Spokane public high schools’ new GPA scale challenges some students, rewards others

A change to the grading scale in Spokane public high schools is attempting to more accurately judge student academic performance. In the process, it’s making it harder to earn an A.

“We’ve heard from students that are more like straight-A students or parents of straight-A students wondering if it really was going to be more difficult to keep those straight As, and the answer is yes,” said Spokane Public Schools’ board President Jeffrey Bierman.

The change, instituted this fall, creates a plus and minus system. Previously, Spokane high schools didn’t have plus or minus grades. Anything between a 90 percent and 100 percent was an A, for example. “I think it is good motivation to learn to step up to the plate,” said Lewis and Clark High School senior Micah Hughes. “There are a lot of kids, including me, who just try to slide by with that 90 percent.”

Part of the rationale behind the change was to encourage students to focus and work throughout the semester, Bierman said. Under the old system, some students, knowing they’d cracked the threshold for a particular grade, slacked off. Additionally, it adds nuance to the grading system and allows teachers to better assess student work, he said.

However, the change does make it harder for high-achieving students to maintain 4.0 GPAs, Bierman said.

“My daughter screams at me about it,” he said: “Now instead of getting an A, I might end up getting an A- in the class.”

Most students interviewed at Lewis and Clark High School Thursday acknowledged the change increases the difficulty of maintaining a particular grade point average.

Some see it as a positive, some aren’t so sure.

“For sure I will work harder to get the grade,” said Lewis and Clark sophomore Julia Quacquarini.

Sophomore Pedro Sanchez said he thinks “it’s dumb. I just think there is no real point to it.”

Specifically Sanchez is bothered that it’s harder to get an A. He said the old system worked just fine.

Quacquarini’s aunt, Christina Adams, said she could sympathize with student complaints.

“I think as a student I can feel their frustration, especially as sophomores,” she said. That’s because GPA pressure is especially high for sophomores and juniors hoping to go to competitive colleges.

The new scale maxes out at an A; there is no A+ designation.

The school board opted against having A+ grades to help students more easily access the top grade, Gering said.

Bierman, the school board president, said the potential of losing a 4.0 GPA is mitigated by another new district policy: weighted grades. This policy went into effect last school year.

Weighted grades add a full point to a student’s GPA if they’re enrolled in an advance placement class and a half-point for an honors course. So, a student who gets a 4.0 in an AP class will actually earn a 5.0, Gering said.

“Kids for years have said you guys are giving two different messages,” said Steven Gering, chief academic officer for the district. “One message you’re telling us is we’re supposed to be taking challenging classes,” while the other message is that students should strive for a 4.0.

Gering references a specific conversation he had with a former student. The woman was attending Dartmouth and told Gering that as a high school student she was hesitant to take hard classes because she wanted to protect her GPA. She ended up taking more challenging courses, although her GPA dropped slightly.

The weighted grade system attempts to encourage students to take rigorous courses, while still protecting their class ranking.

Most school districts around Washington use a combination of the plus-minus system and weighted grades, Gering said. According to state law, individual districts are allowed to decide whether their teachers can assign plus or minus grades.

“I think those two changes together make more sense than either one by themselves,” Bierman said.