GILROY
– Parents gave Gilroy High School Principal Bob Bravo a clear
directive Monday night to reinstate a grading policy that adds
value to grades received by students who take rigorous courses.
GILROY – Parents gave Gilroy High School Principal Bob Bravo a clear directive Monday night to reinstate a grading policy that adds value to grades received by students who take rigorous courses.
Parents at a sparsely attended GHS forum on grade weighting showed overwhelming support for the policy that was rescinded at the start of thisschool year. Nearly all of the dozen or so parents who attended Monday night’s session said the practice of grade weighting offers far more benefits to students than a policy that treats grades in Advanced Placement courses as equivalent to grades in regular courses.
Beginning this year, GHS implemented a non-weighted grading system adopted by former principal Wendy Gudalewicz. The controversial policy changed the grade point averages, and in some cases the class ranks, of this year’s seniors, sending supporters of weighted grades reeling.
“There is a difference between biology and AP biology and that needs to be reflected in a student’s GPA,” parent Denise Baer-Apuzzo said. “An A is an A is an A is just not true. If it is at Gilroy High School, then that has to change.”
Bravo, who called the forum, meets with a leadership team of administrators, teachers and parents today to formalize a recommendation on weighting and other grading policies that would take effect next year. The team will seek approval of its recommendation at an upcoming school board meeting likely May 15 or June 5.
Using weighted grades, a student’s GPA can be affected by as much as a full grade point. Under a weighted grade system, students who receive, for instance, an A in a regular course earn 4.0 grade points; students who earn a B in an AP course would receive 4.0 points.
For parents in attendance Monday, the school board decision should be a no-brainer.
Supporters of grade weighting believe a better class rank makes it easier, and in some cases possible, to enter top-notch universities and win competitive scholarships. Parents last night claimed that giving equal value to grades from all courses unfairly skews student ranking and casts an unrealistic picture of how students are performing in the classroom.
“There’s a self-esteem thing here,” parent Iris Kabert said. “It’s not only cream of the crop students in AP classes. You have middle of the pack students taking rigorous courses, they should be recognized for it. You need to put a carrot there for them.”
Parents also worry students will avoid AP courses if there is no added incentive, especially in light of another GHS policy requiring students to take the yearend exam of every AP course they enter.
Passing the yearend AP exams can earn, in some cases, college course credit. But the exams are considered the most rigorous of standardized tests and many students would prefer to focus on passing a couple of exams rather than every single one. And, students must pay a fee, usually $80, to take the exams.
Supporters of a non-weighted grading policy point to these concerns as the rationale behind the school’s decision to stop weighting grades.
“It’s not beneficial to the culture of the school if students are taking AP courses solely for their GPA,” GHS academic counselor Erin Gemar said Monday. “The (University of California) system encourages well-rounded applications. They’re asking for more well-rounded students.”
Gemar said students in the past have asked administrators to remove elective courses such as choir or yearbook from their transcript in order to pad their GPA with more weighted courses.
Gemar also argued that university admissions offices recalculate GPAs since schools from around the nation operate on different grading systems.
“GPA is almost irrelevant now. It’s about the grade you got and the level of the class you took,” Gemar said in an interview last week. “Students will be rewarded for taking AP courses when colleges evaluate their transcripts.
Parents Monday disputed many of Gemar’s claims.
“We keep hearing how competition is bad in academics. We don’t hear that on basketball courts,” parent Bob Heisey said. “Life is about competition.”
Whichever policy approved by the school board would not be implemented until next school year, but parents of this year’s seniors pushed for a recalculation of their students’ GPAs nonetheless. Since students may need their high school records in the future.
Recalculation could also play into this year’s selection of valedictorian and salutatorian. Bravo said Monday there is no set policy for choosing which students will receive those honors. Parents supported any policy that reflects a student’s class rank and well-roundedness.
Parents got to weigh in on a separate proposal to use citizenship grades to partly determine eligibility for athletics and extracurricular activities. Students would earn two grades per class. One would reflect their academic performance, the other – the citizenship grade – would reflect how students behave in class and whether they were habitually tardy, among other things.
Bravo said he got the idea from visiting Salinas High School, where students are given an academic grade and a citizenship grade in each class.
As is the case at GHS, students must earn a 2.0 GPA at Salinas High if they wish to remain eligible. However, at Salinas, if a student receives two unsatisfactory citizenship grades, they cannot play sports or take part in extracurricular activities.
Parents were largely supportive of the proposal but cautioned against giving teachers too much control over student eligibility. Many said they would support a system in which students would lose eligibility after a certain number of truancies or referrals for bad behavior.
