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.

Comments

[Faylene Macko]

It would be very useful if the documents describing the proposed changes to the ACPS Program of Studies, including the weighted GPA issue covered in the Daily Progress, gave reasons why each change is necessary. What problems are these changes designed to address? After reading the notes for the Steering Committee, and the 10/26/06 description of the proposed changes to the Program of Studies,attending an AHS PTSO meeting devoted to these changes and reading the blog comments on the ACPS website,I am still unclear about the need for these changes in our school system. I hope that the Steering Committee will be able to set forth a clear rationale for these significant changes on the ACPS website, other than just the direction from the School Board to review the Program of Studies.

[John]

Apparently, this change, along with ones to lower the grading scale and combine standard and advanced classes, all appear to be aimed at "eliminating the achievement gap". Of course, all these changes are doing is *lowering* standards such that the gap between high and low achievers is minimized. How unfortunate. Instead of maintaining high standards and trying to raise the performance of the underachievers, the county proposes to lower standards and remove incentives for students to excel. Can you believe the comment by Don Vale that eliminating the weighted GPA will motivate students to take a more challenging course load? Huh? By removing an incentive to take tougher courses (i.e., the potential for a higher GPA), they hope to encourage students to take them? Uh, this doesn't exactly make sense, does it? I sincerely hope School Board members reject these unnecessary and absurd changes, all of which are aimed at lowering the performance bar.

[Pamela Hufnagel]

Are you going to post the 11/30 news article from "the Hook" about the Albemarle High School Information Session, in addition to the Daily Progress articles?