My school district is all over the news today for changing the passing grade from 70 to 65. This was done without any teacher input. I personally don't like it but I'll have to live with it. They claim that it was changed because most schools use the 65 and they wanted to even the playing field? So this leads me to ask what is the passing grade at your school?
A while ago there was a huge change in grading to correspond with the typical grading scales in our area. The lowest passing grade is 64. This was done for scholarship purposes. Our district typically had a much higher grading scale and the students were eliminated from receiving scholarships when other counties in the state and surrounding areas had students receiving better grades due to the lax grading scale. Teachers weren't happy, but we had top notch students getting B+'s in classes that other districts were giving As. Therefore, our students were getting 3.5 factored into the GPA while the other districts students were getting 4.0. In the game of scholarships and entrance into application enrichment programs our students were losing the battle.
65. We changed about 10 years ago for the same reason. It makes sense to have grades be comparable across different regions. Question for those with higher passing grades: do your students actually learn more or are the grades just inflated? Our district adjustment corrected grade deflation compared to the rest of the state. Expectations remained the same. The idea is that final course grades will somewhat correlate to scaled grades on the state exam, and they usually do, within a reasonable range.
70 for the high school in the district I teach in, 65 for my hubby's district. Not sure about the district I live in.
Ours is a 70. I've always gone back and forth on it. In college, we had to get a C in all of our core course work. I think we could get a C- in non-core work? In HS our passing grade was always a 60. I kind of like the 70 because it's more in line with college (even though a 70 is still considered a D at my school). My college was always a 70 was a C-. Idk... I'm going to stop rambling now :lol:
My real concern about this is the kids that always do the bare minimum to get a 70 will do even less now.
60 at my school. Students earning between 60-63% get a D- for that course on the report card. 0-59% converts to an F.
That's actually what it is in my school, too, for term grades. We're not allowed to fail a student with a 59 as the final course grade. We always get a memo near the end of the year saying that any 59s need to be changed to passing for the final grade. (I suppose the number can stay a 59, but the letter must be changed to a D-.)
A passing grade in my district is a D (60%). We have some special programs (magnet, etc.) that require students to earn a C (70%) or better in their magnet classes.
