The Value of an A

This is quite interesting. And I'm making it the first writing assignment for my upcoming College Comp II class.

I need to remind myself of this every day --

“An A should mean outstanding work; it should not be the default grade,” Mr. Perrin said. “If everyone gets an A for adequate completion of tasks, it cripples our ability to recognize exemplary scholarship.”

Too often, I think teachers have been indoctrinated into giving an A for completion, rather than outstanding work or rigorous content mastery. I think too parents are just as guilty.

I marvel at conferences how many times parents will gloss over all of the A's and focus on the one or two D's or F's on an assignment sheet. They totally neglect to note their child's final grade even!

"Why does Johnnie have an F on this?"

"Well, he does have a solid B for the class," I respond. But that rarely matters.

Now with KoKo at Lincoln, the shoe is on the other foot, but when I view her grade reports, I remind myself to look at the overall grade first, and then the assignments.

Do I get after KoKo if she has a low grade?

That depends. If I feel the class is rigorous and challenging, then she might very well struggle and earn a few F's. But if the F's are for missing work or laziness, well, that's a different story.

I think if parents, administrators, teachers, and students returned to the idea that A's represent outstanding work - and not just completed work - this grade inflation insanity would end.

In the PBS documentary, Declining By Degrees, a former university president ponders why are 80% of all grades B or better when 75 years ago 80% of all grades were C or worse.

Are we that much smarter? Or have we lightened up?

I'm think we've grown soft.

Now, I'm not saying we have to go as hardcore as one Ivy Leaguer -

"Princeton adopted guidelines in 2004 providing that no more than 35 percent of undergraduate grades should be A’s, a policy that remains controversial on campus."

But I do think it's a little silly when you talk to the valedictorian from 1978 and they were the top in the class with a 3.89 GPA and now we have close to a dozen students with perfect 4.0's or better.

Maybe Reed College, has it right --

"At Reed College, transcripts are accompanied by an explanatory card. Last year’s graduating class had an average G.P.A. of 3.20, it says, and only 10 percent of the class graduated with a G.P.A. of 3.67 or higher.

“We also tell them that in 26 years, only 10 students have graduated with a perfect 4.0 average — and three of them were transfers who didn’t get all those grades at Reed,” said Nora McLaughlin, the registrar at Reed. “We wanted to put the grades at Reed in context to be sure that graduate schools, particularly professional schools where G.P.A. is very much an important factor, understand how capable our students are.”

I enjoyed this article. I'm going to assign it on the first day of College Comp II. We'll discuss it and then I'll assign them an essay with this topic - "An 'A' represents outstanding work. Now write an essay worthy of an outstanding grade."

It would be interesting to see how many truly outstanding papers I would receive.