ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 TAG: 9608210081
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHERINE D. DEROSSET
I FEEL compelled to respond to Jim Marchman's Aug. 8 letter to the editor (``Dumbing down high-school rankings'') in which he asks the meaning of a 4.5 grade-point average when 4.0 is perfect. Let me explain.
For a student to attain a 4.5 grade-point average means he attained all A's in nonadvanced-placement courses and all A's in advanced-placement courses. AP courses are weighted so that an A in one is worth 5 quality points (a B, 4 quality points; a C, 3 quality points, etc.) to reflect the difficulty level of the courses. It should be noted that AP courses were generally not available 30 years ago.
Guidance counselors from Virginia to California have told me that colleges not only look at students' grades, but also at the course level (AP, honors, gifted). They ask schools to differentiate such courses on the transcript, and to note whether the grade-point average contains weighted grades. Colleges use this information to compare the preparation of applicants from a wide diversity of high schools. Experience and statistics indicate that students' high-school grades are more predictive of ability than are test scores. (Test scores for females are historically lower than for males, but females perform better in first-year college courses.)
Marchman also decries the recentering of the Scholastic Assessment Test. The original 500 mean point of the SAT was determined in 1941 by giving the test to a small, select group of students. SAT test scores began declining in the mid-1960s when larger numbers of students (the first of the baby boomers) began taking it. As the number of students taking a test increases, the mean will tend to decrease because of a greater diversity of ability levels. So the College Board in Princeton, N.J., which administers the SAT, decided it was time to recenter the test so that a score of 500 reflects a true mean. This recentering was determined by the group of students taking it in 1990, so students' scores are now compared with 1990 scores rather than those of 1941.
When the SAT was recentered, all high-school guidance counselors and college admissions offices were sent charts comparing old and new SAT scores. Also, when students are sent their scores, they are told the percentile in which their scores fall, to indicate how they performed nationally. Anyone who wants to know the meaning of students' grade-point average and SAT scores need only ask.
Some schools do not rank students because rankings are ludicrous when there are only a few students (at private prep schools, usually). These schools usually only indicate the top two students (valedictorian and salutatorian), since being in the top 10 percent of a class of 20 is less meaningful than being in the top 10 percent of a class of 100 or more. Some schools do not weight grades. So colleges ask guidance counselors, on the form they fill out when they send students' transcripts, to level the playing field, since it wouldn't be fair to compare a student with weighted grades to one with unweighted grades.
Catherine D. deRosset of Christiansburg is a substitute teacher and a private tutor for high-school math.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB