by Dennis Dalman
news@thenewsleaders.com
Pressure to achieve high grade-point averages in high school can be so nerve-wracking that some students are hesitant to take the more challenging college-level courses.
That is why the Sartell-St. Stephen School District has recently approved a “weighted-grade” system for the next school year. With weighted grades, a student can get a B in a course and still maintain a perfect grade-point average if all of that other student’s grades are A’s. The weighted-grade concept will be retroactive to all students who took advanced-placement classes as early as in ninth grade.
Sartell High School Principal Brenda Steve and several other school officials presented the weighted-grade concept to the school board at its March 17 meeting.
A weighted grade system adds a 1.0 to grades given in advanced-placement courses. The grades are adjusted, in other words, to reflect the course’s difficulty above and beyond the high-school level. Thus, if a student gets a B in college-level calculus, for example, that grade would be counted as a 4.0 in calculating the student’s overall grade-point average. Normally, one must get an A to get the 4.0. If a student gets an A in that college-level calculus course, she will be given a 5.0, which is 1.0 more than the 4.0 assigned to an A in a regular high-school course.
Weighted grades help students obtain scholarships and gain admission to colleges, the school officials noted. All colleges and post-secondary education facilities, they said, are aware of the weighted-grading systems and accept them as valid in considering student applicants. If colleges request regular, unweighted grades, Sartell High School will report them, along with the weighted grades. The school will not report grade class-rankings of students on transcripts to colleges unless requested, Steve noted. Research indicates a steep decline in colleges that give any weight to class rankings when considering students for admission, school officials told the school board.
High-school students in Sartell have dozens of course options for advanced-placement and Discovery Academy classes, the latter made possible via the St. Cloud Technical College. Many of those courses are more difficult and challenging than the normal run of high-school courses, school officials said to the school board. As a result, many students are hesitant to take the more difficult ones, fearing added stress and diminishment of a hard-won grade-point average. The weighted-grade system is an incentive for students to go ahead and take courses they would likely have to take in college, anyway.
In an interview with the Newsleader, Steve said there are many schools in Minnesota and throughout the nation that now use weighted grading systems.
“It will be a real positive for our students,” she said. “We’ve had very positive feedback from parents and students.”
Some examples of advanced-placement classes are English, chemistry and psychology.
The decision to move to a weighted system in Sartell is the result of extensive research of schools nationwide, as well as input gathered from parents, students and faculty by a weighted-grade committee.