I remember reading that Marcia used a P/F grading system on her dc's transcripts. I was just wondering if anyone else is choosing that route.

Sandy

Hi Sandy,
Our umbrella school requires letter grades because that is what the colleges here look at. So, I'd recommend that you check with your umbrella school, as well as colleges that your student may be interested in.

Blessings,

Thanks, Dana. We did grades with our oldest, now graduated, and I did grades this year for ds who just finished 9th grade. We don't have an umbrella school. My ds doesn't yet have his potential college list together, although it seems most in general look for grades/grade points. I was just curious if anyone was using P/F and what their responses have been.

Blessings,
Sandy

I'm also curious. Colleges may be interested in grades as a rule, but surely there's a different attitude toward grades granted by parents?

I have a daughter entering 9th grade this fall, and I do not want to be assigning her letter grades. Even though I have a master's degree in education and five years' experience teaching in a public high school, I feel unqualified to decide what grades to assign my own daughter in a tutorial situation. I simply don't know enough.

Letter grades let a college know how a student has handled a variety of situations over time. A public high school student has academic grades assigned over four years by 10-25 different teachers, using 10-25 different grading methods. There's a real difference between a student who earns mostly A's and a student who earns mostly B-'s.

But any individual letter grade is rather arbitrary. This may sound surprising, since a teacher generally uses a mathematical formula to calculate the grade. The method of calculation isn't usually arbitrary, but a thoughtful teacher knows that the way she sets up her grading method has a far-reaching effect on her student's grades. For example, at the beginning of each semester that I taught Spanish, I had to decide how much weight I would give to various aspects of Spanish and assignments: speaking, writing including tests, homework, and I don't remember what else. Setting these percentages was always troublesome to me. Should I assign these to 30%/50%/20%? Or 40%/40%/20%? 30%/30%/40%? How much extra credit should I make available? What sort of activities should the extra credit be? Plus, what should I put on the tests? Should I ask general, conceptual questions? Picky little details? Should they be multiple choice, or essay questions?

What really drove me crazy was that after I got to know my students, I could stand in front of the classroom and think, "If I use THIS weighting system, then April will get an A in this course and Jonathon will get a B. If I use THAT weighting system, then he'll get the A and she'll get the B." There were always great students who would get an A no matter what, and poor students who would get a C no matter what (mainly because of not being willing to do homework), but there were a large number in the middle with uneven skills who I knew I could flip according to the weighting system. In the end, I just had to choose a method and go with it.

It is the combination of grades from LOTS of different teachers which gives value to a GPA. Homeschool grades are assigned by parents, who not only have the same philosophical biases from year after year, but who are also making their grading decisions with only one student in mind. And that's aside from the emotional factors which make it difficult for a parent to assign a grade.

That's why, if I were an admissions official, I would pay very little attention to parent-assigned grades on a homeschool transcript. No matter what a college says it does with a GPA, it's likely that it applies a different standard to homeschool applicants.

I like Marcia's idea: not reporting grades unless they're assigned by an outside entity. It makes good sense to me. But I am curious about other people's experience with this method.

An alternate method would be to assign grades, but to be extremely clear on the transcript which grades were parent-assigned and which were not. But I'd rather not assign grades at all, because it would give me sleepless nights worrying about how to do it, and I'm not sure the admissions offices would give them much weight anyway.

Do I take it from the lack of response that everyone else is assigning letter grades?

Beth,

I'd also like to hear more responses on this topic. My dilemma is with things like government. How do I assign a grade where the course is reading a lot of material, answering a few questions, and participating in discussions?

Blessings,
Kim

I think if one would give grades the colleges would look at grades along with SAT scores. Some also like to see SAT Subject Test scores, and a couple of AP test scores to see (prove) how much a home school child has learned. (Even though students may be horrible test takers) The scores probably show some sort of pattern.

But the best thing to do is ask the colleges that a child (may likely) go to and work towards meeting that goal.

I would think some sort of standard grade is better than no grade. But that's just my opinion.

Vanessa

I agree. My experience in the education world has led me to believe that admissions officers are looking at four main factors with homeschoolers:

1. SAT scores
2. The content of course work: like, is all the math, science, etc. there? Did they take Biology, etc.?
3. The reading list and writing sample that we provided them. We honestly believe that our son got a full four-year ride on the strength of his Classical Comparison paper and short essays that he submitted on their request. Conversations with Patrick Henry have revolved around book lists--both required for school AND extracurricular.
4. ALL colleges look for students who have a life outside school. So, they look for involvement with sports, travel, clubs (chess, animal, 4-H), and evidence of leadership.

OH: and recommendations from "traditional" sources -- teachers, bosses -- also carry weight.

They don't, in our opinion, look at letter grades because they reason that parents aren't objective. That said, telling them that you've used tests published by the curriculum providers as your grading scheme carries more weight than do teacher-generated tests in the homeschool setting.

HTH!

Beth, what a perfect time to bring this back up to the top (for me, anyway). My daughter--who previously has had no desire to go to college--got to volunteer at a theraputic riding center this summer and now has a desire to help physically disabled people by becoming an Occupational Therapist. Yikes! So, over the last week, I have been searching out school work and records for her so that we can cobble together a transcript for the college admissions officer. What I'm finding is that all her grades will be "A+"...because I REQUIRE mastery before I let her move on.

So now I'm thinking I should do two--one p/f and one gpa. That way, whichever is required will be available.

Now I have to compile that booklist...

Michelle in OK

Well, I finally emailed the office of admissions at one of the schools I think my daughter might, eventually, be interested in. The response was interesting.

He said that although they are aware that a parent-assigned GPA doesn't necessarily correspond to the GPA a student would have received elsewhere, it still has value for them in their admissions process. One thing that I hadn't thought of is that parent-assigned grades can at least give an indication of strengths and weaknesses - a 97 is one subject might clearly be interpreted as a strong grade than an 85 in another.

He listed a number of other factors that would also play into the decision, but he discouraged me from assigning P/F grades. He implied that they actually do trust parent-assigned grades, at least to some degree.

Well, I'm going with that. I'm disappointed, because I really didn't want the grading headache, and possibly sleepless nights worrying about this. But if it must be, it must be. And it's possible that that will give me an extra layer of accountability, which will benefit my kids in the long run.