The Story of an “A” Being a “B”…
So, last year my son missed earning the next higher grade in his math class by 0.7%.
I asked for a parent meeting to discuss the grade. The first question I asked the teacher was this.
If a student has a 90% going into the last test of the year and the student earns a 94% on that test, what should the student’s final grade be?
Her answer was what I expected. That is, the student’s grade in the class would have to be an “A.”
But sadly, in her weighted grading system he earned a “B.”
Huh!? How is that even possible?
Below is the gradebook in Microsoft Excel for the scenario. Quiz #3 is the only assignment left and the student currently has 90% (A) in the class. The teacher weights the class as follows: Tests (40%), Quizzes (30%), Homework (20%), and Projects (10%).
Below is the new grade with quiz #3 (47/50 points or 94%) entered into the gradebook.
So, how did the grade drop even though the student scored a higher percentage on the quiz than the total percentage in the class?
Weighted grades simply render the entire grade out of 100 points regardless of the amount of points issued in the class. In this scenario, the class is weighted as follows: Tests (40%), Quizzes (30%), Homework (20%), and Projects (10%). Thus, the total amount of points that can be earned in each category are 40, 30, 20, and 10 respectively.
The student’s grade drops below a 90% even though they earned a 94% on their last quiz because the most points the student could have earned in the quiz category is 30.
Let me explain. On the prior two quizzes the student earned 100% for both quizzes, thus earning all 30 points in the quiz category. However, on the last quiz, the student earned 47 out of 50 points (94%), so the total points earned in the quiz category dropped from 30 points to 29.3. Therefore, the total grade dropped from a 90% to a 89.3%!
In fact, the only way for the student to earn an “A” in the class would have been if the student earned a 100% on the last quiz even though they had a 90% going into that last quiz.
That’s crazy! A student scores a 94% on a quiz and his grade drops from 90% to 89.3%. That is not transparent to the student or parent.
Weighted grades are not particularly helpful or transparent to students or parents because it is hard to determine how a grade is calculated and therefore difficult to track progress. This scenario is certainly not transparent. Below is a screenshot from my son’s current English grade as reflected in PowerSchool.
If I add up all the points and divide it by the total points his grade is 82.2%. However, his current grade is listed as 79.36%. How is the student or parent to figure it out? The weighting of the assignments causes the grade to drop in this scenario.
Lastly, if you can’t follow all the math…well…that is why weighted grades aren’t transparent.
Let’s stop looking at the teaching and start focusing on the impact on learning.
BTW – look at assignment #14. 22.03 out of 30 points…are grades that precise? And if so, should they be? Do teachers make mistakes in grading?