Anonymous wrote:Have none of you attended school before? Have you had easy teachers, reasonable teachers and teachers that really push you to the limits ?

Think of a school with teachers filled with the latter. They grade essays harder. They have higher standards. You don’t get make up tests if you F up and late work gets a zero. You have pop quizzes

The above is my children’s high school.

They left a school where if they showed up, they basically got an A. And everyone in the class eventually got in A with late work accepted for grade, retakes, redos and very little writing or research. Books selected for reading/analyzing were also not as complex.

Anonymous wrote:

It’s up to the individual teachers. They do not have to allow retakes.

At our DCC school (MCPS) my kid has one class (AP Calc) that allows retakes on quizzes but not exams. Despite this only 4 students in their class got an A last semester.

I think for that class the retakes on quizzes make sense because it’s an opportunity to learn the material they didn’t learn the first time around.

None of their other classes allow retakes.

I have another kid who went to a different MCPS high school where the AP Calc teacher did not allow any retakes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If more than half the kids in a class get an A, there is grade inflation. And yes, I understand that there is grade inflation everywhere. Everyone gets a trophy.

But one could infer from such a cynical remark that you don’t believe those As are earned.

The purpose of primary and secondary education is to teach mastery of material. It’s not to generate a bell curve where top grades are rationed. Thinking about top grades as a commodity in this way is bizarre and antiquated. It’s literally Ok if half the class gets and A, even if they get to have retakes the like — because it demonstrates they learned the material. Which is the purpose of education. It’s not a race to learn the material “first” and it’s not like someone had to be “best” at it.

But when do students learn that college doesn't give them these accommodations? Are students just supposed to adjust to midterms and finals in college when they've never had them in HS? There are no retakes in college so how do they adjust when that's all they've ever known in school?

I had retakes and opportunities to revise in college (UVA in the 90s). It varies by class, school, professor, obviously; if you’re in a weed-out program like engineering, it just sucks. But professors are humans, and many of them are flexible and want students to learn. The idea that there’s some rigid “college system” that students won’t be able to adjust to isn’t real.

Anonymous wrote:Here is what we saw in HS. Example below for illustrative purposes for 1 course and 2 students.

Student 1 who is very bright and excels in the course:
MP 1 99% = A
MP 2 98.2% = A

Semester 1 grade which appears on the transcript = A

MP3 98.9% = A
MP 4 99.1% = A

Semester 2 grade which appears on the transcript = A

Now, let's review a 2nd student, who is in the same exact class, yet this person is not exceling in the course and so their parents intervene with help, paid tutoring, and extra work...to get their college bound student into the B+ and even A- range.

MP 1 84.5% = B
MP 2 90.1% = A

Take the higher of the two marking period grades and award an A for Semester 1 on the transcript

MP 3 91.2% = A
MP 4 83% = B

Take the higher of the two marking period grades and award an A for Semester 2.

So, we have 2 students applying to the same college. They look very similar, with Semester grades of As for the course.
Yet, in reality, one is a very high earning A student and the second is a solid B student, with a sprinkle of A-.

And, if these is an Honors Course, it's scored the same as an AP grade! Think about the difference between the AP student who got all A's and student#2. Now multiply this calc. over years and years of courses. Your strong, even low, B student just has to break the 90% threshold for 2 marking periods a year to capture the A.

In my opinion, this is grade inflation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If more than half the kids in a class get an A, there is grade inflation. And yes, I understand that there is grade inflation everywhere. Everyone gets a trophy.

But one could infer from such a cynical remark that you don’t believe those As are earned.

The purpose of primary and secondary education is to teach mastery of material. It’s not to generate a bell curve where top grades are rationed. Thinking about top grades as a commodity in this way is bizarre and antiquated. It’s literally Ok if half the class gets and A, even if they get to have retakes the like — because it demonstrates they learned the material. Which is the purpose of education. It’s not a race to learn the material “first” and it’s not like someone had to be “best” at it.

But when do students learn that college doesn't give them these accommodations? Are students just supposed to adjust to midterms and finals in college when they've never had them in HS? There are no retakes in college so how do they adjust when that's all they've ever known in school?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is what we saw in HS. Example below for illustrative purposes for 1 course and 2 students.

Student 1 who is very bright and excels in the course:
MP 1 99% = A
MP 2 98.2% = A

Semester 1 grade which appears on the transcript = A

MP3 98.9% = A
MP 4 99.1% = A

Semester 2 grade which appears on the transcript = A

Now, let's review a 2nd student, who is in the same exact class, yet this person is not exceling in the course and so their parents intervene with help, paid tutoring, and extra work...to get their college bound student into the B+ and even A- range.

MP 1 84.5% = B
MP 2 90.1% = A

Take the higher of the two marking period grades and award an A for Semester 1 on the transcript

MP 3 91.2% = A
MP 4 83% = B

Take the higher of the two marking period grades and award an A for Semester 2.

So, we have 2 students applying to the same college. They look very similar, with Semester grades of As for the course.
Yet, in reality, one is a very high earning A student and the second is a solid B student, with a sprinkle of A-.

And, if these is an Honors Course, it's scored the same as an AP grade! Think about the difference between the AP student who got all A's and student#2. Now multiply this calc. over years and years of courses. Your strong, even low, B student just has to break the 90% threshold for 2 marking periods a year to capture the A.

In my opinion, this is grade inflation.

Yes that is ridiculous. Senester grade should be average of each marking period. And schools should use + and minuses

Anonymous wrote:Yes this newfangled way using “A”s and “B”s! WTF is up with that? Makes no sense and it is completely understandable why Princeton is suddenly admitting all these idiots!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If more than half the kids in a class get an A, there is grade inflation. And yes, I understand that there is grade inflation everywhere. Everyone gets a trophy.

But if the grades are inflated for everyone, there are still students that stand out because of superior work. If everyone get an a then the top students will get more than an A.

Nope that’s the problem with grade inflation, it masks the truly superior students.

Really, it does not.

Absolutely it does. That’s why having a prefect gpa from some of these schools doesn’t result in the admissions one would expect.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If more than half the kids in a class get an A, there is grade inflation. And yes, I understand that there is grade inflation everywhere. Everyone gets a trophy.

But one could infer from such a cynical remark that you don’t believe those As are earned.

The purpose of primary and secondary education is to teach mastery of material. It’s not to generate a bell curve where top grades are rationed. Thinking about top grades as a commodity in this way is bizarre and antiquated. It’s literally Ok if half the class gets and A, even if they get to have retakes the like — because it demonstrates they learned the material. Which is the purpose of education. It’s not a race to learn the material “first” and it’s not like someone had to be “best” at it.

Anonymous wrote:UVA (the school itself) was always known to have grade inflation compared to the other state universities.

Anonymous wrote:Here is what we saw in HS. Example below for illustrative purposes for 1 course and 2 students.

Student 1 who is very bright and excels in the course:
MP 1 99% = A
MP 2 98.2% = A

Semester 1 grade which appears on the transcript = A

MP3 98.9% = A
MP 4 99.1% = A

Semester 2 grade which appears on the transcript = A

Now, let's review a 2nd student, who is in the same exact class, yet this person is not exceling in the course and so their parents intervene with help, paid tutoring, and extra work...to get their college bound student into the B+ and even A- range.

MP 1 84.5% = B
MP 2 90.1% = A

Take the higher of the two marking period grades and award an A for Semester 1 on the transcript

MP 3 91.2% = A
MP 4 83% = B

Take the higher of the two marking period grades and award an A for Semester 2.

So, we have 2 students applying to the same college. They look very similar, with Semester grades of As for the course.
Yet, in reality, one is a very high earning A student and the second is a solid B student, with a sprinkle of A-.

And, if these is an Honors Course, it's scored the same as an AP grade! Think about the difference between the AP student who got all A's and student#2. Now multiply this calc. over years and years of courses. Your strong, even low, B student just has to break the 90% threshold for 2 marking periods a year to capture the A.

In my opinion, this is grade inflation.

Anonymous wrote:UVA (the school itself) was always known to have grade inflation compared to the other state universities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If more than half the kids in a class get an A, there is grade inflation. And yes, I understand that there is grade inflation everywhere. Everyone gets a trophy.

But one could infer from such a cynical remark that you don’t believe those As are earned.

The purpose of primary and secondary education is to teach mastery of material. It’s not to generate a bell curve where top grades are rationed. Thinking about top grades as a commodity in this way is bizarre and antiquated. It’s literally Ok if half the class gets and A, even if they get to have retakes the like — because it demonstrates they learned the material. Which is the purpose of education. It’s not a race to learn the material “first” and it’s not like someone had to be “best” at it.