Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What percentage equals an A ??

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.