Grading system to be evaluated
By James Cullum
When a college admissions office receives an application from a Fairfax County student with a cumulative grade point average of 3.4, then reviews the application of a student from outside the county with similar qualifications, but with a GPA of 4.0, which of the two will receive greater consideration for admission?
Last week the Fairfax County School Board directed staff to return this October with a comprehensive study of the county's six-point grading system.
For the past six months, a small group of Fairfax County parents have been researching grading statistics around the country. Those parents formed FAIRGRADE, advocating for the reformation of the school system grading policy. Multiple presentations across the county have prompted the school board to act.
"We need grading policies that allow our students to be competitive with the national playing field," said FAIRGRADE co-founder Megan McLaughlin, a former admissions officer at Georgetown University and Duke University.
In the six-point system used in Fairfax County, an A is equivalent to receiving a grade of 94 or higher on a test or on a report card.
Schools in some surrounding counties, like Arlington County and Montgomery County, Md., operate on a 10-point scale. A grade of 90 in those counties is considered an A, while in Fairfax County, it is a B+. AP and IB courses are also given greater weight in determining a higher GPA.
Saying that Fairfax County, the 13th largest school system in the country, is setting children up for failure is debatable, said school board chair Dan Storck.
"Having three kids myself, with two of them struggling to get into college, there's clearly an impact," Storck said. But, "colleges are relying on the county's reputation and consistency in the grading process. When there's 100,000 [county students], they recognize who we are."
But when only 5 percent of students at Langley High School in McLean have a GPA of 4.0 or higher and 33 percent of students at Churchill High School in Montgomery County have GPAs of 4.0 or higher, "Are their kids smarter than our kids, or does their grading scale layer the curve differently?" Storck said.
In two months, more than 6,000 signatures have been submitted to FAIRGRADE in online and mail-in petitions.
Critics of changing the policy say that standards are being lowered, rewarding students with better grades with less effort.
But responses to FAIRGRADE from colleges around the country indicate that, although standards may be lowered, the current grading system does not help county students in the admissions process.
Admissions offices in prominent colleges said they do not recalculate GPAs, not giving students in a six-point system a fighting chance against applications with grades based on a 10-point system.
The admissions office at the University of Maryland wrote, "We use the GPA provided by the [high school]. If you determine that an A is a 94-100 we make no adjustments to the GPA to account for that."
Villanova wrote, "We do not re-calculate GPAs for admissions."
The highly selective Williams College wrote: "We review GPAs as reported by the high school."
Brown University admissions wrote: "We do not 'recalculate' GPAs."
For more on FAIRGRADE, go to www.fairgrade.com.