Grading and GPA - post tips here, please

[swimmermom3]

Please post your tips describing how you handle grading in high school and figuring GPA for transcripts. How do you deal with plus or minus if you deal with it at all? What is your standard grading scale? Pass or fail? Do you use weighted or unweighted? Your experiences with the application process with regards to college preferences and weighting?

 

Thanks for your help.

[Lori D.]

I don't have the answers to original poster's questions, but, here are my tips on grading, and a very simple explanation of how to figure GPA:


Especially when creating your own course, you have to decide how you'll grade your student. Usually a combination of requirements help determine public high school classes:
- quiz and test scores
- completion of daily assignments
- completion and quality of hands-on activities
- completion and quality of project(s)
- papers (writing responses, term papers, essays, research papers, creative writing, etc.)
- books/articles read
- effort
- attendance (often part of the grade for a public high school or community college class)

The HSLDA website has a short article on guidelines for grading.


How to Calculate GPA:
1. first score your student's work to determine a letter grade (see scoring scales below)

2. next, decide if your student's level of work requires using a weighted or unweighted grade point scale; also decide whether you will use a grade point scale using +/- grades or no +/- grades 
3. once you have a letter grade for EACH course, convert the letter grade into points from the grade point scale

4. now determine grade points for EACH course: multiply the points for the letter grade earned in EACH course by the amount of credit for EACH course
5. add up the total number of "grade points" from ALL courses to find TOTAL GRADE POINTS

6. add up the total number of credits from ALL courses to find TOTAL CREDITS
7. finally, divide TOTAL GP by TOTAL CREDITS, and the result is TOTAL GPA

 

Note: a grade scale using +/- uses different % for scoring letter grades, and is not the same as a weighted grade scale. Here are standard and +/- scoring scales:

 

standard scoring:

90-100% = A

80-89% = B

70-79% = C

60-69% = D

  < 60% = F

 

+/- scoring:

100% or more = A+

93-99% = A

90-92% = A-

87-89% = B+

83-86% = B

80-82% = B-

77-79% = C+

73-76% = C

70-72% = C-

67-69% = D+

63-66% = D

60-62% = D-

  < 60% = F

 

 

UNWEIGHTED grade point scales:

with +/- .  .  .  . no +/-

4.0 = A  .  .  .  . 4.0 = A

3.7 = A- .  .  .  . 3.0 = B

3.3 = B+  .  .  .  2.0 = C

3.0 = B  .  .  .  . 1.0 = D

2.7 = B- .  .  .  . 0.0 = F

2.3 = C+

2.0 = C

1.7 = C-

1.3 = D+

1.0 = D

0.0 = F

 

WEIGHTED grade point scales for dual enrollment or AP level work:

with +/- .  .  .  . no +/-

5.0 = A  .  .  .  . 5.0 = A

4.7 = A- .  .  .  . 4.0 = B

4.3 = B+  .  .  .  3.0 = C

4.0 = B  .  .  .  . 2.0 = D

3.7 = B- .  .  .  . 0.0 = F

3.3 = C+

3.0 = C

2.7 = C-

2.3 = D+

2.0 = D

0.0 = F

 

WEIGHTED grade point scales for high school Honors level work:

with +/- .  .  .  . no +/-

4.5 = A  .  .  .  . 4.5 = A

4.2 = A- .  .  .  . 3.5 = B

3.8 = B+  .  .  .  2.5 = C

3.5 = B  .  .  .  . 1.5 = D

3.2 = B- .  .  .  . 0.0 = F

2.8 = C+

2.5 = C

2.2 = C-

1.8 = D+

1.5 = D

0.0 = F

 

Example of calculating GPA for an unweighted set of courses:

 

grading scale —> course/credit/grade —> .credit x points = grade points (GP)

A = 4.0 pt . . . English . . . 1.0 . . A  .  .  .  .  .1.0 x 4.0 = 4.0

B = 3.0 pt . . . Math . . . . .1.0 . . C  .  .  .  .  . 1.0 x 3.0 = 3.0 

C = 2.0 pt . . . Science . . 1.0 . . B  .  .  .  .   .1.0 x 2.0 = 2.0

D = 1.0 pt . . . For. Lang. .1.0 . . A  .  .  .   . ..1.0 x 4.0 = 4.0

F = 0.0 pt . . . History . . . 0.5 . . C  .  .  .  .  .0.5 x 2.0 = 1.0

 . . . .  . . . .  . . PE . . . . . . 0.25 . A  .  .  .  .  0.25 x 4.0 = 1.0

 . . . .  . . . .  . . Health . . . 0.25 . B  .  .  .  .  0.25 x 3.0 = 0.75

 . . . . . . . . . . . . .total credits = 5.0  . . . . . . .. . . .total GP = 15.75

 

total grade points  /  total credits  =  GPA

15.75 (total GP) / 5.0 (total credits) = 3.15 (GPA) 

Resources for GPA:
- Donna Young website (explanation)
- Donna Young website (GPA calculator; requires spreadsheet program)

Edited May 19, 2017 by Lori D.

[Wildcat]

Please post your tips describing how you handle grading in high school and figuring GPA for transcripts. How do you deal with plus or minus if you deal with it at all? What is your standard grading scale? Pass or fail? Do you use weighted or unweighted? Your experiences with the application process with regards to college preferences and weighting?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

I looked at my local high school (nationally ranked) and found teachers' web pages with syllabi and used those as a guide. They usually give a computational breakdown. Some were very unhelpful (like % for attendance or having a neat notebook, and some gave %5 of the grade for bringing in first-day supplies from the supply list!!), so I tweaked them. I looked at what weight tests vs daily work were and created a % for projects, if there were any. Some classes (like math) I just went strictly with a test average.

 

I only used pass/fail for things that didn't have 'work' like PE. If you add in nutrution or sport histories to your PE clas and test on it, then I would give a letter grade. SInce my kids were just working out and playing sports, there was no 'grade' to be earned, so they earned a "P".

 

I weight grades as they are useful for scholarship consideration (outside the school's merit aid), but colleges usually re-weight on a 4.0 scale, AND they often only look at core classes when they re-weight, too. I made sure my transcript had both weighted and unweighted, but ds' unis all took out the classes they wanted and re-weighed, so it didn't matter in the end if I had that unweighted one on there, but it looked nice. ;)

 

We didn't use + or - as I don't care for that. I used a 10 point scale (since that is what my local high school does) and included that on my transcript.

 

I found a GPA calculator online that allows for weighted/unweighted full credit/half credit computation and used that as a basis. http://www.everyday-..../index.shtml�� I say I used it as a 'basis' because my local high school used 4, 5, and 6 points for regular, honors, and AP/DE classes. I wish the calculator I linked to had the option I needed, as I still had to recompute some things, but it was a big help.