Chapel Hill High school junior Jane Doe, a real student who wishes to stay anonymous, spent a lot of time studying the night before her honors precalculus test this past fall. She had been working very hard to understand trigonometry functions and made sure to pay attention in class leading up to the assessment. One of her fellow students, however, was not working in class and spent class time on things other than math.
When the results came back, Doe found out she earned a 70% while her distracted classmate earned a 69%. Under the current Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) grading policy, Doe was not eligible to retake the test, as one must score below a 70% to be eligible. The other student, however, was.
“My 70% on a test that I studied hard for was frustrating because another student, who hadn’t paid attention [in class] or attempted to complete the notes, could retake up to a potential 100%,” Doe said.
Doe’s dilemma is a consequence of the damaging grading policy at Chapel Hill High School and other schools in the district—a policy that harms the very students it was intended to help.
As of the 2023-2024 school year under policy 3400-R, the district allows for any student to retake any test or quiz if the student scores below a 70% and “participate[s] in new learning opportunities meeting their needs”; students who qualify can replace their grade, earning a perfect score provided they can perform well on the re-assessment.
This safeguard is in addition to the district’s policy that prohibits any assignment from earning less than 50%, regardless of whether or not a student even completes it. Potentially, a student could score a 25% on a test and retake it, earning a perfect score upon retesting.
The district’s grading policies are hurting students for a number of reasons.
First, the grading policy is setting students up for failure. When students go to college, they are not going to be given the chance to retake every test and will not be given a 50 percent when they choose not to complete an assignment. When students are faced with college-level expectations after high school, they may not be able to keep up, or they may be shocked to learn that retakes aren’t an option or that they can receive a grade less than 50%.
Holden Zimmermann, a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill and 2023 graduate of Chapel Hill High school, said he found it odd in college that “you can get below a 50% on basically any assignment, which is weird to me because at CHHS that was not how it worked.”
Students are not the only ones who see the grading system as harmful to students; many teachers feel similarly. “A 50 floor for assignments puts students at a disadvantage because it makes it much easier for students who have not learned the content to pass a class,” CTE teacher Robert Bourgeois noted. “As a result, they go on to the next level class, which they are not prepared for as they have not learned the previous material.”
Students in this district have an unrealistic perspective of grades and academic achievement, resulting in students feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Given the competitive nature of Chapel Hill High School, students already feel like they have to push themselves to the extreme in order to be successful, and the grading policy just exacerbates that as it just increases grade inflation.
Grade inflation in this district is already out of control. A weighted GPA of 4.06-4.24 lands you only in the top 50% of the class for class rank, according to the Chapel Hill High School school profile, and last year’s graduating class had a whopping 65 valedictorians.
When every student can just retake tests and not complete their work without much consequence, the students who earn high scores and help to maintain the district’s high-achieving reputation may be left feeling like their accomplishments are nothing special.
Many exceptional students are noticing that the grading system does not always seem fair. Junior Grace Harper, a dedicated student, is one of them.
“I believe that the grading floor of 50 can be beneficial as it prevents struggling students from failing,” junior Grace Harper noted. She pointed out, though, that the policy “also seems only to serve as a means to present high GPAs in the district compared to others, where there is no floor to buffer grades, which can make this district seem disproportionately competitive.”
In short, students may not feel proud of an A, as an A is not something that is hard to get. When everyone is an A student, no one is really exceptional, and motivation is completely lost.
