Many parents mistakenly believe their children are functioning at or above grade level for several reasons:
Grades Reflect More Than Just Academic Performance:
Class grades are not solely based on academic abilities. They often include factors like attendance, class participation, homework completion, behavior, quizzes, and tests. This means that a student can earn good grades even if they haven’t mastered the actual material.
Grade Improvement Opportunities:
Many teachers provide opportunities for students to improve their grades through late homework submissions, extra credit assignments, retaking quizzes or tests, and doing test corrections. This practice can inflate a student’s final grade, making it seem like they are performing better academically than they actually are.
Parents Trust the School System:
Parents often trust the education system and may assume that if their child is earning good grades, they are on track to succeed in college and the workforce. However, the grading system can be influenced by various factors, leading to inflated perceptions of a student’s performance.
Lack of Understanding of Educational Standards:
Some parents may not fully understand the educational standards and expectations at each grade level. They might not be aware of the gap between their child’s reported grades and actual proficiency in subjects like math and reading.
Grade Inflation:
Grade inflation is a phenomenon where grades are higher than they were in the past, and this can contribute to the misconception that students are performing at or above grade level when they may not be.
Standardized Test Concerns:
Standardized tests are not always seen as reliable measures of student potential. Some parents and educators may be skeptical of their validity and may rely more on class grades.
To address this issue, it is important for parents to have open and regular communication with their child’s teachers. Discussing a child’s academic progress and areas where improvement is needed can provide a more accurate picture of their performance. Additionally, parents can take an active role in their child’s education by providing supplementary resources and activities that help them develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills beyond what is covered in the classroom. This approach can help ensure that a child is truly prepared for success in college and their future careers.
Many parents mistakenly believe their children are functioning at or above grade level for several reasons:
Grades Reflect More Than Just Academic Performance:
Class grades are not solely based on academic abilities. They often include factors like attendance, class participation, homework completion, behavior, quizzes, and tests. This means that a student can earn good grades even if they haven’t mastered the actual material.
Grade Improvement Opportunities:
Many teachers provide opportunities for students to improve their grades through late homework submissions, extra credit assignments, retaking quizzes or tests, and doing test corrections. This practice can inflate a student’s final grade, making it seem like they are performing better academically than they actually are.
Parents Trust the School System:
Parents often trust the education system and may assume that if their child is earning good grades, they are on track to succeed in college and the workforce. However, the grading system can be influenced by various factors, leading to inflated perceptions of a student’s performance.
Lack of Understanding of Educational Standards:
Some parents may not fully understand the educational standards and expectations at each grade level. They might not be aware of the gap between their child’s reported grades and actual proficiency in subjects like math and reading.
Grade Inflation:
Grade inflation is a phenomenon where grades are higher than they were in the past, and this can contribute to the misconception that students are performing at or above grade level when they may not be.
Standardized Test Concerns:
Standardized tests are not always seen as reliable measures of student potential. Some parents and educators may be skeptical of their validity and may rely more on class grades.
To address this issue, it is important for parents to have open and regular communication with their child’s teachers. Discussing a child’s academic progress and areas where improvement is needed can provide a more accurate picture of their performance. Additionally, parents can take an active role in their child’s education by providing supplementary resources and activities that help them develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills beyond what is covered in the classroom. This approach can help ensure that a child is truly prepared for success in college and their future careers.
As we approach the end of fall semester, college students across the nation are pushing to extend the Pass/Fail grading system they all received last spring. But, most colleges aren’t allowing it. Each college has set up their pandemic grading protocols – albeit by the seat of their pants – to deal with student issues. Some colleges allow students to choose between grades and pass/fail, but the problem is WHEN they allow students to make this decision. If the students choose this at the beginning of the term, that would be more fair than allowing students to choose just before finals. In other words, if a student is not doing well in a class, should they be able to opt for a Pass instead of a C?
When students have pass/fail marks on their transcripts instead of grades, it doesn’t work to their benefit when it comes to grad school. Admissions officers are going to prefer a transcript with real grades to one that is riddled with passes or no-pass/fails. If students are really suffering because of COVID-related issues, they can always discuss their circumstances in an essay or interview.
Even at the high school level, most students are receiving grades this term. High school students face the same dilemma as college students when it comes to competing to get into selective colleges. If their transcript shows stellar grades, the students will be more likely to impress admissions officers than students with a transcript filled with passes. So if a student is getting all A’s in their classes, a transcript with passes will make them appear to be average A-C students. Not good.
Spring 2019 and Fall 2020 have already set students back because of the chaos that ensued during the transition to online classes last fall and the fact that online classes just don’t offer the same learning experience that face-to-face classes do. Students who get grades will do much better than students who get passes.
What does it mean for your child now that their classes will not return to school campuses for the rest of this spring semester? It means that you need to become both teacher and guidance counselor to ensure that your child stays on track.
Teachers and administrators have scrambled to learn how to conduct lectures in an online group setting. They are struggling to test students to determine if they understand the concepts covered in this new classroom venue. Some students don’t have access to high-speed internet or computers to partake in these classes. This isn’t fair to anyone – especially those students who don’t have laptops or teachers who don’t have the technical support to set up Zoom or Hangout classrooms.
As final exams loom over every high school teacher, schools are making difficult decisions about how to assign grades for courses taken this spring semester. College-bound students need strong GPAs and transcripts to be competitive in the college admissions race. I’m hearing that many high schools are succumbing to giving pass/fail marks instead of letter grades.
Average students benefit from pass/fail because colleges won’t know if they’re an A or a D student. For students applying to selective colleges, these pass/fail grades create a question mark about these courses. These students need to do other things to stand out in the college admissions process.
In addition to the problem with pass-fail courses on student transcripts, students really aren’t going to learn all of the concepts that would normally be taught in these classes. They lost several weeks of instruction due to the chaos that the shelter-in-place order caused in every school. Many classes have been reduced to just once zoom class per week while all other interaction with teachers consists of turning in homework assignments.
The problem with this scenario is that the students are expected (and need) to know all of these concepts in order for them to transition into the next class in the fall. That means that they’ll be starting the next level of instruction with a gap in their knowledge and skill set. This isn’t fair to their future teachers who will then attempt to teach those skills that weren’t taught this year along with all of the new concepts and skills they were planning to teach during the next school year.
Here’s what you can do as parent, teacher, and guidance counselor to your child:
1. Talk to your child’s teachers to determine what concepts will NOT be covered this year. Then look for resources that will help bridge this gap. Consider online lectures, videos, textbooks and other materials.
2. Use a planner to help your children organize their time so they can be sure to cover the additional reading, videos, or projects to supplement each of their academic classes. It’s easy for them to skip these extra steps amidst the lack of normalcy at home.
3. Insist that courses receive grades (not pass/fail) and work with your school to find solutions.
4. Hire a tutor who can teach concepts that your child is having difficulty with. Don’t let this snowball into a big problem next year.
5. If your children aren’t learning in one or more of their classes, consider enrolling them in accredited classes taught one-on-one with a real teacher (using Google Hangouts). They’ll have customized classes that focus just on your child. These courses will receive real grades (not pass/fail) and your children’s GPAs will be more favorable to college admissions officers.
Over 1000 colleges give students the option whether or not to declare their SAT or ACT scores with their college applications. Now the University of California is considering dropping the standardized test requirement for their admissions process at their 9 campuses. This is a highly controversial subject that comes on the heels of the admissions scandal where wealthy families paid proctors to cheat by giving their children unfair advantages.
Requiring SATs or ACTs has 2 problems: (1) These standardized tests do NOT identify students who will do well in college; and (2) Wealthy students who are average or even below average can receive excellent scores when their parents pay thousands of dollars for SAT or ACT private prep tutoring, which makes gives the rich students an unfair advantage over poor students.
The real problem colleges face is determining which students will be successful at their institutions. Grade point averages (GPAs) vary from school to school. In wealthy school districts where classes are taught by teachers who often hold advanced degrees, they often succumb to grade inflation due to an onslaught of demanding parents. On the other hand, in poorer school districts where they struggle to keep good teachers, these teachers burn out quickly when faced with students functioning several grade levels below average and often don’t have the foundation to learn the concepts. An “A” in one school could be a “C” in another.
Maybe the honest way for students to apply to colleges and for colleges to determine whether a student will be successful is to have a college application day where every student in the nation fills out the application form, writes their essays, and organizes their resumes in the school auditorium. Teachers and counselors could assist the students and answer questions as proctor the application day. That way, the colleges evaluate the students based on their own work and all students receive the same support and guidance. Just a thought…
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With the skyrocketing cost of college tuition, you may be wondering what the return on investment (ROI) is today. The average college graduate with a bachelor’s degree, will earn about $78,000 per year compared to just $45,000 for those with a high school diploma. The ROI is about 14%, which is considerably higher than the typical 8-9% investors expect from the stock market and other investments.
So keep up your grades and get your college degrees!
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…and how it will affect your child’s college admissions is alarming.
We all hear about grade inflation – when teachers give A’s to average students – and we look the other way, especially when our kids benefit from them, right? I’ve heard about teachers giving students a full-letter grade bump just for showing up to take the standardized tests at school each year. Others give students 10 points for bringing in snacks or class supplies. What’s worst of all are teachers who offer so much extra credit that students don’t do their work or study for tests because they know that one way or another, they can pull their terrible grades up to A’s by the end of the semester. None of this builds character or prepares students for college.
Grade inflation hurts the students.
Yup! Because so many schools are inflating grades – especially in white, affluent schools—colleges can’t rely on grade point averages (GPAs) to assess whether or not the students will be successful in their colleges. So when colleges can’t rely on the students’ grades, they revert to the SATs and ACTs. After all, college-bound students take the exact same test in a proctored classroom on the same day across the country. If we’re comparing apples to apples, this may seem more reliable than GPAs.
But SATs and ACTs don’t determine which students will be our next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Testing reading comprehension, grammar, math and science skills in a timed, multiple-choice format does not weed out students who would do poorly in college. Instead, students who do well on standardized tests today are those who can afford private SAT/ACT tutoring and spend years preparing for these tests.
Both the inflated GPA at wealthy white schools and high SAT/ACT scores due to expensive prep programs give these affluent students an unfair advantage. They aren’t better equipped to succeed in college; they’re simply able to afford to attend schools that give away A’s and spend many hours under the expensive supervision of SAT/ACT coaches.
The good news is that college admissions officers receive school profiles that list GPAs and demographics so they know which schools inflate grades. And colleges that require personal statements, essays, letters of recommendation and interviews use an eclectic approach to selecting their incoming classes. When a student stands out because they’ve done a project or something remarkable, colleges notice.
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