ASHLAND — Ashland City Schools’ board of education unanimously approved weighted grades for advanced placement and College Credit Plus courses during its May meeting. The new weighted grades go into effect at Ashland High next year, according to principal Josh Packard.
The topic of weighted grades, has, at times, served as a discussion flashpoint for Ashland City Schools, like at a Talk the Vote event hosted by Ashland Source in October 2021. Some residents brought up the desire for a weighted grading system then.
“I think it’s shameful,” one retired teacher said, advocating for the implementation of a weighted scale.
(Below is a PDF of an Ashland City Schools Citizens’ Agenda. Ashland Source put together the agenda following the 2021 Talk the Vote event.)
Packard said the idea of weighted grades has come up from time-to-time over the last 25 years. Typically, he said, those conversations took place between parents whose children had applied for college.
For years, Ashland High has used a 4.0 scale. To earn valedictorian status, Ashland City Schools had requirements in place to take advanced placement (AP) courses, according to previous Ashland Source reporting.
The weighted system passed in May overhauls the current grading scale. It assigns a 5-point value to an A in AP and College Credit Plus (CCP) courses, offering a grade-point average boost to students who take more rigorous classes.
The school will spend the summer re-calculating students’ GPAs to fall in line with the new weighted system, Packard said.
Packard added a new 5.0 value for AP and CCP classes isn’t the only change the high school is poised for. After the 2024-2025 year ends, the high school plans to do away with bestowing valedictorian and salutatorian honors.
Instead, it’ll transition to the “Latin system” starting in 2025-2026. Under that system, students will earn designations of summa cum laude, magna cum laude and cum laude honors. Those honors will be doled out based on GPA ranges.
“I think that provides opportunity for students to excel and distinguish themselves, but not in a predetermined, set pathway, one-size-fits-all for everyone,” said Juliet Thomas, an Ashland High counselor.
The school hasn’t determined what GPAs students will need to earn those designations yet.
Why make the grading switch now?
Packard said the weighted system became a larger conversation for the district when Ashland High found out Ashland University doesn’t unweight grades when it comes to doling out merit scholarships.
Afterwards, Packard and Thomas created a survey. They sent it to several in-state colleges Ashland High students typically apply to attend. The list included Otterbein University, The Ohio State University, Cleveland State, Kent State and more.
The survey results showed those schools do not unweight students’ GPAs to determine merit scholarship award amounts.
At Ashland University, for example, students with a GPA of 4.0 or higher earn a merit-based presidential scholarship of $17,000. But, students whose GPAs sit at 3.0 to 3.99 earn a provost scholarship for $15,000 per year.
With Ashland High’s 4.0 scale, students who took AP or CCP classes and earned even one B would lose out on $2,000 per year.
But with the weighted scale in place, a B in an AP or CCP class is worth four points. An A is worth five. In essence, it offers a boost to students’ GPAs when they take more challenging courses.
“We don’t want our Ashland High School kids to leave money on the table,” Packard said.
Addressing challenges
While weighted grades come with benefits, Ashland High’s assistant principal Katherine Bartlett said there were also challenges.
Bartlett said parents expressed concerns about students who were on track to be valedictorians for the 2024-2025 school year. She said it didn’t seem fair to “pull the rug out” for juniors a year away from earning that honor.
So, the school elected to wait a year before bringing the Latin honor system into play. That also offers Ashland High a chance to assess GPA ranges for those categories after seeing how students’ grades turn out this year, Packard and Bartlett said.
Thomas, the Ashland High counselor, added the Latin honor system’s implementation will be important for the success of weighted grades. One concern that can come with weighting grades is that of increased competition for the valedictorian spot, Thomas said.
By taking that title out of play, Thomas thinks students will pursue more personalized paths.
“I just imagine future scheduling conversations to not have to say, ‘Well, if your goal is to be valedictorian, these are the set classes you have to take,’ but to say, ‘What is it that you want to do? What are you interested in?'” Thomas said. “… You can take AP chemistry because you say you want to be pre-med, but you’re terrified of getting a B+ in AP chemistry, and that’s not going to hurt you.
“You can explore those options, be better prepared, have more of the rigor in college without the fear that you’ll be penalized if you don’t have that A.”