Do High School Grades Really Matter?

Do grades matter? Let me say with enthusiasm, yes! And with equal enthusiasm, no!

In order to dissect this oxymoronic answer, let me first speak from the perspective of college admissions. Grades don’t matter as much as you might think. That’s because colleges have several problems relying on grades to make admissions decisions. First, grades are ridiculously inflated across the country. In Alabama where I live, the average ACT score is a full point below the national average, but according to the self-reported section of that test, our average g.p.a. is 3.1 (a B). If the letter grade of “C” were truly accurate, reflecting the “average”, our g.p.a. should be somewhere in the 1.8-2.0 range. It’s no different in other states. The effect, quite frankly, is that colleges cannot trust grades as accurate reflections of achievement or abilities.

The second problem colleges have is that grading varies wildly from school to school. A typical state university may get 10,000 applications from 2,000 different high schools. Among the 2000 may be elite private, urban public, public magnet, rural, Catholic, Christian, Jewish, and evangelical Christian schools. Each has a different mission, caters to a different demographic, comes from a community with a different expectation, and aims for different outcomes. The net result is that a “4.0 g.p.a”, for example, simply doesn’t mean the same thing from school to school. As an example, in one large public school in Montgomery last year, there were 17 students who graduated with perfect 4.0 averages. In the 21 years I’ve been associated with our school, there has only been one student who has graduated with a 4.0. Colleges know that grade point averages don’t allow them to make “apples to apples” comparisons of applicants from different schools.

Finally, even within the SAME high school, grade point averages do not reliably compare students. A student who takes an honors and A.P. curriculum for four years may have a lower grade point average than a student who has taken less demanding classes.

As a result, colleges don't rely heavily on high school grades for college entrance. Rather, they are far more trusting of national standardized tests, either the SAT or the ACT, precisely because they compare students by the same measuring stick. To the extent that grades matter at all, some schools compare test scores to g.p.a. to determine work habits (a high test score with mediocre grades reveals something about character), while many of the elite colleges ask for a student’s class rank (which helps them contextualize a student’s grade point by comparing it to their school’s peers). Grades mean little on their own.

You may be thinking, “But don’t some scholarships require a certain grade point average”? Yes, but look carefully at the criteria. Typically, the top scholarships will say something like “minimum 32 on the ACT and 3.5+ grade point average”. Roughly 20% of those attending college have 3.5+ high school grade points, but less than 1% score a 32+ on the ACT. The true discriminator for academic scholarships is almost always the test score, not the grade point average.

If all that is true, what is the best strategy for positioning students for college entrance? Quite simply, students should take the most difficult and challenging set of courses that with hard work, they are able to earn a “C” or better in. As a former principal, I used to hear parents say “I don’t want my son/daughter to take _________ (fill in the demanding class) because it will hurt his/her grade point average. “ Nothing could be more wrong-headed! Yes, sometimes parents may judge it’s not in their child's best interest to take all the tough classes because of the stress of juggling them with his or her other commitments (are the priorities right?), but if the intent is to produce a higher grade point average so as to put their child in better stead with college admission counselors, it’s simply misguided for two reasons:

First, being stretched for four years by demanding classes will yield higher test scores, which, as I have argued, is the criteria that matters most.

Second, schools like Notre Dame and other elite schools are beginning to ask school counselors this question as part of the application process:

“On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the most demanding curriculum available at your school and 1 being the easiest, rate the difficulty level of the student’s curriculum”.

What colleges now realize is that the student's choice of courses, especially in his junior and senior year when there are more electives, is often a better predictor of college success than even the grades the student may earn in those courses. It’s better to get a “C” in A.P. Physics or Calculus than it is to make an A or B in lesser science or math electives, regardless of the impact on the grade point average.

What, then, is the point of striving for a good grade? Aha!--this is precisely where grades really DO matter—to the extent that they represent how hard a student is striving! For sure, students will always see grades as an end in themselves. That’s OK. But as adults, we need to value grades not in themselves, but as feedback to us as to how hard our child is working. If we have a very bright child who coasts through classes with a “B”, we should be very upset with our child. If we have a child who truly struggles but does his homework every night, attends after school tutorials, and pays attention in class, then we should take evident pride in our child, even if he fails from time to time and his report card is littered with “D’s”. I recommend that the parents of these hard working, less able children take their child to dinner to celebrate their “success” and their pride in their child’s effort, even before report cards come out.

In the end, grades are carrots. Good teachers understand this, and forever dangle the carrots a little further beyond what students think they're able to achieve, so as to stretch them to achieve even more. As parents, our expectation for our children should not be for a certain set of grades, but for consistent effort. We want our children to learn to work hard, and we want them to attend a school which is courageous enough to tell them the truth about how hard they are working, even if they sometimes earn less than stellar grades. If they learn to work hard, then the grades—and college admissions—will take care of themselves.

Layered Assessments

I. The “dilemma” of academic diversity

Because we are an archdiocesan school, Montgomery Catholic is blessed by an extraordinary diversity of academic talent, ranging from students who are merit finalists to students who really struggle to achieve minimal course goals. With the exception of Math and English (which are tracked in an honors/non-honors sequence), all students attend classes together. Even within the tracked classes, there is a range of talent and ability.

Teachers, when designing an assessment, must make an impossible choice: Do we create a test that truly challenges our best and brightest, at the expense of our weakest? Or do we create an assessment that is “doable” for weaker students, but does not extend the top students? Faced with this choice, most teachers aim for the middle, where the negative effects on both groups are minimized, yet remain. Over the course of a 7th-12th grade curriculum, the effects of aiming for the middle are predictable: high achievers have college test scores that are not as high as they could be, and less able students have a VERY difficult time in the curriculum, as reflected in grade point averages which are lower than anyone wants.

II. Three ways to address:

There are only three ways that I know to address this dilemma substantially.

The first is to rigidly track students up and down the curriculum, allowing teachers to target each test to the class based on their ability. Without this article becoming a war over the pros and cons of tracking, suffice it to say tracking gives up a lot in terms of building a community of students, putting student leaders in a position to be leaders in their peer group (can we reasonably expect our good students to lead peers who they only know as acquaintances in the hallways?) and there’s at least some research that says tracking hurts the lower track students and doesn’t help the higher track. Besides, for us it’s a moot point, because we couldn’t do it anyway without re-structuring our program completely.

The second way is to give broad, open ended assessments which are graded on a rubric, instead of objective tests that are graded on a percentage. If, for example, I ask students to engage in a debate or perform a musical piece and grade this debate or performance on a 1 (low) and 4 (high) rubric, my less able students may work toward a 2+ or 3, whereas my top students could work to achieve the 4, without either group affecting the ability of the other to be successful. There are many web sites that assist teachers in developing such rubrics like this one which make our jobs easier. I believe we should give more of these kinds of assessments; they can often be exciting, interesting tools that significantly extend the “dryer” content of the class.

Still, even teachers committed to giving these open ended assessments would agree that objective tests should be a standard part of the teacher’s assessment “arsenal”. What then?

III. Layered Assessments

The third way of handling academic diversity on tests is through what is often called a “layered assessment”. Though there are many ways to implement this idea, here’s how I would advocate we should do it at Montgomery Catholic:

Layer I: The first layer will be comprised of factual recall, translation and simple application problems and questions. Typically, this layer will comprise the bulk of the overall assessment. This layer is graded like any other test, by percentage correct (or by rubric). A student who scores less than 60% fails, between 60-69% a D, 70-79% a C, 80-89% a B. The only difference is a student cannot earn an "A" on this layer. Students may get up to a “B+” on this layer if they score 89% or higher.

Layer II: The second layer will be comprised of more advanced application problems, analysis or synthesis level questions. Successful completion of this level (70%+) adds a full letter grade (or 10 points, if scored numerically) to whatever is achieved in layer I. Thus to earn an “A” for the assessment, a student must receive a “B” on layer one, and pass layer II to increase their grade for the A.

If, in the opinion of the teacher, a student does reasonably well on layer II but does not pass it (for example, 50%), the teacher may award 5 bonus points to the overall layer one score, provided that this doesn't elevate the student's grade to an A. The only way to achieve an A is by successful completion of Layer II.

All students, then, should be required to attempt both levels, since it can only help them.

IV. Grading examples:

1. A student gets 73/90 on layer one (= 81%). So on level 1 he has a “B-”. He then scores a 7/10 on layer II, which means he has passed the second layer. This means the teacher adds one full letter grade to his B from layer I = A- for the overall assessment. The teacher records an “A-” (or a "91") in the grade book.

This works the same if the same teacher wanted to give an essay on either layer I or II, rather than grade by percentages. The teacher creates a rubric to determine if each essay is successfully completed. Whatever grade the layer one essay earns, if the student passes layer II, the overall grade is increased by one full letter grade.

2. A student gets 73/90 on layer one (=81%=B) as above, but gets 2/10 on layer two. The second layer isn’t successfully completed, so there’s neither a bonus nor a penalty; he receives a B- (or 81) for the assessment.

3. A student gets a 70/90 on layer I (=78%=C) and a 5/10 on layer II. Though he did not pass layer II, the teacher may give that student 5 points toward level I, which would elevate his layer I score to an 83 (=B). In effect, the layer II acts as a "bonus" question here.

4. A student gets a 90/90 on level I. He has a B+ so far. If he passes layer II he will receive a full letter grade bump to an A+. If not, he has a B+.

5. Typically, a student who does poorly on layer I will likely do poorly on layer II. Nevertheless, the same principles apply: A student who fails level I but passes level II gets a letter grade bump from an “F” to a “D”.

V. Benefits of a Layered Assessment:

The layered assessment is an attempt to challenge the top tier students with meaningful, challenging extensions of class material, so that over the course of their 6 years at MCPS, they will be able to think at higher levels. We believe this will translate into higher ACT, PSAT and SAT scores for college.

At the same time, the layering aids less able students grade-wise. Since the higher level questions are bracketed in layer II, these questions do not hurt the weaker students’ ability to get as high as a B on the test. A traditional test which contains 10-20% of “A-level” questions (that a weaker student is less likely to successfully complete) significantly narrows the window of success for less able students; they must get a high percentage of every other question correct to pass.

Also, by labeling the questions clearly as “level I” or “level II”, the teacher helps the weaker student by identifying those questions which gives him the most chance of success. (Sometimes, weaker students will spend too much time on questions that are beyond their scope.)

In some cases, the stronger student benefits grade-wise from this system, too, by giving him more margin for error in obtaining an “A”. In a traditional system, to achieve an A, the student must get just about every question right, or “92%+. But using the layers, a student may miss a few “layer one” questions and still be able to achieve an A. In the grading example from # 1 above, by way of illustration, if the student were graded traditionally, he’d have an 80% (73/90 + 7/10) or a B. But in the layered system, he would have an A.

Everybody wins.

Three Proposals Regarding Catholic Schools

Applying the Bishops' Recent Statement to the Archdiocese of Mobile

The United States Bishops recently wrote a pastoral letter on Catholic schools, entitled “Renewing our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools” (2005). In this statement the bishops commit to the goal “of making Catholic education available, accessible and affordable to all Catholics and their children, including the poor and the middle class. “ This commitment is the right one, the bishops say, because “Catholic schools afford the fullest and best opportunity to realize the fourfold purpose of Christian education: namely to provide an atmosphere in which the Gospel message is proclaimed, community in Christ is experienced, service to our sisters and brothers is the norm, and thanksgiving and worship of our God is cultivated”.

As a practical matter, if it’s true that our Catholic schools provide the fullest and best opportunity for the education of our children, how do we ensure the future health of these schools in our archdiocese? I would like to pull out three ideas from this letter and suggest concrete ways for making them happen here:

1) Under the section on finances, the bishops write:

"The burden of supporting our Catholic schools can no longer be placed exclusively on the individual parishes that have schools and on parents who pay tuition. This will require all Catholics, including those in parishes without schools, to focus on the spirituality of stewardship."

I agree, but this is too much of an abstraction to prompt a plan of action. In our diocese, most parishes with Catholic K-8 elementary schools spend a hugely disproportionate share of their parish tithe on Catholic education compared to those parishes without schools. Yes, the parishes without schools subsidize the Catholic school dependent on the number of children from their parish that attend the nearby Catholic school, but this subsidy doesn’t even begin to even out the parish resources being spent between the two.

Therefore, I propose: Establish a diocesan parish tax for our Catholic schools based on a percentage of the annual parish tithe. This is in effect how we run our chancery offices, levying a 5% tax on the total income of each parish. The monies collected could be used as an archdiocesan scholarship fund for needy families or used to defray operational expenses in our schools, keeping tuitions lower for all.

2) The bishops remark further:

"While we have made progress in opening offices for development, endowments, marketing, and institutional advancement, we must expand those efforts on both the diocesan and local levels… Diocesan and school leaders should continue actively to pursue financial support from the business and civic communities. Our total Catholic community must increase efforts to address the financial needs of our Catholic school administrators, teachers, and staff."

In our diocese, whatever progress we've made in development, endowments and marketing relative to Catholic schools has been a function of individual schools, and not the diocese as a whole. Schools with resources have hired development directors, but the schools who arguably need it most cannot afford such a "luxury". Therefore I propose an archdiocesan endowment fund for Catholic schools. This is hardly radical, as many dioceses all over the country have begun such funds years ago, some with great success. Once the fund has reached a pre-determined level, the interest can be used for the benefit of scholarships for needy families or to offset operational costs.

The advantages of a diocesan endowment fund vs. local school endowment funds are many: First, an archdiocesan fund allows the bishop to be a major actor in the solicitation of funds (perhaps through an annual appeal, similar to Catholic Charities). Second, poorer schools and parishes don’t have the kind of affluent connections which make fund-raising a success. Third, larger businesses are likelier to give a single donation to a single annual cause than to the thousands of small causes, which each of their employees may champion. Finally, we can entrust our diocesan funds to professional money managers, rather than expect our beleaguered principals or pastors to make informed investment decisions.

3. The bishops write:

“Our challenge today is to provide schools close to where our Catholic people live. In areas where there currently are no Catholic schools, we should open schools that have a mission to evangelize.”

The current configuration of our Catholic schools is the result of historical happenstance, with little system-wide planning since. This isn't so much a criticism of anyone, as a recognition that our schools were formed as parochial structures, serving the needs of individual parishes. But our parochial assumptions now need a critical re-evaluation. Schools in once thriving neighborhoods are now in poorer areas, struggling to say open. Three schools in our diocese have closed in the last five years, with several more hanging on heroically. Rather than allow a kind of Darwinian evolution to take place, I propose we commission the equivalent of a “Blue Ribbon Commission” (ala the BRAC commission regarding military base realignments) to study the needs of Catholic education through-out our entire diocese, recommending new Catholic schools where the evidence suggest they will thrive (a Catholic high school in Baldwin County? an elementary school in Autauga/Elmore County?) and recommending the regionalization of schools where appropriate. Of course, the bishop would have to approve any of these recommendations.

Having worked in our archdiocese for over twenty years now, I know these are unsettling proposals. I also know that unless we begin to think creatively, the magnificent gift to our local church which is Catholic education is in peril. Left on their own, our Catholic schools will die….one school at a time.