DD14 came home the other day upset because of one of the quirks of the weighted GPA system at her school.

All of the pre-IB Freshmen take the same six honors-level classes and have a weighted GPA (A=5). Freshman are allowed to take band, orchestra or choir as a seventh class but no other seventh classes are allowed. The music classes are not considered honors (A=4).

DD had straight A's. Since she took band, her overall GPA is lower than the kids who did not take band and had straight A's. Bottom line is that her GPA would have been better off if she had not taken band. She is miffed that she took the same classes as the other kids plus an extra class and is ranked lower in the class because of it. She doesn't regret taking band but her "justice police" streak is having a hard time with this one.

We've talked about taking the classes that she wants and exploring different interests through electives. We've talked about it being an imperfect system and that colleges will look at actual transcripts. She gets all of that but still finds this issue annoying.

Has anyone else run into issues with how the high schools implement weighted GPAs?

Yes, wow. I'm surprised high schools have not yet seen this flaw in their system and corrected it. Our high school, many moons ago, had a similar system. It provided a real disincentive to any students who were primarily in honors/higher weighted classes to delve into too many non-honors classes, lest their GPA would artificially plummet! It bothered me back then, too!

One thing I've seen schools do is offer "honors" for some "less academic" classes. This classes are challenging, and require invitation. These can be controversial, too, though.

But then I've heard of the "flip side," where schools have removed such weighting, meaning that students who opt to "accept" the honors classes that were recommended for them...no longer get the GPA boost. Those classes, in my experience, did not COMPARE to regular classes (more work, more challenging, etc.), so this is also a terrible solution, IMO.

Has anyone seen a GOOD fair system for including weighted GPAs, but not discouraging lower GPA classes?

I'll bet lots of us have stories about GPA weighting rules. I transferred into my high school in junior year, and the school did not transfer my prior Honors classes at A=5. So I was salutatorian, not valedictorian, despite higher (actual) grades and harder classes than the valedictorian. Eh.

So, unfairness is just out there, as it is in any rule system.

Keep in mind, though, that the vagaries of weighting are well-known to college admissions officers, who often compute an UNweighted GPA as well. Class rank, too, is such an imperfect indicator: hard to know what it means without knowing the other kids. So I wouldn't worry too too much.

I suspect you're right that the "plus" from her music enrollment and higher course load will outweigh the lower weighted GPA.

There are many online discussions of weighted GPA, most in regard to college admissions.

In addition to considering GPA, institutions may look at the total number of credits taken. Those who took only the weighted courses and no others may be seen as not availing themselves of all the opportunities offered.

These thoughts may not help a student seeking specifically to be valedictorian, but they may prove helpful for college admissions and beyond.

Our district doesn't do class rank anymore. Any honor rolls that kids make are based on unweighted GPA's.I know in our district junior/senior year though you can take one class pass/fail but that doesn't help in your case. I agree with GF2 with it being a "plus" though it lowers the GPA. This may seem dumb but I'm not sure why you get a grade for taking band. High School athletes don't get graded for being on a sports team.

Several schools and districts which claim not to generate a class rank, actually do generate a class rank which is used in determining valedictorian and salutatorian and is also furnished to colleges, however it may not appear on student report cards or progress reports, or on parent/student copies of transcripts. Evidently class rank is not considered to be a data item covered by FERPA, but rather a school-specific statistic and therefore is not required to be furnished to the parents/students.

I could be wrong but I couldn't find a valedictorian or salutatorian info anywhere in our district.

In the grand scheme of things, I don't think that weighted GPA will affect what classes my DD chooses to take. She wants to take some electives in areas that truly interest her. I'm encouraging her to explore since she is cursed with multi-potentiality and doesn't know which direction to go. I most definitely do not want her to take classes only based on how they might affect her GPA.



Sports teams are extra curricular. Marching band also is an extracurricular activity that is not graded and they will take almost anyone who is willing to pick up an instrument.

Band, orchestra and choir are actual classes given during the school day that are graded based on a variety of things including playing tests, music theory and concert performances. You have to audition into these classes.

Our district also does not use class rank or award valedictorian.

This is off topic, but you have touched a sore point for me, so I'd like to explain why kids can get grades for band (sort of like getting a grade for taking art, or architectural drawing, or computers, or... I'm not sure I get the distinction where band is not a class).

I don't know about other districts, but here, the wind ensemble and highest level of symphony are considered to be the equivalent of college level courses in the amount of work and skill expected. I think the comparison with sports doesn't add up, as the music ensembles meet for a specific class period every day, during the day (thus kids taking these courses have one fewer period to take what you might consider to be more academic courses). In addition to written work, they are tested and graded on specific aspects of their playing (technical skill, musicality) and have to submit recordings of their parts for part checks, There is quite a bit of theory, performance, practice, lessons during school, etc- the amount of work that is done and evaluated is easily more than most of my daughter's other honors courses. The fact that this work is "rewarded" with a grade is unimportant, as others have mentioned, it is the activity itself that holds the value. However, the fact that she can take fewer electives or can't easily double up on academic classes means that having the course graded is appropriate, in my mind. She's certainly being evaluated on her work, just as a visual artist, or student in other non-traditionally academic subject would be evaluated.

Our school does not weight or rank precisely for this sort of reason. It fosters unhealthy behaviors and competition.

My daughters in 7th grade and takes band for a grade. My point was not to minimize the difficulty of the course but the fact in the original posters complaint it lowered her daughters GPA. My comparison with a sport was a bad one.

We saw this bus coming from a long way off, so we made sure to let DD14 know that while we expect her GPA to be good, we would rather she challenge herself than play it safe for a higher class rank. This is one of those times where you have to encourage your kid to miss out on the honor of appearing to be the best student by having her gain real knowledge and experience instead. In my opinion, it is better to have a real education and no award, than an award and a half-arsed education to go with it.

A couple of DD14s friends have the highest GPAs in her class and, thank goodness, DD does think it silly how they maneuver around to keep it as high as possible.

In my graduating class, I felt bad for our salutatorian. Our school had unweighted GPAs, and the salutatorian had one B and everything else As - while taking a fairly rigorous schedule. The valedictorian of my class took almost no rigor, and skated to all As.

Best of luck,
--S.F.

Agreed! There is a Latin phrase which applies here: "Esse quam videri" meaning "To be, rather than to seem (to be)". It has been used as a motto by a number of different groups including the State of North Carolina.

Fortunately, more college admissions seem to be taking many factors into account rather than relying primarily on GPA.

Succinct, and since it's in Latin it sounds cool too. I had not encountered that phrase before, but am jotting it down now. Thank you Indigo.

Have a good day,
--S.F.

ITA with you Frog. The thing we wrestle with here is that ds' school program mantra is all about "getting into the *best* college", and GPA is stressed by his counselor, as well as by a lot of parents so there are a lot of students hyper-focused on it. DS' counselor has gone so far as to point out that if you opt to add high school courses taken in middle school to your transcript you might "accidentally" lower your cumulative GPA by adding in additional classes with non-weighted As and the same can happen by taking additional classes during high school which aren't weighted.

The only classes which are weighted here are AP courses - honors courses, gifted courses, accelerated courses, dual credit college courses etc are not weighted.

I find the emphasis on class standing and GPA very frustrating - and I'm not a student!

polarbear

Polarbear - Very frustrating, I agree and can empathize with you. DD14s situation sounds very similar to your DSs. Only AP courses carry weight, so As in non-AP classes can lower your overall GPA. Same situation on HS classes taken in MS, too.

Luckily our DD has bought into our mantra of bettering herself rather than her GPA. Taking two foreign languages and band, even while getting A+s in all three, causes her GPA to trail behind others in her class who max out mainly on APs and avoid filling their schedule with other classes. But she LOVES taking two languages and thoroughly enjoys band.

Oh well. I keep hoping that, at the end of the day, she won't be worse off by bettering herself.

Best of luck,
--S.F.

PB, this is what we are running into. Much as I am trying to encourage DD to explore areas that interest her (math, music and visual arts), she constantly has the school culture whispering in her ear, "How will that affect your ability to get into college?" This whole discussion was prompted by the school giving out class rankings which I think is somewhat ludicrous after one semester of classes. Some of DDs friends are talking about dropping band/orchestra because of the GPA effect.

DD has no desire to drop music. She's just irritated by an imperfect system. As a parent, I'm trying to help her keep things in perspective. I keep reminding her that I have no worries that she will get into college - that's pretty much a given unless something truly catastrophic happens. I told her that I want her to focus on figuring out what she wants to do in life and how college fits in with those goals.

I was curious whether anyone had seen a better weighting system. I'm not hearing that there is one out there.

There isn't. People figure out how to "game" them all, making the attempt rather pointless within a very short time.

Some of DD's top-10 "competitors" in school used a lot of trickery to goose their GPA's; avoiding classes which were unweighted by taking them over the summer at other institutions, so that they wouldn't be part of the calculated GPA, figuring out ways to have ONLY their AP/Honors weighted courses included in their GPA, etc. Some of those tactics were pretty extreme.

I was pretty happy to see that the kid when went au naturale there was the one who wound up number 1 in the end. I think that in her case (and I'd feel this way if she'd wound up number 2 or even 3) the weighting system really worked, because her transcripts are not pristine-- she has grades other than A+ on them. She was able to take risks and learn from mistakes.

I also kind of had to laugh, because for all of that jockeying around, the two radically accelerated PG kiddos were the ones who wound up 1,2-- and WAY out in front of the rest of the class. The reason was that they were the two who were able to truly ace the AP coursework and take on a wider variety of it-- not just mathy or lit-based stuff, but pretty much every offering.

Yes, my DD did do some playing of the game (she added AP USH late when she realized that her gpa was dropping because of an unweighted advanced math course that she was getting straight A's in)-- but only when it served her interests as a whole as well as her desire to be number 1.

For a perfectionist PG kid in a system that was insufficiently challenging, that top spot wasn't that unreasonable a goal, so we didn't feel that we could really say much about it when she decided she wanted it. It wasn't unhealthy in any way, that competition. DD knew everyone in the top 5, and was good friends with 3 of those people, and cordial with the other one.

I guess I look at this sort of thing this way-- secondary ed isn't really much more than a game at this point in many schools. DD was marking time until she had that bit of paper and could move along to the next stage in her life. She needed certain soft skills and better executive function for that next stage, so that is what her high school career was mostly about. It wasn't for learning the curriculum, which she mostly found trivially easy. Learning to play the game and play well-- I rationalize that this, too, has a place in the world. I further posit that kids at high LOG and who have strong justice orientations may need, more than others, to learn those things, because a lot of it is about how unethical a contestant is willing to be in order to "win" at any point in time. My DD had to decide on an existential level whether she was willing to play-- and to what degree. What did her own ethics dictate about what constituted reasonable personal conduct there?

SHE decided, for example, that she refused to superscore on standardized exams. She finds the practice abhorrent and dishonest, and couldn't do it in spite of the fact that she KNOWS that she is in a very small minority among high-achieving peers. She can't do anything about them-- only herself. So she lived with a disappointing set of SAT scores, and vowed to do better with the ACT (which she did).

That kind of decision-making and growth was a really important step prior to college, which asks kids to live in an ambiguous environment where THEY must adapt to the system as it is. That's a really tough thing for young matriculants, in my experience. The rules in the game of life aren't really the same for everyone. That's just the way it is.

I feel your pain. Luckily, our school did away with class rank, but they still confer Latin honors, and it's difficult to get highest honors if a student takes too many unweighted courses. My son knows that taking orchestra all four years will lower his GPA, which does annoy me, given that it's a very rigorous music curriculum. I have no idea how this could be fixed - even if one limits the number of weighted grades a student could receive in a given year, there are other ways to "game" the system (students figuring out which no-cut varsity sport they can join to try and get an exemption from the required, but non-weighted PE... or back when it was offered, student would take the Consumer Education proficiency test to get out of taking the non-weighted, but required in our state, course). I want my kids to be well rounded and be able to take art or music or business classes, all of which are unweighted. I tell my son that all of the kids who are at the top, trying to inch their GPA a little higher, will likely be accepted to many colleges based on GPA and ACT/SAT scores. The real fight will be for scholarships or elite acceptances, and for those, it will be much more beneficial to look well-rounded than to have a tenth of a point higher GPA. At least I hope that is true!

"secondary ed isn't really much more than a game at this point in many schools"

I agree. But it's a dangerous game being played by people and entities who are showing a frightening lack of concern for the game pieces (i.e., our children). I don't mean to be melodramatic, but this: http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ge...for-answers-in-wake-of-student-suicides. Reading the quotes from the good kids trying to find their way in this good school with good teachers and administrators who are trying so hard and still this happens over and over and over - it's heart breaking and very frightening.

Even though DS7 is young enough that he's not yet in the game, I know it's coming faster than I can imagine. We are telling him all the right things and modeling the behavior he'll need. I hope it's enough. Even more - I hope the people playing - and using - this game will finally cut it out. As a kindergarten teacher's poster says "The child is not going to be somebody. The child IS somebody."

I'm sorry to be emotional here. But the problem is so much on my mind these days.

Sue

Sue, I concur. Having been through that step of "processing" with my child, I have to say that I never though that was the sort of scaffolding that I'd find myself doing.

It was both eye-opening and sobering. You truly cannot expect to win on merit alone anymore-- because so many of those around you will stop at pretty much nothing. So if you intend to live within your own code of ethics, it may come at some cost. Choose wisely, yes-- but also make peace with the possible consequences of that choice.

Thanks HowlerKarma. If you don't mind my saying - I read eagerly about your child's progress and it often gives me hope. Whatever you did - you did a great job!

ETA - I guess more properly, "are doing a great job"! It's never really "done", right?

Sue

Could they not just base the GPA on the core subjects.

What would be core subjects?

This is one of the reasons our school DOES NOT RANK students based on GPA. Because of the shenanigans that some students would do to get that extra point. Our school doesn't give ANY freshman, honors or not the extra point. Extra points only start in H. Pre-Calc for math. And only two classes sophomore year count for the extra point. The school honors all seniors in top 3% of the students. And instead of a valedictorian, anyone in that 3% is allowed to submit a graduation speech and there is a selection processed for who gets to speak at graduation.

In addition all kids must take PE that doesn't get weighted. And most top students try to stay UC eligible and to do that you needs to take an art or music class. Top GPA's that one can possibly get at our school is about a 4.38. Last our school provides 3 GPA's on their transcript. Total GPA, Academic GPA, and Weighted Academic GPA. In our case Band is considered in the Academic GPA but marching band & PE are not. Classes that are included in the academic GPA are those that are "UC Eligible".

Continue to encourage your daughter to take band. The benefits to this will by far outweight ranking above the kids who didn't take music or art.

A unified voice from the gifted community might be one which states that GPA is just one measure of an individual's education, and encourages talking up the value of a diverse array of accomplishments, roles, and experiences.

It seems that many college admissions offices already value diverse criteria and credentials, but the message is somehow lost at the high school level. Possibly due to high schools striving for their own ratings and rankings, over and above managing the expectations of the students.

One thing here is that there is no honors for language levels I and II. But Spanish an d other languages are honors automatically at level III. I wish there was a regular and an honors Spanish I...my son would like it to be harder.

The OP implied that that her daughter and the others did six subjects the same but her daughter did an extra. I would take core subjects to be anything that isn't an elective. English, maths, science, second language if required.

By this definition the GPA for core classes wouldn't accomplish what I think the original poster was suggesting. Foreign language wouldn't be included nor any math after Geometry. The label our H.S. uses is 'Academic GPA'. Academic is any class that is approved for college entrance at the state university systems. Thus for us PE wouldn't be included and some art, music classes are included while other are not.

Many university calculate their own GPA for entrance weighting and counting only the classes they are interested. So this is not really as much a factor for college entrance as it is for some invisible ranking.

Different system I guess. We don't really have such a thing at high school.

I think my son will always be near the top of his high school class (he is currently really high). But we make educational decisions based on his needs not looking at ranking. He actually needs all honors and AP to be happy and you can't get that because some classes don't come honors.

Maybe he will end up valedictorian, maybe not. But he will have gotten the education he wanted. There are 700 kids in his class and only one can be number one. Granted the drop out rate is high and his class will be smaller in 3 years. But still the chance is slim.

Any metric used for college admissions will be gamed, and I fear that holistic admissions is often used to smuggle in various preferences. In addition to GPA, maybe colleges should also look at the number of credits earned in academic subjects. Of course, if this becomes a commonly used metric, some people will take extra classes just to pile on credits. Elite college admissions processes will always be evolving.

I think you're correct, Bostonian. I've concluded that there pretty much IS no system that can't be gamed, no stat that can't be goosed somehow. Not really.

Cookie, this is the exact thinking that led DD to that number one spot. We had no idea what her class rank was until the school counselor offered us the info (#2 and then #3) when she grade-skipped again from 9th to 11th. That really hurt her chances, truthfully-- because she jumped from a class where she was one of just two very clear favorites to one in which there were about 5 elite performing students. I'm not the only parent who noted that about her graduating class, incidentally-- the top 5 in her group were truly an amazing bunch of kids.

Still-- it was definitely not a reason not to skip. Never even crossed our minds until later that it might have an impact. We were thinking about things the way that Cookie is. Those AP courses were the best preparation for college-- not in terms of level, necessarily, and definitely not in terms of pacing-- but in terms of the workload and time management. As a radically accelerated student, that was the set of domains that she most needed development in prior to post-secondary, so a fuller-than-typical schedule and AP coursework jammed with continuous assignments/expectations was ideal.

Agreed! Encouraging kids to listen to their inner voice, plan, and be flexible may be the enduring message.

The only constant is change.

Not true in my district you get a grade for athletics, marching band, drama, ASP (student council), art, and PE. There are some things like academic teams that are only 'clubs' but I've heard of schools that teams like Science Olympiad are classes with teachers and grades. Most of these classes ask more time of the students than most academic classes do even with the huge amount of homework some of them give. Not all classes get 'academic' credit but they all count towards graduation and the total GPA.

My kid takes two classes concert band & marching band. Both are classes & both get grades, marching band qualifies for PE credit. You can't be enrolled in marching band if you aren't enrolled in concert band. Concert Band 'counts' as a UC course (aka academic course) but Marching Band doesn't. In concert band you learn different skills than you would in a a math or english class. But learning to read music, learning to follow the instructor, work as a large group are all important educational skills. Students go to university to study music, shouldn't their H.S. music classes count for credit & a grade?