In the competition for college admittance, students in Harford County public high schools are hamstrung by the school board’s policy on weighted grade point averages, according to Harford school officials who are recommending that the board revise its policy. The proposal announced at a meeting Tuesday would increase the extra numerical value, or weight, currently awarded for a letter grade of “B” or “C” in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, and allow for such weighted grades in other rigorous courses.
Joe Schmitz, head of middle/high school instruction and performance, told board members that current policy puts HCPS students at a disadvantage compared with students in surrounding jurisdictions because of the limited number of courses HCPS deems eligible for weighted grades, and the point value it assigns to those grades.
Supervisor of Guidance and Counseling Kevin Ensor added that the volume of college applications has increased such that computers often perform the initial reviews, and students who do not reach a certain weighted GPA are not getting a second look. “It’s not just for college admissions but it’s also for scholarship selection as well… those schools that do not have the weighted grades are at a big disadvantage,” he said.
Ensor followed up with an anecdote about a guidance counselor who calculated his own son’s GPA and found that the son would not have gotten into Penn State under the current policy, but would have gotten in and qualified for a scholarship under the weighted grading scale used in Montgomery County Public Schools.
The proposed policy revision for HCPS maintains the point value of 5.0 for an “A” in a course with weighted grades (versus 4.0 for an “A” in a standard course). However, the point value for a “B” in a weighted course would increase from 3.75 to 4.0; and the value would rise for a “C” from 2.5 to 3.0. The value for a “D” in a weighted course would drop from 1.25 to a 1.0 under the proposal.
In addition, the revised policy would authorize Superintendent Barbara Canavan or her designee to make additional courses eligible for weighted grades, such as those in the Project Lead the Way Pre-engineering and Biomedical sequence, the Aberdeen Science and Math Academy, and North Harford’s Natural Sciences and Agricultural Science Magnet Program.
The existing policy entitled “Report Cards and Marking System”, and the proposed revised policy appear below. Board action on the revised policy is expected at a future board business meeting.
Why not give them six or seven points. 4 points for an A, 3 points for a B, 2 points for a C and one for a D. E = Failing and no points are given. Must be the same people that think the minimum skills jobs should pay $15.00.
Who cares if they get points if they fail or not? Employers are gonna see a D or and E and say nope.
Why stop at 6 or 7? Lets go to a 10 point scale, we’d have the highest GPAs in the nation.
Novel concept, get better teachers. Most Importantly get rid of the bad ones. Yes we know Ryan Burbey you think more money will fix it so spare us your communist blathering.
Yet another comment attacking teachers. I’ve yet to meet a bad HCPS teacher. In fact, every one I have had contact with are devoted professionals who care about our kids enough to put in extra time and their own resources, despite being “attacked” by those who really don’t understand how anything works in reality. I’m curious, are you employed by HCPS, frank? Do you volunteer at your child’s school?
Not sure at all where the “communist” statement comes from since it makes no sense at all in this context.. It is unfortunate that students reading and commenting thoughtfully to this article have to read, and likely be confused by this negative word-dropping and sarcasm.
No it attacks BAD Teachers. You rallying the wagons around them shows you are part of the blame. Bad teachers must go. Stop letting unions protect them.
“I’ve yet to meet a bad HCPS teacher. ”
LOL.
Totally unrelated to the subject at hand. If you want to bash teachers, do so within the context of an appropriate story. Otherwise, you look foolish.
As a college student who has talked to a lot of students from other states with 5-4-3-etc. systems, I can attest that we are at a disadvantage. Not to say that it will improve our education, but I think that Har-Co students are remarkably underrepresented when it comes to out-of-state-bound college students, and this could very well be a reason why.
Maybe HCPS is pushing too many students towards AP classes (and selling the dream of ‘everyone must go to college’) when they’re not ready for them, resulting in lower GPAs and lower admittance rates?
“Not to say that it will improve our education” What difference will it make? harford County need to get back to the basics.
This should have been done years ago when the programs were first started. I know that it put me at a disadvantages when applying to colleges–my GPA was high enough that I was able to get into very good state schools and their honors programs, however smaller prestigious liberal arts and Ivey League schools did reject me. While I love where I am now, I still wonder if this would have helped me get into those schools. Also, I can’t directly attribute my denial of entrance to my GPA, however I’m sure that it played a factor somehow.
Also, lets clarify this right now: no it’s not a problem with the teachers. No it doesn’t relate to the budget, O’Malley, Ryan Burbury, Jesse Bane’s helicopter program, or anything else for that matter. This is directly related to other school systems across the country (and even internationally!) and how the way they calculate their GPA puts HCPS students at a disadvantage.
One issue that I have with the grading policy is that the current system rewards the same point value to a student with an 89.5% as they do to the student who scores a 99.5%. I think a plus/minus system needs to be instituted as well.
Or go strictly to a 0-100 scale with no letter grades assigned?
Maybe. I hear that Cecil does the plus/minus system. I wonder how that works? Either way, I think a 99 needs to be distinguished in some way from the 89.9.
Don’t colleges “deflate” them anyway?
I will eventually say something that is relevant….just like to hear myself talk.
Sure, Harford County ought to raise the values to keep pace with surrounding areas. The problem is then someone else will raise their values because “regular” classes in their county are equal to “advanced” programs in some other county and so on and so on … Not to mention that someday really soon some mush-headed Liberal will decide that students who come from single parent families ought to get an “extra” point because they have a harder time of it and then we’ll have to add point to kids that qualify for free lunch, and then we’ll add points for kids who don’t speak english and extra points for kids who come from certain ethnic origins and before long everyone will have and 50 or 75 point GPA and the whole system will become useless.
Well, these nitwits with college degrees could always get jobs back where the dysfunction started, the public school system.
I always think of the Hollywood film “Office Space” where the ‘Bob’s” interview all the employees and ask the one guy, “What do you say you do here?” and shake their heads.
Every college I applied to told me that they completely ignore whatever GPA individual schools claim students have, look at their actual grades for each class, look at what classes they took, and use their own system for weighting grades based on whatever AP/honors classes a particular student took.
There are so many different grade point systems across the country (4.0, 5.0, 100 point scales just to name 3 and there are others out there) and every school system weight grades for AP classes differently that to do anything else makes it impossible to compare students from different systems.
At my high school they used a weird GPA weighting system where the max GPA anyone could get was 4.4. At my girlfriend’s high school (she went to a private school) someone taking the exact same classes could potentially end up with a 5.0 GPA. I got into several colleges that friends of hers didn’t get into even though according to the GPA given by our different schools they had a much higher GPA than I did (and then similar SAT scores and similar extracurricular activities.) Once the college did their own weighting my GPA was quite a bit higher than theirs.
Something doesn’t sit right, maybe its those bean burritos I ate for lunch.
Seems there is always more to the story, how could HCPS precisely know that potential candidates for any of the thousands of colleges are not getting a “second look” based on the HCPS GPA system that’s in use?
Seems like (as stated above) this is the foundation to expand on getting as many students as possible with later revisions added onto in the effect of achieving the highest GPA, regardless even if they did not excell in anything that a prepared college bound student gets accepted on (see above) such as, particular classes honors, AP, individual grades, clubs, and other volunteer work.
But if we go up with grades should the bottom also be raised? Why should a student that only earns a .55 be awarded credit at the end of the year for a course they did not pass?
How can girls rule the nation without proper grade inflation?
GPA”S only help you get a free ride. Pull out your own checkbook and you can buy your way into any school.