What’s the origin of an A-F grading scale that’s in use in schools?
Also, why is there no E grade?
My guess would be because E is sometimes used on report cards to mean ‘excellent’.
A friend of mine’s high school did, in fact, use “E” for failing.
Of course, here we use “R”…
In school, we use E-S-U in the lower grades for Excellent, Satisfactory, and Unsatisfactory.
We used to use A-B-C-D-0[zero] Zero meant no credit, usually for extended absenteeism, often not the fault of the child but of the parents who were on the local military bases and would move a lot.
F seemed required to separate the kinds of failure, attendance and poor comprehension.
Every school board re-makes these decisions every few years, usually to keep the system they have, but it does get reviewed.
There’s also considerable confusion over how to construct a GPA for letter grades.
Numerical grades (67% is passing, etc.) have the look of more precision, but the teachers know there’s nothing precise about any of their tests or gradings.
To make a basic 3-or-4-or-5 option decision look like there’s 100 fine discriminations is just misleading.
That depends on the nature of the class and tests, of course. If you’ve got a 50-question multiple choice math test, for instance, of course you have precision. On the other hand, for a 500-word history essay, it’s not so straightforward.
There’s actually a lot of variety within the education system.
For example, in my high school, an A was from 100-93, a B from 92-85, ect. Some schools have an A from 100-90. Canada uses a different grading scale entirely. (I believe it’s in 15 point incraments, correct if I’m wrong.) They all have to convert it to a 4.0 grading scale in college apps to quantify their system.
Some schools do use E. An E in my hs indicated that the kid could attend summer school; F indicated that they could not.
A WAG would be that F=Failure was a good enough reason to skip over E.
Yeah, there is. My high school started off as a 100-94 = A, then switched to 100-90 = A. As I was graduating, there was discussion about making Advance Placement classes a 5.0 scale as opposed to a 4.0 scale. IIRC, it was intended to offset the lower grades the students got as a result of taking tougher classes.
The university I graduated from used an E as a failing grade.
I’d be curious to hear the origin of the A,B,C,D,F grading system too.
As I was walking across campus one day, I heard a student talking about a test he’d just taken: “I did so bad, he’ll probably give me a ‘G’.”
At the very bottom of Making the Grade(s) webpage is this quote:
“Harvard began using letter grades in 1883, and the only real change in more recent years was the introduction of plus and minus.” Although not explicitly stated, my gut-feeling is that this is one of the first uses of letter grades.
The practice of giving out letter grades with any regularity appears to have developed around the 1930’s and 40’s, according to The History of Grading in Three Minutes.
University of Kentucky uses E for failure in tradtional classes, reserving F for failure in pass/fail classes. I, myself, have not come across this practice, having received all my failing classes with a resounding F!
In my HS, it was 92-100 was an A, and 5.0 AP classes, although you couldn’t go over 0.1 higher than 4.0 for every AP you took, so if you had all As and 5 APs, you’d have a 4.5 GPA. In college, it’s 90-100 A.
Jman
I design software for computing grades for school districts all around the country, so I know a little bit about this subject.
The consensus is, everyone does it a little differently! The models are determined by the individual school boards. It is amazing how much variation can occur within a single state, as far as standards.
Generally, the grading schemes are:
P/F (Used more in colleges than at the K-12 level)
P - Pass
F - Fail
Achievement (usually seen in Elementary schools)
E - Excellent
S - Satisfactory
N - Needs Improvement
U - Unsatisfactory
Academic (Alpha)
A - 4.00 points
B - 3.00 points
C - 2.00 points
D - 1.00 points
F - 0.00 points
I agree that the reason they went straight to “F” was because it implied “Failure”.
100 point scale (Numeric)
0 - 100 points
Actually the fairest of all systems, and one I find more districts to be implementing.
Remember, no matter what system is used, it’s all so fucking subjective that it’s ridiculous. I you want to get started on THAT subject we better meet in the Pit.
I don’t know if Harvard started the practice of letter-grading, but I do know for a fact that a failing grade there is an ‘E’, and I have the report card to prove it.
–sublight.
In the school at which I teach, the system is as follows:
“A”=93-100
“A-”=90-92
“B+”=87-89
“B”=83-86
“B-”=80-82
and so on. Furthermore, the credit given depends upon the level of the course being taught. The basic courses are on a 4.0 scale, but Honors level courses are on a 4.5 scale, and Advanced Placement level courses are on a 5.0 scale. It gets pretty confusing at times, but it works well for us.