[Michael Gomez]

Colleagues, I hope all is well.  I have a situation that I would like some feedback on:

During the summer, a parent sent an email out to many other parents as well as to a board member explaining two specific concerns.  She finally contacted me on the first day of school.

Concern 1: Her sons friends who did not get accepted to my school have a higher GPA in honors classes than her son here.  She said that she hears about this all the time.  Is SJP that much harder? 

Concern 2: If she took her son's numerical grades and transfered them to 6 other high schools in the areas, he would have a higher GPA  because their grades scales are different than ours. This is not fair for her son in terms of college acceptances.  Here is the Prep's:
93-100: A
89-92: B+
85-88: B
81-84: C+
77-80: C
73-76: D+
70-72: D
Below 70--F

Other schools in the area have a 90 as an A and an 80 as a B. 

On our transcripts, we use letter grades and compute GPA from that.  Last year, we discussed switching to strictly numerical grades or letter grades with the number attached.

Your thoughts on this one?  Any comments from your parents about how difficult your school is in terms of gpa and college acceptance? 

We are off to a great start this year--new 5 floor addition to our campus...

Peace to you all, my friends.

Michael

[susan ohara]

Mike,   I think these things vary more than we may think.    The public school I am in now uses 97-100 A+, 93-96 A, 90-92 A- and so on.   Chapin had a system that went by five points, not three or four, so that 95-100 A, 90-94 A-, 85-89 B+, 80-84 B, etc.  Andover doesn't use letter grades at all; grades are on a scale of 1 to 6.   At your school a 70 would be a D   At my current school a 70 would be a C-   At Chapin a 70 would be a C   I SUPPOSE the colleges are supposed to account for these differences.   I also imagine that colleges have a standard--or know what is most typical--across country?     The question, then, is why or why not follow the national "norm"?  Do tougher grades at your school make your school seem to have more rigor? (Thereby impressing colleges?)  Or do the colleges just look at grades?   Glad to hear you are thriving.   Sue --- On Fri, 9/12/08, Michael Gomez <gome...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[Marc Ott]

Hi Michael,

Here is some feedback based on my experience.

It is well likely that SJP has higher standards than other nearby schools. I would take this argument to your advantage. At LAS we normalize the grades. Teachers should have a mean GPA per class of 2.5 within the range of 2.3 and 2.9. There are several reasons for that.

1. When two teachers teach the exact same classes (i.e. French 1 and 2), assuming the distribution of students is done randomly, they should, therefore, have approximately to same average class GPA. This is particularly useful for new teachers: it gives them guidelines in the grading level of the school. Furthermore it is only fair to the students.

2. Our academic standards have increased in the past 5 years but our average GPA remains more or less constant. Consequently, from an outside perspective we remain an academically strong and increasingly a stronger school. In addition, we are not falling into the trap of grade inflation, especially if our academic standards would remain the same.

3. From a college acceptance standpoint of view, it should not change much. The colleges will primarily look at SAT, AP or IB scores which are world-wide standards, thus independent from the academic level of schools. In fact, our college counselor would even argue that if they see high AP score with a good but not high GPA, college admissions people will say, "oh, this school has high academic standards: they do not give out good grades easily." This can only help the image of your school from the perspective of college admissions.

At LAS we use 5 grading scales (yes, it is complicated!): Letter grade (A to F), percentage grade, quality points (4 point scale), weighed points (it is uses the 4-point scale but it is weighed with the AP/IB classes; 4.0 = 4.5 on this scale), and IB scale (1 to 7, with 4 being the minimum passing grade). I would simply argue that students really need to perform at a high level to earn an A at SJP. No grade inflation at our school.

For more information on our academics you can download our Academic Course Guide:

http://www.las.ch/ibacademics/departments.html

I hope all is well.

Greetings from Switzerland,

Marc