School board adjusts to grading scale
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on March 22, 2017 10:00 AM
The Wayne County Board of Education discussed numerous policies at their work session Tuesday morning, as well as the impact of a state-mandated grading scale shift which took effect in 2015.
In that year, the state Board of Education mandated that high schools switch from their traditional seven-point grading scales to the 10-point scale used in most colleges. The change went into effect for all students regardless of grade level, meaning that some had spent their first few years in high school under the previous scale and would finish under the new scale. That change widened the range of each grade, which board chairman Arnold Flowers said could reduce the rigor of education in the state.
Those concerns were compounded by another facet of the changes, which eliminated the use of augmented grading scales for differentiating between students who score the same letter grade. Under an augmented scale, a student who scored a high "A" grade -- a 97, for example -- would receive slightly more quality points then a student who scored a low "A," such as a 93. Those differences would be used to determine who among the highest scoring students would receive Valedictorian and Salutatorian honors.
Without that grading scale, Wayne County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent for Accountability/Information and Technology David Lewis said it will soon become difficult to parse out who should be recognized as top of their class.
"The longer students are under this new system, the less differentiation will be possible," he said. "If you've been in the new system the entire time you're in high school, a student who receives a 90 will get the same quality points as a student who receives a 100, because an "A" is an "A" no matter what."
Tamara Ishee, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said that students class-by-class, 100-point grades would still be visible to colleges and employers through their transcripts. As such, students looking to make the best impression possible should not think that a 90 means the same as a 100 when it comes to college admission.
Where it does matter is in the case of academic honors. To combat what will likely be an overcrowding at the top for those awards, WCPS staff proposed switching the district over to a Latin honors system - using Cum Laude, Summa Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude as honorifics -- instead of awards for the top two.
District 4 representative Jennifer Strickland took issue with that idea, saying that, for some students, competing for the title of Valedictorian is a major driving force behind their success.
While the grading scale changes are state mandated and therefore not changeable, the board will further discuss changes to the academic honors system at their April meeting.