Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the report card not tell you how to interpret the grade levels? If you don't know how to interpret them, you should ask the school. They should have clear answers that look like e.g. C -- struggles to meet grade level standards; B -- meets grade level standards; A -- exceeds grade level standards.

Also, doesn't matter if the report card is "average" -- the school should be measuring the students against the specific things they expect them to learn, not against the performance of other students.

yes thank you

This thread started in 2013; OP's kid is ready to graduate high school now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on which school. Some schools have a lot of grade inflation.

Very true. The retake thing cracks me up too. What's good is a test if you can just take another one if you do poorly?

Our principal is tough on grade inflation (reminds regularly that C is average) and I hear our parochial school "grades harder" than others. That said, we are still in an affluent area where kids come from highly educated families and have a lot of academic support at home so there are lots on honor roll even with the higher scale that ADW schools use.
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So you can learn from your mistakes and better learn the material being taught? Isn't that the point of school, especially in elementary school?

My kids in Catholic schools always have to redo the questions they got wrong on a test for homework. It becomes a homework grade. They don't retake the test.

Anonymous wrote:My kid got straight As in public school. I don't know why because his work was meh. But he showed up every day, did his work and didn't cause trouble. I switched him to Catholic school in 5th grade and those As disappeared. He ended up with one A, three Bs and three Cs. The expectations were much higher. He had at least an hour of homework each night. No retakes, no extensions on work. He has now worked MUCH harder to get lower grades in the last 4 years but he is much better prepared for his Catholic HS. Worth every penny to teach him how to work hard.

Ph and the grading scale was harder. A C+ started somewhere around 83% or 84%.

My kid got straight As in public school. I don't know why because his work was meh. But he showed up every day, did his work and didn't cause trouble. I switched him to Catholic school in 5th grade and those As disappeared. He ended up with one A, three Bs and three Cs. The expectations were much higher. He had at least an hour of homework each night. No retakes, no extensions on work. He has now worked MUCH harder to get lower grades in the last 4 years but he is much better prepared for his Catholic HS. Worth every penny to teach him how to work hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the grading scale in FCPS? In Catholic school, it is 93-100 A, 85-92 B, 75-84 C, 68-74 B, 69 and below is failing. My DS has to do corrections on his tests/quizzes for homework but there are no retakes and no chance to improve the grade. Much different than my friends and neighbors whose kids goes to public school.

FCPS has that same grading scale. Retakes don't give full credit and all teachers don't use them, but the most common policy I have seen among those that have them is if you get below 80% you can retake the test, but the maximum you can be awarded is 80%. So it's mainly a policy to 1) help students learn the material they really didn't get and 2) don't let 1 bad test totally tank an otherwise good course grade. I've yet to see a teacher that allows retakes of tests for full credit and my kid is a senior.

if your talking about fairfax county VA they use a 1 2 3 and 4 grading system not a lettering system

Anonymous wrote:Does the report card not tell you how to interpret the grade levels? If you don't know how to interpret them, you should ask the school. They should have clear answers that look like e.g. C -- struggles to meet grade level standards; B -- meets grade level standards; A -- exceeds grade level standards.

Also, doesn't matter if the report card is "average" -- the school should be measuring the students against the specific things they expect them to learn, not against the performance of other students.

yes thank you

Anonymous wrote:What is the grading scale in FCPS? In Catholic school, it is 93-100 A, 85-92 B, 75-84 C, 68-74 B, 69 and below is failing. My DS has to do corrections on his tests/quizzes for homework but there are no retakes and no chance to improve the grade. Much different than my friends and neighbors whose kids goes to public school.

FCPS has that same grading scale. Retakes don't give full credit and all teachers don't use them, but the most common policy I have seen among those that have them is if you get below 80% you can retake the test, but the maximum you can be awarded is 80%. So it's mainly a policy to 1) help students learn the material they really didn't get and 2) don't let 1 bad test totally tank an otherwise good course grade. I've yet to see a teacher that allows retakes of tests for full credit and my kid is a senior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on which school. Some schools have a lot of grade inflation.

Very true. The retake thing cracks me up too. What's good is a test if you can just take another one if you do poorly?

Our principal is tough on grade inflation (reminds regularly that C is average) and I hear our parochial school "grades harder" than others. That said, we are still in an affluent area where kids come from highly educated families and have a lot of academic support at home so there are lots on honor roll even with the higher scale that ADW schools use.
.

So you can learn from your mistakes and better learn the material being taught? Isn't that the point of school, especially in elementary school?

I think the mistake was not studying for the test/quiz in the first place. My son's Catholic school has the students correct errors for a homework grade.

What is the grading scale in FCPS? In Catholic school, it is 93-100 A, 85-92 B, 75-84 C, 68-74 B, 69 and below is failing. My DS has to do corrections on his tests/quizzes for homework but there are no retakes and no chance to improve the grade. Much different than my friends and neighbors whose kids goes to public school.

Anonymous wrote:My 13 yr old son had his EOY awards ceremony. He said most of his class did not get 1st or 2nd honors (All As, As and Bs respectively). So most students got at least one C for the year. This is a Catholic school. At the EOY 5th grade closing ceremony at his former public school, I'd guess 70% of the kids got all As and Bs from grades 3-5. Grade inflation is real. I'd rather pay tuition so he can get a real reflection of his abilities than all As when he did nothing to deserve them.

This has not been our experience at FCPS middle and high schools. DC is a bright student who got a 1500 on SAT, is in all advanced courses and has to work very hard to sometimes only get an A- in a course--never missing any hw, studying a lot, putting work into projects etc. And if the grade is 92.4%, it becomes a 3.7 on the unweighted GPA. And a 89.4 is a B+ becomes a 3.3 GPA. The "higher" GPAs are with the .5 weighting for honors and 1.0 weighting for AP. But rumors that everyone gets As with no work are not correct at all in our experience. Likewise in elementary (though they had a 1-4 benchmark system not "grades" until 5th/6th grade).

FCPS has a "tougher" GPA accounting than her friends in Catholic high schools. They get things that are called A's and B's with an occasional C but their unweighted GPAs are calculated in a much more generous way.

My 13 yr old son had his EOY awards ceremony. He said most of his class did not get 1st or 2nd honors (All As, As and Bs respectively). So most students got at least one C for the year. This is a Catholic school. At the EOY 5th grade closing ceremony at his former public school, I'd guess 70% of the kids got all As and Bs from grades 3-5. Grade inflation is real. I'd rather pay tuition so he can get a real reflection of his abilities than all As when he did nothing to deserve them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on which school. Some schools have a lot of grade inflation.

Very true. The retake thing cracks me up too. What's good is a test if you can just take another one if you do poorly?

Our principal is tough on grade inflation (reminds regularly that C is average) and I hear our parochial school "grades harder" than others. That said, we are still in an affluent area where kids come from highly educated families and have a lot of academic support at home so there are lots on honor roll even with the higher scale that ADW schools use.
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I think the opposite of this--what good is a test if you can retake to learn what you missed?

PP--meant to write "can't"