Staff Writer
The
North Carolina State Board of Education made the decision to eliminate the 7
point grading scale on October 2. This change will be effective in the
2015-2016 school year, beginning with next year’s freshman class.
The
Board of Education made the change in order to level the playing field for
North Carolina students applying to college who are up against high schoolers
from other states on the 10 point scale. Decreasing the dropout rate, and
increasing students morale are also goals that the board hopes to achieve with
the change. CTE teacher Gary Austin, said, “I think that this new system will
help get more students out the door and decrease the dropout rate, which is the
main reason they’re doing it. That’s great, but it is also true that students
aren’t going to have to try as hard to graduate. Kids who pass with a 60
obviously don’t care, and that lack of motivation isn’t going to help them once
they’re out in the real world.”
Certain
classes will have students from multiple grade levels, and they will be graded
on separate scales. Austin’s classes have students from each grade level. He
said, “The school board hasn’t really told us how we’re going to handle grading
on the new scale, but I do know that there is a way to go into Powerschool and
specify which grading scale you would like to use, so I’m assuming we’ll
separate the freshman from the other grade levels in the computer, and select a
new scale. If we decide to do it that way, it won’t be difficult.”
Changes
will also be made regarding the value of Honors and AP level courses. The value
of an Honors class will drop to only one half extra point, and AP will drop to
one. The extra points for AP classes previously allowed someone to achieve as
high as a 6.0 GPA, but now the maximum will be a 5.0.
Austin
said, “I used to think my 3.4 GPA was impressive, but now kids are feeling
pressured to take tons of AP classes, and a 4.0 isn’t even good anymore.
Colleges primarily look at letter grades and GPA, so the 10 point scale is
going to help out the students applying to college in a big way.”
