SchoolMatters Weblog

Albemarle may nix weights for grades

11/11/06 * Daily Progress [full story]

Albemarle County high schools may eliminate weighted grade-point averages, raising questions about the role grades should play in encouraging students to excel – and how successful students should be rewarded for it.

The county school division formed a committee this year of principals, guidance counselors, teachers and students to discuss grading changes. The group has recommended to Superintendent Pamela Moran that the county treat grades equally in all three levels of academic difficulty – standard, advanced and honors/Advanced Placement.

Don Vale, director of curriculum and instruction for the division and the committee leader, said that by eliminating the weighted GPA, students would become motivated to take a challenging course load to attract the attention of colleges and to stretch their potential, not to raise their GPA.

Under the county’s current system, standard-level courses in the county’s high schools receive no weight, while advanced courses receive 0.5 “quality points” and honors/Advanced Placement courses are given one quality point. A student who makes an “A” in four standard classes gets a 4.0 GPA; a student with the same grades in four AP classes would have a 5.0.

College-level courses in Albemarle County

I just listened to a podcast of last weekend's candidate forum for the City of Charlottesville's first-ever school board elections.  In the discussions, a candidate in the City provided some information on college-level coursework in their division.

The candidate stated the following about Charlottesville City Schools:

"We have more AP courses than any school in the area, public or private. In 1989, we had 13 AP courses with 55 students.  And 75% of those received a 3 or higher [grade on AP exam].  In 2005, we have 20 AP subjects and 142 students taking, so that's about 3 times as many students [Note: that is about 3% of students enrolled in City].  And our pass rate for college credit is 88%, compared to the state's of 61%. We now have five dual-enrollment courses with Piedmont [Virginia Community College]."

Many good facts about Charlottesville City Schools can be found on their website here. 

In this case, I called the candidate today and we had a good conversation about how Albemarle's numbers had improved in recent years with respect to college-level courses.  Thus, with this posting I want to share the latest information on Albemarle County Public Schools so that the public is aware of our current offerings and performance measurements.

• Albemarle County has 22 AP courses offered at our high schools for 2006-07 (actual offerings will depend on enrollment next year)
• Albemarle County has 13 dual-enrollment courses with PVCC for 2006-07 (actual offerings will depend on enrollment next year)
• During 2004-05, Albemarle County had 1,539 students participating in AP courses (about 12.5% of our population) and 71% of the students taking an AP exam received a grade of 3 or higher, the level for which most students can receive college credit (this down from 84% in 1999-2000, but back then we had only 788 students taking AP courses, or about 6.5% of our population). 

The Albemarle County School Board received a report on this data at our February 9, 2006 meeting and the item can be found on our website here.

Nothing against my colleagues in the City, I just want everyone to know how much progress Albemarle County has made in recent years in the area of challenging our students with college-level coursework.

Brian Wheeler