BOE Eyes Weighted Grading

By Eric Bowen, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

Jan. 23–Students taking tougher courses could get a boost on their GPA under a new policy the Monongalia County Board of Education will review tonight.

The policy would give a weighted grade-point score for high school students taking advanced-placement classes. Instead of the traditional 4 points for an “A,” students would get 5 points, which could give them a GPA higher than 4.0.

School board President Nancy Walker said Monday that the switch could give Mon County students a leg up when competing for scholarships and college admissions. Some colleges award scholarships based on GPA, so local students have been at a disadvantage when competing with schools that give higher grades for college-level classes.

“We do not want someone to take a less-rigorous course because they’re worried about getting a lower grade,” Walker said. AP classes are “accepted everywhere to be more rigorous coursework. They should be doing more work in that class.”

University High School student Stephanie Khoo said that AP courses should get a higher weight than other classes. She said that advanced placement courses are designed to be at the same level as college classes, and it’s harder to achieve top honors.

Khoo said she works hard to get good grades, and is taking a lot of tough classes in her senior year. She said that it would take off a lot of pressure in AP classes if she knew that a lower grade wouldn’t hurt her GPA.

“Grades are extremely important to me,” Khoo said. “It’s a real struggle to pull off an A. If it were a weighted grade, it would work better for whatever I’m trying to do.”

Preston High School uses a weighted system to assign grades for honors classes, said senior Mackenzie Clarkson. He has a 4.44 GPA after taking about 15 weighted classes, including several AP courses.

Clarkson said he likes the 5-point system because it rewards students for taking tougher classes. He said it also gives PHS students an advantage when it comes to getting into college.

“Whenever they see that, they realize you’ve taken the tougher courses and you haven’t taken what you need to get by,” Clarkson said. “You’ve actually applied yourself and chosen to take the more difficult courses.”

Morgantown High senior Daniel Barbero said he doesn’t think changing to a weighted grade system will make much difference. For one thing, he said it would be important to make sure that AP classes really are significantly more difficult than other classes at the school.

Most colleges take into account how difficult an applicant’s course load is no matter whether the GPA is weighted, Barbero said. He said it might be useful as an indicator of the difficulty of classes, but colleges would be able to tell that without using the weighted figure.

“I don’t think they will be basing it on just one number,” Barbero said. “At the very least they would be asking if this is a weighted GPA or an unweighted GPA.”

Jim Eakins, a senior at MHS, said it would be “absolutely fantastic” to get an extra GPA boost for taking harder classes. He said UHS has some students who get straight-A’s by taking easy classes.

Eakins said that some students might get upset if someone else beat them out for valedictorian by taking more AP courses. But, he said, “They’re taking more tough classes than some other people, so in a way they deserve it in some respects.”

The school board will take up the weighted GPA question at 7 p.m. tonight.

Walker said that this issue has come up before and has not been passed. She said she has been in favor of weighted grades, but some teachers think that students shouldn’t get an extra reward for taking harder classes.

“It’s a big issue,” Walker said. “It will be interesting to see how everyone on the board weighs in.”

The Monongalia County Board of Education will take up the weighted GPA question at 7 p.m. tonight at the district’s administrative office at 13 S. High St. If the policy passes on first reading, it will go out for public comment.

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