Board resolution on middle school grades

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach college. The first thing our admissions office does when they receive a transcript is _unweight_ and recalculate the GPA. Weighted GPAs vary so much in different environments (I even saw a US student once, in a conventional school, with a GPA on something like a scale of 1 to 6 or 7) that they cannot be compared. We give a separate rating based on strength of curriculum that takes AP, IB, honors, and other challenging classes into account, but it does not nuance every individual course.

Weighted GPA matters if a student is going to have access (or not) to something within their own school as a result. At the college level? Not so much. Just inventory the grades.

That is not the topic of this thread. We are talking about middle school grades being on high school transcripts and calculated into the high school GPA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So feasibly, a kid that received all As in these courses could end up lowering their GPA as a result of these courses? Particularly if they take all honors/AP/ IB classes. I suppose more the language & engineering class as opposed to Geometry. IIRC, Geometry was honors level.

Consider it this way, the kids who took HS classes in MS now have the opportunity to take more advanced/weighted classes in HS, which is an advantage other students don't have. If they are able to handle the HS work/rigor and get the benefits of being placed into more rigorous courses colleges are looking for, they should also be able to "own" the grades they earned to get there. If the course receives HS credit, students should take the good and the "bad" that comes with it.

I agree it can be a lot of stress on kids, but I don't think the answer is dropping the grades as much as rethinking the pressure we put on them to take the advanced courses at such a young age.