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Editorial: Shift to nuanced grading deserves A-plus

Sat., Sept. 19, 2015

High schools used to select one valedictorian and one salutatorian. Perfect grades didn’t automatically mean students would be so honored. The “losers” didn’t need to sign up for therapy.

That still occurs today, but it is unusual.

Central Valley High School had one valedictorian in 2105. Ferris and Lewis and Clark had a dozen each. Mead High School had 32. At the spring awards ceremony at Chase Middle School, about 80 eighth-graders were awarded certificates for perfect grades.

In Spokane Public Schools, this proliferation of perfection is about to come to an end, because the district has instituted a more discerning grading standard that will better identify the true academic superstars and put an end to warped incentives.

Before the change, the district didn’t assign plus/minus grades (A-minus, B-plus), which meant a student scoring a 90 in a class would be assigned the same grade point as one who achieved 100. Now, they’ll need to get at least a 93 to get four points in the class. If they score 90-92, they’ll get 3.7. Scores of 87-89 will mean a B-plus and 3.3 points; scores of 80-82 will be a B-minus and 2.7 points, and so forth.

In addition, grade points will be weighted so that students taking more difficult classes will get more points. For example, a student getting an A in AP English will get five points. A student acing regular English will get four points.

This should end the logjams for first place and the practice of students taking easier classes to protect their grade-point averages. The label “valedictorian” will carry greater significance.

Should students worry that this will hurt their chances of enrolling at their preferred colleges and universities? No. College admissions offices were already aware of grade-point inflation and the expanding number of “top” students. They’ve come to look past the GPA to see whether students challenged themselves. If they did, it was probably reflected in their SAT and ACT scores and their college admission essays.

College applicants who took more difficult courses already are leapfrogging some classmates with higher GPAs. So pursuing “perfection” had become unproductive. The grading change better reflects life after high school, where competitive majors and workplaces winnow candidates without concern for hurt feelings.

When everyone wins, nobody wins, and this principle isn’t confined to students. In 2010, a Partnership for Learning analysis showed that 99.8 percent of teachers in Spokane Public Schools were deemed “satisfactory” from 2005-06 to 2008-09.

Nobody really benefited from this. The unsatisfactory teachers weren’t getting help. The truly great ones were obscured.

Moving to a more discerning evaluation system is better for everyone. It was long overdue.