At DS's H.S. and the junior high grade are very rigid.
90-100% A
80-99% B
70-79% C
60-69% D
<59.9 F
And there is some graduation for +'s an -'s, I not precisely sure where those lines are ... I think it's
90.0 <= A- < 92.5 <= A < 97.5 <= A+
Repeated, for the other grades. Except F's are just F's. What is different is some teachers round at different places so my son got a A- last semester with a 89.97 and a different teacher might call that a B+. Teachers and classes differ a LOT how much different assignments score, but finals are no more than 15% of the grade. And there can be no more than 3% extra credit awarded. Teachers even those teaching the same class sometimes weight different assignments even for the same class differently, so you can get a teacher where test grades matter more than homework or vice-verse. There is no curving. If everyone deserves an A, everyone gets one. But this rarely happens for semester grades because the teachers just grade the next assignments harder if they do. If all students do very poorly on a test, I've seen teacher re-think some of the questions and up everyone's grade.
There is one exception to this rule, ONE English teacher my DD had graded on a much lower curve. I don't remember but a 50 was a C or something along those lines. Freaked out a lot of students.
When I was a student in High School teachers often graded on a Curve. Very maddening, although it usually helped students not hurt. Top score might be a 89/100. And that was certainly the case in university. My husband grades his university classes on a 'curve', BUT it's not a "true" curve where 10% must fail, and 10% get A's and most students get "C"s. It's more look at the grade distributions, have a lower bound that isn't passing and assign grades based on what usually end up as obvious clusters with a goal of fairly evenly distributing the grades between A-C, giving out only minimal and usually deserving D's & F's.
Last edited by bluemagic; 02/26/15 08:41 PM.
