I was wondering how this varies around the country/world. In Middle School or High School - what are the percentage cut-offs for getting A's, B's etc ?? In our district it is as follows - <64.5% F. 64.5%-75.4% D 75.5%-84.4% C 84.5%-92.4% B and over 92.5% A.
I don't recall what it was when I was in school, but I do know that if I was in school today, and scored 9 out of 10 only to get a B, I'd give up really quickly !

I have heard that some places and areas do it differently, like you have reported. In my experience, F was always 60 and below, 60-69 was a D, 70-79 was a C, etc. "Minuses" would be given for a 60, 70, etc and a plus would be given on a 69, 79, etc. I think this is what is used in our district.

I wonder if systems like you describe are in response to grade inflation.

No data, just a scream of disbelief. 75% is a D?! 84% is a C?! That's lunatic. Some kind of weird grade-inflation deflation reaction?

OK, I looked up our (Canadian) Board (percents are only used in high school around here, and we're still elementary). While the numbers below seem fairly consistent with my long-ago memories of school, I note that "Students who achieve B or above have met the expectations for the course, and are prepared for the next course along the current pathway", suggesting that both C and D - anything below 70 - is a fail?

Is everybody's marking so bizarre these days? I am so not ready to deal with high school.

Achievement Level Percentage Marks
A+ 95-100
A 87-94
A- 80-86

B+ 77-79
B 73-76
B- 70-72

C+ 67-69
C 63-66
C- 60-62

D+ 57-59
D 53-56
D- 50-52

Here is is 90 and above is an A, 95 and above is Honor Roll.
B is 80-89, etc.

Most prep schools I know of an A is something like 93 and above, similar to the OP.

Wow, but then the Canadian ones seem too high to me!This is interesting.

When I was in high school in New Hampshire (early 80s), the grades were as follows:

93-100%: A
85-92: B
77-84:C
70-76: D
<= 69: F

In Ireland (and I think the UK), exams were much harder when I was a student in the 80s and 90s, and were written so that getting everything right wasn't expected or generally possible:

70% + : "First or I." High and rare-ish.

60-69: "Two one or II. Still a very high mark. Often a cutoff for getting into Ph.D. program.

50-59: "Two-two or II.2." A decent mark.

40-49: "Third or III" You passed.

A friend's mother had gone to Oxford on the late 50s/early 60s. She told me that back then, Oxford had a fourth that was also a passing score. Think she called it something akin to a gentleman's D-- (I don't remember her actual term, but mine captures the spirit of what she said).

In my school, 94 to 100 was an A, but this was not meaningful, since most teachers graded on a curve.

Depends on the grading system and calculation method. A traditional percentage based system is done by 10 point increments:

A: 90-100
B: 80-89
C: 70-79...

That is generally considered standard with the plusses and minuses given in the two points adjacent to the next corresponding grade.

Of course, the above system can be adjusted in countless ways. If I were to give a high school class a middle school level assignment (I don't know why I would... but if I did), it might be appropriate to adjust the scale upward accordingly. Or downward in the case of a particularly rigorous assignment.

Another approach is to curve grades based on actual performance. There are many ways to do this, including

a) Using the top attained score rather than the total number of problems as the basis for calculating percentages (nobody got 100/100, so I'm calculating this on the basis of 94 which was the top attained score).

b) Eliminating commonly missed problems.

c) Using a standardized distribution such as a bell curve, which places the bulk of students in C range and radiating outward by some quantile in both directions (this used to be much more common, I rarely see this done anymore).

d) I'm going to stop, there are thousands of ways to do this... you get the idea.

BUT, other options and systems obviously exist...

In the International Baccalaureate Program, grades are given on a scale of 1–7, with 7 representing highest achievement. But, because these grades correspond with rubric requirements, one could theoretically answer 90% of questions on an exam correctly, but still get a 5 if the missed 10% represented crucial problems that corresponded to the 6 and 7 grade bands.

Percentile grading is still used at some universities, which is similar to curving grades, but results in the top 20% getting the equivalent of an A, the next 20% a B, and so on.

All of this, by the way, is one of the justifications for standardized testing. At any given school, any number of these systems can be employed in different classrooms. Administrators often try to crack down on really radical variance, and increasingly campus wide grading software is being used (like Blackbaud), which enforces a 10% traditional grade scale.

This pretty much sums up my DD14s high school grading system (and middle school too).

--S.F.

When I went to school it was pretty much as TC posted, starting at 64 for D. I have no idea why we did it that way and that was back in the early 90's. It was only for high school though, elementary was O, S, and U and middle school was the standard 60, 70, etc.

It made it pretty difficult to get an A when you had to get 94. An 89 wan't even a B+, it was just an average B.

I did not go to a high achieving school. I went to a rural school in the US where 68 out of over 130 kids actually graduated from HS. Not all of the others were drop outs, quite a few went to technical school. My school didn't offer many electives and only had 2 languages. So, I don't think there is any logic to the decision some schools seem to make to switch to non-standard grading like this.

It's based on the belief that showing up and regurgitating what you've been taught is the best that you can do. It's pretty common in these systems to get 100% for an essay. In these systems where the top grade needs close to perfect scores there is usually a very different grade distribution. There's also a correlation with extra credit, so the stated percentage is often not actually the true percentage.

In my extensive experience an A is not nearly as valuable in the places where you have to get 94% as it is in places where you have to get 75%.

why is there no E?

Anyway I remember in Australia they used to (20 years ago....)
have:
Very low achievement 0 - 30%
low achievement 30 - 50%
pass 50 - 70%
High achievement 70 - 85%
Very high achievement 85 - 100%

I was the proud owner of several VLA scores for calculus. My parents just about threw a party when I got a Low achievement one semester. Funny because now I'm learning calculus for fun

Our independent school in VA:

A+ 98-100
A 93-97
A- 90-92

B+ 87-89
B 83-86
B- 80-82

C+ 77-79
C 73-76
C- 70-72

F Below 70

At my high school (private, Canadian) and all the Canadian universities I've attended, 80%+ was an A.

In my high school graduating class of ~100, only the top 5 students had averages above 90.

To be in the top 1% of the faculty of arts and science as a whole in my undergrad didn't require a 90%+ average. The lower cut-off was around 85% for top 1%, depending on the year.

In the grad schools I attended, a 3.7 GPA (A-) was the approximate minimum threshold for the top 10% of the program.

Mine in NZ were much like that. National exams were often scaled to a bell curve with at 50% mean. I have never met anyone who got 10O% except in something like a lab quiz and multi choice is not commonly used although there may be a section that has it.

Oh we had A+, A, A-, B+,B, B-, C+, D.

Primary schools don't have grades and I am not sure high schools do now as the new system works in ways I don't undestand.

One of the big problems converting my DDs school marks to something understood in the US is that 90% at her school is rare. The best mark in a subject might be in the low 80's. Alternatively she topped a subject one year with 97% and still didn't get an A. The school marking system is unknowable and seemingly quite random. In one year she got a mark in the 50s for Physical Ed and Health despite nearly topping the Health component and having a medical exemption for the physical stuff. Horrible teacher. If you ask questions you get a shrug of the shoulders and a bad reputation!

The true percentage may also be obscured by grade replacement practices as discussed in this old post.

Even crazier at my kids high school, the teacher decides what level is considered an "A." So her biology teacher sets the bar at 92% and up, while her social studies teacher sets it at 90% and up. It's noted on her schedule.

Knute, at least it's noted.

In higher ed, it (IME) isn't standardized at all, nor does it have to be explicitly stated in a lot of institutions-- that is, the faculty member can decide. In fact, if s/he doesn't note it in writing at the start of the term, it can change.

(Yes, I find such tactics fairly deplorable, myself.)

I was a big fan of Moomin's first described practice, and from there, using a straight 90/80/70 percentage-based metric with my own classes. The only part that they found confusing was that I did it on an assignment basis rather than a term-long, cumulative one. So the top score on any one assignment became 100% for that assignment. I let the chips fall where they would with respect to the larger summation of student scores, however.

Generally speaking, this worked to the advantage of students, and I also told them that if they all earned A's, I'd be happy with that. Usually, grades followed a normal distribution anyway, for whatever that is worth. I tracked my stats pretty carefully, and I taught the same service courses a lot, so I had a fair amount of data.

I found that it actively encouraged a positive learning community within a class, and fostered healthy (rather than unhealthy) competition, and it tended to make students much more accepting of their own mistakes since I was telling them at the outset that I wasn't perfect either, and didn't expect to be (because this kind of grading scheme automatically ditches bad questions, since the 'top scorer' probably won't get them right either).

I feel that it is sad that more instructors don't use such a scale, myself. I've never taught a class that someone didn't earn an A in, after all. What was funny was that generally it was not just one student who earned the top marks on assessed items-- it was often a rotating cast of the top 4-6 students in a class of 35 or 40.



DD's high school used a 98 A+, 91 A- scale, and so on.

Our school (high school) uses
A+ 98-100
A 93-97
A- 90-92
B+ 87-89
B 83-86
B- 80-82
C+ 77-79
C 73-76
C- 70-72
D+ 67-69
D 65-66
F <65

Teachers do not enter letter grades, only % grades. The system generates the letter grades. Qualitatively, a C is supposed to mean meeting basic standards, B is proficient, and A is advanced. D basically means you received credit for the course.

And, of course, it's all converted to a 4.0 scale for transcript purposes.

I like HK's system. I had one o-chem prof who graded on a weighted curve, which was good on the midterm for which the class mean was in the lower teens. (I'm proud to say I did just manage to beat the curve!)

This is what our school uses except that 96 is an A+, not 97.
Personally, I think grades are less and less meaningful. All the kids in honors classes basically get A's and B's; C's mean you did especially poorly and A+'s mean you are either really good or just didn't make mistskes. It sort of irritates me when teachers say they want everyone to have at least a B - it just pushes up the average so an A can mean a wider range of things, and I wish high versus low grades actually told you how much you know. (That being said, everyone must pass Government with a good score and I completely agree.)

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.

Here's a cautionary tale some of you may enjoy or benefit from knowing: In a computerized system which calculated course grades and grade point average to four decimal places, teachers learned they could assign numerical grades to several decimal places. For example, a teacher might enter 94.9999 or 95.0001 for an essay grade. In this particular electronic grade reporting system, once grades were "rolled up" at the end of the grading period, the detail of each assigned grade was not available to be viewed. Therefore entering grades in the electronic gradebook on the last possible day allowed a small window of opportunity for viewing these detail assignment grades prior to their "roll up" or summation.

However a curious, conscientious gifted kid with an interest in math happened to discover this pattern. When a particular teacher consistently entered grades on the last possible day, and several subjective assignments received grades to several decimal points, it gave the appearance of "designer grades" and attempting to manipulate student GPA and transcripted letter grades, while reducing access to the "paper trail" of individual assignment grades. For example, 95.0001 or 95.1234 for an essay grade might result in a student course final grade of A, while 94.9999 or 94.8765 for the essay grade would result in a student course final grade of A-.

I like that. Actually, quite a bit - I like how grading on a curve reduces grade inflation/high amounts of A's and B's, but it always did bother me how 10 percent had to fail. I don't think teachers should fail students "because it fits the curve", only if they truly don't deserve to pass. It seems to me like that many kids wouldn't be failing in every single class, and some especially tough ones could potentially have more.

Our middle school uses the traditional 90-80-70-60 as the cut for A-B-C-D. I do think that grade inflation is definitely an issue but at the same time many assessments (other than unit tests) and daily classwork tend to be less than 10 points so to achieve 90% average means that you often need to earn all the points (4/4, 5/5, 6/6, ...).

Another reason why frequent assessment sucks.

This drives my ds crazy.. especially on LA and Spanish. Tons of small quiz with 5 answers.

Another thought: How would you grade a 6th grade Students taking an High School Honors Algebra class. Some schools have Honors classes weighted anyway.

I also question how easy/hard assignments and homework are, considering my ds11 (in 6th grade gifted program) gets at least 90% in every subject every quarter (this includes several grades for each subject. (e.g. in ELA, they get a grade for language skills, reading comprehension, speaking and listening and writing composition). I can't figure out if he's doing really well, or if the work is just easy ?? Despite what I've been told over the years by his various teachers, I am still trying to figure out if he's gifted or a "high achiever".

I've read that frequent assessment improves learning. A recent paper is Daily Online Testing in Large Classes: Boosting College Performance while Reducing Achievement Gaps. People upset over getting a B- for missing 1 point on a 5 point quiz need to develop thicker skins and to recognize that even A students will get B's on some individual assignments.

When that B means their entire high school GPA is never going to be as high ever again? No. And when the only way to get an A us utter perfection, every time? No.

I don't understand. A student's grade over a marking period will depend on many quizzes and homework assignments and a few tests. It's not necessary to have a 90% on each quiz in order to get 90% of all points. My son has A's or A-'s in his classes, because he tends to very well on tests but often gets 4/5 or 8/10 on individual assignments.

How often to assess students and what fraction of grades appearing on report cards should be A's are separate questions.

Yes, NC is presently on the 7 point system and has been for years. They will be changing it to the 10 point system next year for high schools only.

100-93 (A)
92-85 (B)
84-77 (C)
76-70 (D)
69--(F)

90% is only an A-. If you have 20 tests, each out which is out of ten and you miss a question on each of them, then you get an A-, not an A. You need to get perfect marks close to half the time if you only miss one question on the other tests. And for every extra point missed on a test, that's another you need to get 100% for, to balance it out.

Hmmm.... I'd argue that in addition to what Bostonian posted, this is actually a problem with high-stakes and low-VALUE summative assessment practices.

It's not the frequency of assessment which is the problem-- it's that mistakes are so COSTLY in some schema.

It's no better to have just two graded assessments for an entire class, really-- because if you have one bad day... well.


Suppose that there are two extremes:

1 class teaches with "daily" formative quizzes and eight weekly take-home exams to be completed in a student's own handwriting-- 50% of the course grade is those daily quizzes, worth 5 points each (or so) and by design, are not difficult. The other half is from the summative exercises which are by intention more difficult. The key is this, though-- this kind of scheme has a LOT of points in it-- maybe 1000.

The other has a final exam only-- 100 points, and what you score is your percentage.


Now, someone who has never seen a very bright child that cannot test well might not immediately see the problem with option two, but speaking as someone who has counseled a lot of struggling college students, that segment of people is real, and they aren't all just failing to master the material. Some of them simply have anxiety re: exam performance. I think that some of THOSE students deserve an A which reflects their mastery of the material.

I also believe that some students who simply "test well" probably don't deserve that A, but an A-, B+ instead.

The combination of formative/summative and exercising more LOW-STAKES, high-difficulty assessment does lead to a more equitable distribution of grades. Students also tend to retain more of the material.

I know this one because I've done things both ways. (I was forced to do it the latter way when I was teaching a course for another professor.)

Apples to apples comparison is that some students find the relentless grind of daily work to be a pain and they whine about it, but it's still better than having a single bad day mean that you can no longer hope to "demonstrate excellent mastery" of the material in a class.

Th problems that I'm seeing now are that "efficiency" and "high throughput" are being confused with high quality in teaching and assessment practices. Those may be mutually exclusive concepts, quite frankly, when one is discussing real students and authentic learning. There may just not be any non-labor intensive means of doing teaching right.

So teachers/faculty don't assign much graded work because they don't want to spend so time grading it, students who most need it lack formative assessment feedback which is meaningful, and the result is rather predictably that students tend to focus on testing well rather than learning well.

It's also true that human beings all write assessment items a bit differently from one another, and those quirks matter a great deal when you offer summative assessments. Students have to have some way of knowing what it is that you're going to ask, HOW you're going to ask it, and what you're going to look for in their responses. Without that information, it's really a bit unfair. KWIM?

College professors have generally gotten round that one by being extremely generous with partial credit and by avoiding over-reliance upon test bank questions and cloze/multiple choice/true-false testing. Offering more open-ended testing is a great way to see what students actually know and understand. If they get a short-answer question wrong, odds are good that they have some parts of the concept right, just not enough of them to be "correct."

It's not just about the top end of the distribution, though that tends to take care of itself in this kind of grading philosophy as well. I prefer that because it promotes growth mindset in students who can see that NO mistake is ever catastrophic in terms of their grade. The grade is just a reflection of learning/mastery, ideally.

Personally, I'm of the belief that infrequent assessment sucks even more than the frequent variety.

I am so with you on this. Law school mostly consists of classes with one final exam or paper which counts for 100% of your grade. Brutal if you have a bad day.

I get it.

Our biggest strides come when ds is up against a lower grade and still has the opportunity (through frequent assessment) to chip away and bring it back up to an A. It almost seems as he sets himself up for this. Sure is a lot more work this way.

Actually, I am a convert to the frequent assessment approach for the reasons indicated in Bostonian's article and HowlerKarma's post. For a few years, I was exasperated and felt bad for my kids until I realized that being accountable most days had resulted in development of superior learning, performance and executive functioning skills.

Personally, I would have had a hard time under this approach, but I also believe it would have forced me to become a better student before college. It was a dangerous habit for me to be able to tune out in class, skip most of the daily work and simply cram the night before to ace exams and therefore the courses in high school.

Furthermore, in many of DS/DD's classes, the big unit assessments tend to be mostly basic material not meant to challenge and generally not difficult to ace. The daily work, on the other hand, fell into two distinct categories. Most often, they were basic questions/problems to confirm understanding. Sometimes, however, they were extensions/applications meant to challenge the students, which also allows the teacher to distinguish the high ability students. However, since these challenging assignments are low-value (5-10 points), it is still very possible for hard-working conscientious students to get an "A" even if they fell short of these challenges.

I also prefer frequent assessment. DD bombed a unit math test (very uncharacteristic--in fact, it has never happened before) earlier in the year because she was coming down with strep and had a killer headache and fever. (No, she didn't ask to go home, because....??) It did take her grade down for a while, but she had enough other assignments to make it turn out okay-- which was very fortunate, because that semester was high stakes for middle school admission.

Speaking from experience, tuning out, skipping work, and cramming works better in law school than in undergrad engineering.

I remember several classes where, since the material was cumulative, the grade you earned on the final was your final grade if it was your highest. I remember teachers saying that you would have had to go back and figure out what you hadn't known on the earlier tests and quizzes. If your score was lower, then you were given your average. Personally, that was my favorite way. Although I used it as a way to slack until the end, I did see it benefit peers who were truly working and improving as the courses went along.

I think I prefer somewhere in the middle....not frequent and not infrequent assessment. I don't really like tons of work but don't mind some and I test well...and I study hard.

Very well said Howler. I have two very different kids, DD doesn't test well and DS does tests well. My DD is where she is because she diligently does all work assigned to her, goes and asks questions of teachers and learns from her mistakes on tests. DS is more aggravating for me because he tests very very well & has even recently gotten a 99% on a final for a class he was barely passing, he is inconstant in homework and quizzes and it costs him. And yes we are working on it and it is getting better but it costs him top grades.

But even for DS16 who does test well, it can take an assessment or two to get used to how a teacher tests. In H.S. the weight of tests vs. homework or other assessments is one of the differences in honors vs. regular H.S. classes. And as a class gets closer to 'college' level work there are fewer assessments. DS's pre-calc class this fall had only 4 tests last semester. While 2nd year Spanish Class has multiple assessments every single week, vocabulary quiz, test of grammar that sort of thing.

I think there is a balance, here is an interesting example. My DD20 took a community college general ed (survey) science course this past summer. It was a whole semester in 8 weeks, 4 days a week so it went fast. The grading scheme was set up so that students who put in the effort but whom math wasn't their strength could still pass the class. On the other hand it was a college class that was mostly graded on tests and would serve good testers like my son well. Teacher assigned homework & reading but it was never graded but he did go over it in class. There was a test every other week, that included the final. Final counted more and you could drop your lowest mid-term grade. Thus in the end the grade was only on 2 mid-terms and the final. Test questions looked a lot like the homework, and it was only partially multiple choice and other questions partial credit was given. There was a lab report was due almost every week, but they were only 20% of the grade. Attendance mattered but only by a small amount, it was more you got points off for missing more than a few classes. The teacher gave out an extra credit project ONLY if you came to him for help. My daughter managed to pass partly by doing the extra credit and by slowly getting better grades on the tests. The attendance grade was a bit odd but I figured out if a student missed all the classes except tests & labs but Aced all the tests they would end up with an A- in the class. Basically missing enough class could cost you a half a grade.

Allowing a student to dropped an assessment is an useful tool. It allows students to have a bad day or make a mistake, or get used to a classes grading style. My son's social studies teacher lets the kids drop one quiz a semester. They choose when taking it and my son did this last week because he read the wrong chapter.