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

[Anonymous]

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

-DCUM

+1000

[Anonymous]

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

-DCUM

It’s true though!

[Anonymous]

My kids grades in HS were definitely inflated (MCPS). Had a 3.8 UW and a 4.4+ weighted. 5 years of Spanish language, almost all As and can’t read or understand a lick of Spanish. College was a shock to her; first semester was < 3.0, and she felt completely unprepared for the rigors of college. She has been forced to learn to study, and is putting a ton more time into her coursework and her grades are now good.

[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. 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.

I find it hard to believe that you work in tech. The difference in productivity between top workers and “average” works is often an order of magnitude. The average workers are “adding value” but not nearly as much as the top workers. When they analyze open source projects they find the same pattern; the top few contributors do 80% of the work.

[Anonymous]

DC is in magnet, so the uw 4.0 is well earned

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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. 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.

I find it hard to believe that you work in tech. The difference in productivity between top workers and “average” works is often an order of magnitude. The average workers are “adding value” but not nearly as much as the top workers. When they analyze open source projects they find the same pattern; the top few contributors do 80% of the work.

Hell yeah, my husband and one co-worker are working all weekend. They continually clean up everyone’s messes and do the lion share of the entire team. He’s a consultant and usually the only one retained and given a big financial incentive to do so because he is gold for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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. 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.

I find it hard to believe that you work in tech. The difference in productivity between top workers and “average” works is often an order of magnitude. The average workers are “adding value” but not nearly as much as the top workers. When they analyze open source projects they find the same pattern; the top few contributors do 80% of the work.

Hell yeah, my husband and one co-worker are working all weekend. They continually clean up everyone’s messes and do the lion share of the entire team. He’s a consultant and usually the only one retained and given a big financial incentive to do so because he is gold for them.

And we both WAH and the idiocy I hear coming out if zoom calls is ridiculous. Dead weight. So many not only aren’t adding value, they are making more work for everyone else.

[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 [b]retakes for an A is fine if they learn the material, which is the point (rather than getting the grade first or whatever)[/b].

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.

What school is letting you retake something for an A? In FCPS, the most you can get if you retake anything in an 80.

[Anonymous]

NP. I think it is rank dishonesty to say your child’s grades aren’t inflated if the school your child is in graduates a class with around 40-50% of the graduates with an unweighted 4.0 and above. I mean, this is a question of basic stats. Of course those are inflated. There is no other truth possible.

[Anonymous]

How would I know? I don’t monitor the amount of time they spend studying or what grades they get on particular assignments or whether they turn in assignments on time. That’s their job and I don’t have the time or inclination to micromanage.

[Anonymous]

I think the A/A+'s are definitely earned. The A-'s might be given the benefit of the doubt.

[Anonymous]

PP here--i do love that our school gives number grades so technically i should have written that i think 93-99% are earned. Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised by a 90% vs something in the high 80's.