Reply to Why are kids mad about the new grading?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Under the policy MCPS has been using, for any given semester, if you got an A one quarter and a B the other quarter, MCPS gave you an A for your semester grade. That meant that if you got an A (at least 89.5%) in the first quarter of any semester, you knew you had an A for your semester grade even if you got an 79.5% for the second quarter. That allowed A/B students some grace in the second half of semesters. It’s the 4th quarter. Need more time to study for AP exams? Have a huge year-end project due? No problem, you can put in minimal effort on a few small assignments or turn them in late and let your grade slip to B without your GPA taking any hit, as long as you had an A for the 3rd quarter.

Under the new policy, your percentage for each quarter in a semester will be averaged to determine your semester grade. Let’s say you get a 92% in the third quarter and an 86% for the 4th quarter. Your semester grade would be 89% — a B. Under the old grading system it would have been an A. You’ll end up with a lower GPA under the new policy.

The old policy is more popular with students because it gave them a little wiggle room for the second and fourth quarters, which often have more projects and more content covered on tests. [/quote]

This is wonderful.  My unofficial policy with both of my kids (alumni) was that each quarter grade should be above 95%. Of course, they slipped and usually some quarters were 91-92 - but the rule was they would aim for an A every time with no rounding up. And the fact that they could get 10% of the grade by just turning in homework was shocking to me.

Mainly, I was scared that MCPS would remove the inflated grading policy and it would impact the GPA because my kids were trained to aim low.  I also made sure that my kids were taking as many AP courses that they could (12 each) and got a 5 in all the AP exams.  They had to cover at least 1 AP exam from all the 5 AP core areas before they started applying.  There was no other way to differentiate in MCPS because everyone got easy As. [/quote]

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