 92.5% student reach that threshold? No, than s/he gets an A-.

[Anonymous]

OP, it's gonna be ok. Promise.

Life will go on and your kid is gonna get into a school. Life isn't "fair." But an A-, anyway you shake it, means your kid is getting some good grades. Be thankful for that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd rather just report numbers. Kid got an 89.4

If we did that, I wouldn't have 14 emails asking me to "please just bump up the grade a little" or "can I please have some extra credit?" at the end of every year.

But at the end of the day, colleges all recalculate anyway. If it's that important, the year isn't over yet, work towards getting it up to a 92.5 so it rounds up to an A.

Why on earth would you round up? The threshold for getting an A is 93%. Did the 92.5% student reach that threshold? No, than s/he gets an A-.

It is how the gradebook in FCPS is set automatically. 92.4 = A-, 92.5 = A. It's the same for all grades (88.4/88.5, etc)

--FCPS teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d consider it a bonus that the A- didn’t go into SIS as a B (3) which has been the case in some of DCs classes when they were using a 4.0 scale and teachers wouldn’t “round up”.

Kids have enough to worry about. Extra points for an A+ is unnecessary pressure.

OP here.

An A- in Fairfax County is 90-93%. And it is counted as 3.7 instead of a 4.0. So even if your kid gets legit As, they only get a 3.7 if they are at 92%.

It should be counted as a 4.0. I am not obsessing about the GPA- I don’t I think it’s unfair that a legitimate A (say 92%) gets punished, whileas all of the other grades get pluses.

Get rid of it completely. It’s unfair. Your kid has no idea that their GPA is not a 4.0 even though they are getting a solid 92% in all of their grades. That should be an A. The whole plus and minus thing is BS. Colleges don’t adjust because everywhere else there are A plusses. So we end up having kids with grade deflation.

Either give the option to get an A+ or get rid of the minuses and the pluses. Or use a % number instead.

And yes: you would be obsessed if your straight A student has a 3.7 GPA. It’s bs.

A 92% was a B+ when I graduated from my FCPS high school. Should they just go back to that to make you feel better? Or if you just tell yourself an A- means your kid is no longer a straight A student?

I mean this is like saying calling a grade below D an "E" so that it's not "F" for failure matters. You're arguing with the school system about semantics! A 92% isn't a 4.0. That's how it's been for a long, long time.

Correct!

When I was in FCPS HS:

94-100 = A
90-93 = B+
84-89= B
80-83 = C+
74-79 = C
70-73 = D+
64-69 = D
0-63 = F

There were no retakes, no late work allowed, and no 50% minimum required.

Honors classes got a 0.0 boost (AKA "no GPA boost") and AP classes got a 0.5 GPA boost.

PP you quoted here. The last sentence was just TJ, right? Or did TJ just hang onto that scale longer than every other FCPS school?

I did not go to TJ, but did go to another FCPS high school. We did not get a grade boost for honors and only got 0.5 boost for AP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd rather just report numbers. Kid got an 89.4

If we did that, I wouldn't have 14 emails asking me to "please just bump up the grade a little" or "can I please have some extra credit?" at the end of every year.

But at the end of the day, colleges all recalculate anyway. If it's that important, the year isn't over yet, work towards getting it up to a 92.5 so it rounds up to an A.

Why on earth would you round up? The threshold for getting an A is 93%. Did the 92.5% student reach that threshold? No, than s/he gets an A-.

It is how the gradebook in FCPS is set automatically. 92.4 = A-, 92.5 = A. It's the same for all grades (88.4/88.5, etc)

--FCPS teacher

but if they have 59% now they will ask up to round up to D-. it used to be 61-62% average..

[Anonymous]

when i was in school grading was like this:
A - 93-100
B - 85-92
C - 84-76
etc.

your snowflakes have it easy!

[Anonymous]

I went to HS in NY and our HS grades were numbers. With weighting, the highest score you could get was 110.

This system also made it much easier to rank kids - just put the final numerical grades in order!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd rather just report numbers. Kid got an 89.4

If we did that, I wouldn't have 14 emails asking me to "please just bump up the grade a little" or "can I please have some extra credit?" at the end of every year.

But at the end of the day, colleges all recalculate anyway. If it's that important, the year isn't over yet, work towards getting it up to a 92.5 so it rounds up to an A.

Why on earth would you round up? The threshold for getting an A is 93%. Did the 92.5% student reach that threshold? No, than s/he gets an A-.

It is how the gradebook in FCPS is set automatically. 92.4 = A-, 92.5 = A. It's the same for all grades (88.4/88.5, etc)

--FCPS teacher

but if they have 59% now they will ask up to round up to D-. it used to be 61-62% average..

No, as of last year there was no D-, it was a 62.5 to pass with a D. This year a 59.5 will get them a D-. (But really, those aren't the kids begging for extra points--they've mostly accepted their fate. The obnoxious ones are the ones who get Bs on all assessments but worked hard on classwork/practice so they believe they deserve an A-...when they have earned a B+.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's gonna be ok. Promise.

Life will go on and your kid is gonna get into a school. Life isn't "fair." But an A-, anyway you shake it, means your kid is getting some good grades. Be thankful for that!

I'm not the OP, but I get where he/she is coming from. When your kid has their heart set on a certain school, and they know that in order to get in, you need the highest GPA possible, you want to make sure that the grades they're getting are judged fairly in relation to all of the other millions overachieving kids applying to the same school. At those schools, they're competing against kids with 5.0 GPAs, 1590 SAT scores, academic research, passion projects, founding leader of club, etc.

So an A- could mean your kid isn't getting in.

I don't think transcripts include numerical grades, right, so how do colleges fairly compare one academic performance to another?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's gonna be ok. Promise.

Life will go on and your kid is gonna get into a school. Life isn't "fair." But an A-, anyway you shake it, means your kid is getting some good grades. Be thankful for that!

I'm not the OP, but I get where he/she is coming from. When your kid has their heart set on a certain school, and they know that in order to get in, you need the highest GPA possible, you want to make sure that the grades they're getting are judged fairly in relation to all of the other millions overachieving kids applying to the same school. At those schools, they're competing against kids with 5.0 GPAs, 1590 SAT scores, academic research, passion projects, founding leader of club, etc.

So an A- could mean your kid isn't getting in.

I don't think transcripts include numerical grades, right, so how do colleges fairly compare one academic performance to another?

Ask the latter question over on the college forum and they'll tell you that the colleges do indeed have a decent enough idea of grading scales (your kids' schools will send this information not on the transcript, but as another part of the packet) that the colleges can reweight the GPA - and they do this. They also compare kids from each school/district against each other as much as anything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, it's gonna be ok. Promise.

Life will go on and your kid is gonna get into a school. Life isn't "fair." But an A-, anyway you shake it, means your kid is getting some good grades. Be thankful for that!

I'm not the OP, but I get where he/she is coming from. When your kid has their heart set on a certain school, and they know that in order to get in, you need the highest GPA possible, you want to make sure that the grades they're getting are judged fairly in relation to all of the other millions overachieving kids applying to the same school. At those schools, they're competing against kids with 5.0 GPAs, 1590 SAT scores, academic research, passion projects, founding leader of club, etc.

So an A- could mean your kid isn't getting in.

I don't think transcripts include numerical grades, right, so how do colleges fairly compare one academic performance to another?

The first thing every admissions officer says is they unweight the grades and compare strength of classes among kids in same HS. The admissions officers know the schools to know rigorous when kids apply. OP kid wants their kid to get a 4.0 when hasn’t earned it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d consider it a bonus that the A- didn’t go into SIS as a B (3) which has been the case in some of DCs classes when they were using a 4.0 scale and teachers wouldn’t “round up”.

Kids have enough to worry about. Extra points for an A+ is unnecessary pressure.

OP here.

An A- in Fairfax County is 90-93%. And it is counted as 3.7 instead of a 4.0. So even if your kid gets legit As, they only get a 3.7 if they are at 92%.

It should be counted as a 4.0. I am not obsessing about the GPA- I don’t I think it’s unfair that a legitimate A (say 92%) gets punished, whileas all of the other grades get pluses.

Get rid of it completely. It’s unfair. Your kid has no idea that their GPA is not a 4.0 even though they are getting a solid 92% in all of their grades. That should be an A. The whole plus and minus thing is BS. Colleges don’t adjust because everywhere else there are A plusses. So we end up having kids with grade deflation.

Either give the option to get an A+ or get rid of the minuses and the pluses. Or use a % number instead.

And yes: you would be obsessed if your straight A student has a 3.7 GPA. It’s bs.

A 92% was a B+ when I graduated from my FCPS high school. Should they just go back to that to make you feel better? Or if you just tell yourself an A- means your kid is no longer a straight A student?

I mean this is like saying calling a grade below D an "E" so that it's not "F" for failure matters. You're arguing with the school system about semantics! A 92% isn't a 4.0. That's how it's been for a long, long time.

Correct!

When I was in FCPS HS:

94-100 = A
90-93 = B+
84-89= B
80-83 = C+
74-79 = C
70-73 = D+
64-69 = D
0-63 = F

There were no retakes, no late work allowed, and no 50% minimum required.

Honors classes got a 0.0 boost (AKA "no GPA boost") and AP classes got a 0.5 GPA boost.

I personally think this is the fairest and clearest grading scale.