Fairfax considers Fairgrade

A large and enthusiastic audience greeted Fairgrade president and co-founder Megan McLaughlin at Luther Jackson Middle School on Aug. 25. She, along with nine other panelists, presented the possibility of completely changing Fairfax County Public School’s grading policies.

This panel discussion was convened to debate shifting FCPS from a 6-point grading scale to a 10-point grading scale. In the proposed 10-point system, an A would be from 90-100, a B would be from 80-89, a C would be from 70-79, etc.

“[Fairfax County Public Schools] students need to consider out-of-state public universities that offer high quality education at an affordable price,” McLaughlin said. “Merit-scholarships allow for that. But when an FCPS student earns a B+ instead of an A/A- for the same numeric achievement, they appear less competitive for both admissions and scholarships.”

McLaughlin, a former Georgetown admissions officer, is one of three co-founders who created Fairgrade in January of this year. Along with a small group of parents, Fairgrade founders researched grading policies from school districts around the country and discovered that Fairfax County grades were lower than the average. This would put students at a disadvantage, they said, when applying for college and scholarships.

Another perceived disparity that Fairgrade brought to light is that in many other districts give an additional 1.0 GPA boost for Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB), while Fairfax County awards a 0.5 GPA boost. In addition, other school districts give a GPA boost for Honors classes while none is granted in here.

“Each of [the students’] files will have an academic profile that tells us the grading scale. We try to get an understanding of what that grade means within that school and within that class,” Greg Roberts, senior associate dean of admission at the University of Virginia, said. He was among a diverse panel, which had members ranging from college admissions officers to a Fairfax County parent.

“Of course I want [the change],” said junior Raquel Tripp. “People say that colleges take into account our grading scale, but a lot of [other] people think they don’t look [at our transcripts] as carefully as they say they do.”

Shannon Gundy, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Maryland, informed parents that Maryland is well aware of Fairfax County’s reputation and the grading policy it operates under.

“I do think, though, that there is a danger that the farther away you get from the state of Virginia, the less likely it is that people are going to be familiar with the caliber of students [in Fairfax County],” Gundy said.

John Lattig, dean of undergraduate admissions at Johns Hopkins University, explained that when evaluating students, the most important factor to him is the rigor of the courses that students take.

“[However], I think an important distinction needs to be made,” McLaughlin said. “A student from Montgomery County could take five AP’s their senior year, and so could a student from Fairfax County. If those two students both earned 93’s in their courses, that student from Montgomery County would have 5 A’s. The student from Fairfax County would have 5 B’s. Here are two kids with courses of equal rigor, but the one [with] lower grades appears less competitive.”

McLaughlin added that Fairgrade contacted 45 schools on the top 100 national high schools list created by U.S. News & World Report magazine. Of those schools, only one used a 6-point grading scale. All the other schools either used a 10-point grading scale, a numerical scale or no scale at all.

“I want to level the playing field, and I want to do it this year,” McLaughlin said.

There is a possible downside to the proposed system. Lauren Runco, daughter of English teacher Jennifer Seavey, was a senior at Paschal High School in Fort Worth, Texas when she applied to the University of Florida. Her 4.1 GPA, which was based on the 10-point grading scale with a 1.0 GPA boost for AP and honors courses, was automatically discounted to a 3.4.

“It came as quite a surprise that my daughter seemed to be a victim of systemic grade inflation,” Seavey said. “I would have preferred that her grades represented reality, not wishful thinking.”

Some also fear that giving a bigger GPA boost at Jefferson, where students already place heavy emphasis on how many AP classes they take, would only encourage this AP-focused culture.

“I don't think AP courses should receive a GPA boost. At a neighborhood school, this has the positive effect of encouraging students to challenge themselves in a harder course, but at TJ, there are a lot of high quality non-AP courses, and the GPA boost has the negative effect of encouraging students to take AP courses instead,” said technology teacher Shane Torbert. “If our goal was to have students take a broad array of AP courses this would make sense, but I don't think that's actually our goal.”

Other teachers also point out that adjusting the grading scale may not necessarily mean there would be a large shift in grade distribution.

“[Teachers] all know what an A is, a B is and a D is, and we grade assignments accordingly,” said physics teacher Duncan Forbes. “It is a trivial matter to adjust the grading scale to properly reflect a student's mastery of the material.”

A decision will be made by Superintendent Jack Dale and the School Board by November of this year after reviewing the information provided by Fairgrade.

“I asked [my daughter] what she thought about the whole controversy…she heard what you guys do here [because her school system operates under a 10-point grading scale] and she thought you guys were crazy,” said panel moderator Greg Toppo, an education reporter for USA Today, pausing while the crowd clapped and cheered. “But I said, ‘Think about it for a second, 94-100, if you had that grading system, wouldn’t you work harder?’ And she said, ‘Absolutely.’ ”