How extreme is High School Grade Inflation: 20% of a class has 4.0?

I was chatting with an acquaintance the other day who has a rising high school senior about colleges.  This student attends a large (3,000 student) local public high school generally thought to be "good".  I take that with a grain of salt -- most high schools find some way to be above average by some metric or another.  She was expressing concern that her son wouldn't be able to get into the colleges of his choice because his GPA was so low -- 3.8 something.  I was a little surprised that she considered this low, and she told me that after junior year, 20% of her son's class had a 4.0 grade point average (unweighted).

 

I know that grade inflation is rampant, but are these statistics common?

[EKS]

In our local high school, 8% of the class of 2015 had a 4.0.  But 50% had an A- average or above (3.5+).  

 

ETA:  This is unweighted.  Weighting grades is illegal in our state.  Which is bad for students who want to get scholarships that use weighted GPAs.

Edited July 15, 2016 by EKS

[SparklyUnicorn]

My math instructor at the CC also taught high school math.  He said that at the CC they want to see a bell curve in terms of grade distribution (and the instructors are told this), but in high school they want to see far more students with As and Bs.  The reasoning, according to him, is if a large percentage are not getting As and Bs that that is an indication they are not learning what they need to learn.  It's seen more as a failure on the part of the instructor.  In college that is not seen quite the same.

 

Just passing along what he said and not saying this is absolutely always true. 

[Arcadia]

I can't find unweighted. Below is for my local high school and should be weighted GPA. There are kids who finish Calc BC in sophomore and takes advanced math in a university for junior year.

 

"*** High School had 621 students with a 4.0 or higher for the 2nd semester of the 2015-2016 school year.

 

Seven of the 621 high achieving students topped the charts by earning a 5.0 for the 2015-2016 school year"

"*** High School had 621 students with a 4.0 or higher for the 2nd semester of the 2015-2016 school year.

 

 

What's that in percentage of total students in the class?

[Guest]

..

Edited July 16, 2016 by Heigh Ho

[Arcadia]

What's that in percentage of total students in the class?

621/1977 approximately 31% of cohort. My area is considered as city/suburbia and the school is average (not a high performing) one.

[MinivanMom]

We have a "good" suburban high school with over 2000 students. Most kids are college-track, and most college-track kids go onto "good" colleges. 

 

About 10% of our students have the 3.6 weighted gpa required to join National Honor Society. So, no grade inflation here. The daughter of some good friends just graduated from the high school with a 4.0 unweighted gpa, and her parents were beyond thrilled because a 4.0 gpa is a really rare thing at our high school. Their daughter headed to a public ivy this fall.

[EndOfOrdinary]

My husband is a high school teacher. He is very discouraged from failing anyone. In his principal's opinion a "C" is enough indication that the student failed to anyone who is looking. The school doesn't even have the option of a D. You either don't show up (F) or you do terribly ©.

[Lanny]

Rubrics are out and grading on the curve is in?

[Arcadia]

Rubrics are out and grading on the curve is in?

Rubrics are still in. The curve is just skewed in some schools instead of normalized. It is hard to fail unless the student really refused to do anything, even then summer credit recovery is available.

 

What parents need to be aware of is that GPA is school specific even for the same school district. So if the whole cohort takes SAT or ACT, that would be a better statistics to look at. For my local high school, only some take SAT or ACT and the school only publish the median scores. The college acceptance list is not available to public. Not much info for parents to work on. For every success story my district publicized, you can see heavy parents involvement.

[Roadrunner]

I don't have percentages, but I was told grade inflation in our "high achieving" district is very high. Couple of tippy top private school teachers told me that if we are looking to attend UC system, we need to stay homeschooling or go to public school and forget private schools. Because of grade inflation in public schools they have a harder time placing their students from private schools into UCs, because their GPAs are lower. It's not fair, but a reality. Ironically they place kids into Harvard and the likes with less issues.

[Farrar]

If I heard that 20% had above a 4.0, my first thought would be that it might be a school with double weighted credits - 4.0 for regular class, 5.0 for honors, 6.0 for AP.

 

I don't know if that's inflation per se. To me, inflation is when students are given higher grades for less work or just generally that there are lower expectations for good grades. In the case of weighted GPA's, kids are given the "right" grades, at least potentially, but they just all get more credit for them. I've heard that private colleges and universities (like, as mentioned above, Ivy Leagues and so forth) have formulas and methods for trying to level the playing field when it comes to weighted GPA's but that public universities often don't as much - just because they deal with so many public schools within their state which all have the same weighting policies, thus supposedly creating a more level field from the get go. I don't know how true that is though.

[Lanny]

Years ago, we had a friend (mutual hobby) who taught in the Public university. Then, the Public university went through a horrible financial crisis. He then began teaching in a Private university.  He told us this story, years ago.  In the Public university, if necessary, he could fail everyone in the class.  In the Private university, he said that he had some excellent students, but others, who told him they were too busy watching 800 channels on their TV set, to do the work. Had he failed everyone in a class, in the Private university, he would have quickly become unemployed.  Standards, or, lack of standards...

[rdj2027]

The online high school my son is taking a class from as well as the BM high school award grades differently than in my time.  Their idea of competence based learning is that students will not progress if they earn anything less than an 85% so basically that is the new F.  Work, tests, homework can be resubmitted until they have reached the desired grade so for a lot of kids it has become simply a matter of effort to obtain an A.  My kids' tests, projects... were not particularly difficult to begin with so getting a 4.0 average is rather easy these days.  In my son's 8th grade class, 47% had a 4.0 average.

 

Do they really learn?  I am not sure as some teachers point out the errors, others will tell the students there are errors but not where and of what kind they are so students have to redo the work to find them.

 

 

[Roadrunner]

If I heard that 20% had above a 4.0, my first thought would be that it might be a school with double weighted credits - 4.0 for regular class, 5.0 for honors, 6.0 for AP.

 

 

This isn't the case in our district. I know that AP classes are weighted on a 5.0 scale. I have no idea about honors classes. Yet based on anecdotal evidence, 20% with 4.0 might be just about right. 

[lewelma]

No grade inflation in NZ.  The scores are curved.  Only 15% of kids get an A in any single class.  25% B, 40% C, and 20% F. This is PER class.  So straight As for ds will put him in the top 1% for a National class rank, which can be calculated because ALL internal and external assessments for *every* school are moderated by a national body.  How is that for different!?!?  Small countries have some options that big countries just don't.  Seems to me I better explain this somehow in my course descriptions or school letter if ds decides to go to a USA university!  20% 4.0 yikes!

 

Ruth in NZ

Edited July 15, 2016 by lewelma

[FaithManor]

AP's are weighted at a 5.0 here so if a student takes two and gets A's that would make up for some A-'s or a B or two. But, they don't offer many AP's, just physics and calculus on a rotating basis plus AP biology every couple of years as well. So not a lot of options which means that only a small number of students take the AP.

 

This is a rural area. The graduating class was 71 students. Only 2 had 4.0 or higher. My ds, had he graduated from there would have been 3rd in the class because they would have weighted his A in AP World History at 5.0 while I as a homeschooling parent do not since I didn't get my syllabus approved by the college board so can't list it as AP on the transcript. He got a 5 on the exam though so they can see that he did the work. His homeschool GPA was 3.8 plus a little. I am a tough grader.

 

That said, while D's are definitely handed out, teachers are pressured to give C's. They don't have to give B's and A's unless warranted, but they definitely are encouraged to give C's when they are not earned. 

[MarkT]

Our local public school districts AP = 5.0 and honors = 4.5.  It is a reward for the students willing to take more challenging courses.  On the other hand, the state universities want both weighted and un-weighted GPAs.

[wapiti]

Where it gets confusing IMO is comparing different high schools, especially public ones within the same district.  If we get away from the idea of an in-school bell curve, it makes sense that the high school with a good/better reputation would have a larger proportion of high scoring students compared to an average or worse high school where a larger proportion of students simply don't perform as well (due to effort and/or ability) and/or where the academics may be less rigorous.

 

In other words, the student bodies of two high schools may be very different; should they have identical GPA distributions?

Edited July 16, 2016 by wapiti

[48820592]

When I retired from teaching six years ago, I found some curriculum I used in teaching an Honors 8th grade math class.  As I perused through the material it struck me how much more demanding the math curriculum was 25 years ago.  I did not think too many of my Algebra 1 students could handle what was taught in that class.  

 

Teachers receive so much pressure from parents/students to give A's, everyone thinks their kid is going to Harvard. Also, the administration does not want to see F's; one teacher was called into the principal's office and was told she could no longer teach her current classes because she had too many failures (never mind that kids were lazy and didn't do homework).  Then there is the crazy amount of extra credit that is given out to "raise grades" often times for meaningless things/work.  

 

[katilac]

In our local high school, 8% of the class of 2015 had a 4.0.  But 50% had an A- average or above (3.5+).  

 

ETA:  This is unweighted.  Weighting grades is illegal in our state.  Which is bad for students who want to get scholarships that use weighted GPAs.

 

Wow, what state? That does make it very hard on students seeking scholarships. 

 

Another thing to keep in mind is that plenty of schools don't use plusses and minuses. So any 'A' equals 4 points, any 'B' equals 3 points. Those schools would have more students with a 4.0. 

[EKS]

Wow, what state? That does make it very hard on students seeking scholarships. 

 

Washington.

[8filltheheart]

In our local high school, 8% of the class of 2015 had a 4.0. But 50% had an A- average or above (3.5+).

 

ETA: This is unweighted. Weighting grades is illegal in our state. Which is bad for students who want to get scholarships that use weighted GPAs.

I was curious about this bc I had never seen it mentioned on CC. I thought I would share this info in case you didn't know about it. http://www.spokaneschools.org/Page/26199. It does look like the law allows for additional documentation for admissions and scholarships.

 

Washington State law requires all schools to use a standardized transcript that does not allow weighted grades to be included as part of the official transcript. State law does however permit schools to attach supplemental information to the transcript.

 

A weighted transcript is typically requested in the senior year for the purpose of college admissions to specific universities and some scholarships. Not all colleges and universities ask for a weighted transcript.

Students who chose to challenge themselves academically in Honors and AP courses are making a commitment to work harder. A weighted transcript encourages and rewards students with additional grade points for taking challenging course work as opposed to taking less rigorous coursework.

Weighted grades conversion table: Honors courses are weighted with a maximum of 4.5 points for an A, while AP courses are weighted with a maximum of 5.0 points for an A. To calculate a student's cumulative weighted GPA, all points earned for all courses attempted are totaled and then divided by the number of courses attempted.

[EKS]

I was curious about this bc I had never seen it mentioned on CC. I thought I would share this info in case you didn't know about it. http://www.spokaneschools.org/Page/26199. It does look like the law allows for additional documentation for admissions and scholarships.

 

 

That appears to be peculiar to Spokane.  Other districts have documentation that tells students and their families that the colleges know about this issue and will recalculate the GPA as necessary.  The local district simply says the grades aren't weighted because it's the law.

[8filltheheart]

That appears to be peculiar to Spokane. Other districts have documentation that tells students and their families that the colleges know about this issue and will recalculate the GPA as necessary. The local district simply says the grades aren't weighted because it's the law.

As a homeschooler, if I didn't require documentation from my home superintendent's office, I would follow Spokane's lead. Actually, I would probably call the state dept of education and ask if the info on Spokane's website was accurate. Some schools like UA do not recalculate but tell students that they can request that their GC includes a recalculated weight and attach it to the transcript. That seems to replicate what Spokane is doing.

[EKS]

As a homeschooler, if I didn't require documentation from my home superintendent's office, I would follow Spokane's lead. Actually, I would probably call the state dept of education and ask if the info on Spokane's website was accurate. Some schools like UA do not recalculate but tell students that they can request that their GC includes a recalculated weight and attach it to the transcript. That seems to replicate what Spokane is doing.

 

I wasn't talking about what one should do as a homeschooler...as I thought the thread was about grade inflation at b&m high schools.

Edited July 17, 2016 by EKS