ASHLAND — It’s a debate that has been raging at schools across the nation: Should school districts have weighted grades?
In a weighted system, certain classes are valued differently on grade point averages (GPA) than others. For example, an A in an Advanced Placement (AP) class could be a 5.0 on the GPA scale, while an A in a normal class could be a 4.0.
The discussion appeared at Ashland Source’s Talk the Vote event last fall where a group of community members spoke up about Ashland City Schools’ lack of a weighted grade system.
Currently, all classes at Ashland City Schools are on a 4.0 grading scale regardless of difficulty.
“I think it’s shameful,” a retired teacher said about Ashland’s current system at Talk the Vote on Oct. 14, 2021.
Ashland Board of Education member Pam Mowry said the district should have a way for students to earn a weighted GPA. When her children applied to college a decade ago, she says that their unweighted GPAs were up against other students that had weighted, higher GPAs.
Mowry also said she’s heard from other parents who said their child had lost out on scholarships because of their unweighted GPA.
“We’ve known parents whose kids did not get maybe that provost scholarship or that dean’s scholarship. Different colleges, in the day, were based on everything including test scores that apparently now aren’t considered as much and GPA class rank,” she said.
But according to Ashland City Schools Curriculum Director Linda McKibben, many colleges unweight any weighted grades they receive when considering a student.
“Weighted grades are generally only helpful to high schools,” she said.
So which is it? Do colleges care about weighted grades? What are weighted grades even for, anyway? Ashland Source set out to find the answers.
What are weighted grades even for?
According to a research brief published by Michigan-based nonprofit Education Partnerships, Inc., weighted grades’ primary purpose is not to give students a higher GPA or help them with college admissions and scholarships.
Instead, the main purpose of weighted grades is to “encourage high school students to take more rigorous courses,” the brief reads.
The research brief's major findings and conclusions found both advantages and disadvantages to weighted grades:
Advantages:
- More students take rigorous courses.
- More challenging courses can be offered.
- It increases a student's GPA.
- Higher class rankings for those who take more demanding courses.
- Students are more competitive with peers from other schools with weighted grading for first-choice and more elite college acceptance.
- Better chance for students to receive more in scholarship monies.
- More likelihood for students to have higher self-esteem.
Disadvantages:
- Lack of consistency from school to school as to what courses are weighted and how much they are weighted.
- Not all courses, even honors and AP, are equally demanding.
- It may send a message to those who are taking regular courses, that their work is not as highly valued as weighted classes, which may lower self-esteem and attempts to strive for high grades.
- College admissions offices tend to look at the overall GPA and not if the grades had been weighted.
- If a student is afraid of getting a low grade in a more rigorous course, he/she may opt to take a less demanding course in order to earn a higher grade.
- Tracking of students could become more common.
- Students at the lower academic end of the spectrum would not have equal opportunities to take a more engaging academic program.
- Litigation by parents may occur if they believe the system is hindering their child(ren) from equal access to the curriculum.
- Smaller schools have fewer opportunities to offer a wide array of weighted and non-weighted courses.
- Fine arts courses may not be taken because it is possible that a non-weighted grade will lower a student's GPA.
At Mapleton High School in northern Ashland County, students can receive grades on a 5.0 scale in college credit or dual credit classes. Principal Corey Kline said this is to reward students for taking tougher courses.
“The content of a college course is much more rigorous than a high school course so we reward them with a five-point scale rather than a four-point scale,“ he said.
In the absence of a weighted grade incentive, Ashland City Schools requires any high-achieving student who wants to be valedictorian or salutatorian take a number of challenging classes throughout their high school careers.
Students have the option to take a number of AP courses — which would normally be valued higher in a weighted system — to fulfill their valedictorian requirements at Ashland.
“Instead of weighting grades, we actually raise the bar on the courses you take,” McKibben said.
Still, Mowry said that Ashland’s current non-weighted system may be disincentivizing students from taking challenging classes since less difficult classes are on the same grading scale, she added.
"How many will take a course that's under working their hardest but they know they don't get, (because) they have a better chance of getting a higher grade?" she asked.
Beyond valedictorian eligibility, students have another incentive for taking challenging classes during high school even if they’re not weighted: The college admissions and scholarship process.
What’s the deal with colleges and weighted grades?
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, many modern colleges practice holistic evaluation where they evaluate all of a student’s accomplishments when making an admission decision.
Even Harvard College’s admissions criteria are based on the student as a whole and not just academic achievements, according to its website.
“There is no formula for gaining admission to Harvard. Academic accomplishment in high school is important, but the Admissions Committee also considers many other criteria, such as community involvement, leadership and distinction in extracurricular activities, and personal qualities and character,” Harvard’s admission criteria says.
According to the National Society for High School Scholars, colleges also consider the difficulty of a student’s coursework when deciding on scholarships and admissions.
For North Central State College, a student’s weighted grades are not a concern.
“We don’t even take into account weighted grades at all,” said Keith Stoner, North Central State College’s director of marketing and public relations.
North Central State’s only scholarship available to high school students, the Tuition Freedom scholarship, is based on the GPA they earned in College Credit Plus classes — not general high school GPA, said Amanda Kaltenbaugh, director of financial aid.
Also, most college transcripts with a weighted GPA also include an unweighted GPA for colleges to consider, Stoner said.
At Ashland University, GPA does matter, at least for presidential scholarships. The largest scholarship of $11,000 is awarded to students with a GPA of 4.0 or higher. A student in an unweighted system would have to get straight A’s in their four years of high school to earn a 4.0, while a student in a weighted system could earn some lower grades and still earn above a 4.0 if they take weighted classes.
“It does carry some weight for those students who are gonna go on and go to a secondary school,” Principal Kline said.
The Education Partnerships research brief also found that weighted grades can allow students to compete for admissions with students from other schools with a weighted system — and weighted grades can increase the chances that a student will receive more scholarship money.
What have other districts done?
Weighted and unweighted grades both have potential advantages and disadvantages, so districts from around the country have found success in tailoring their grading systems to their district and its needs.
In Caribou, Maine, a local school board voted to implement weighted grades after a research group found that 86 percent of the district’s students supported weighted grades and that a new system would produce more equitable class rankings, according to an article in The County.
And in North Conway, New Hampshire, a local school board voted last year to do away with weighted grades, saying that they punish students for taking unweighted career tech courses instead of weighted AP classes.
Some schools have even opted to try a new standards-based system, where students are evaluated on how they’re learning and not on points or letter grades.
Ashland’s own system of unweighted grades alongside class requirements for valedictorians is unique to the district, and McKibben said she’s satisfied with it.
“I think it’s a very honest way, a very accurate way of awarding a valedictorian honor on a student. Because they’ve met all that criteria and they all meet, they all have to meet that same criteria,” she said.