A Perfect Transcript May Not Mean There's been a Perfect Education
by Regan L. Barr
“I need to withdraw my daughter Celeste (not her real name) from your Greek 1 class,” read the email. I was surprised. Celeste was always enthusiastic and chatty in class. She had never indicated that she was unhappy or struggling. I checked my grade book. Celeste had a solid 88 – a nice B+. The email continued, “she doesn’t have time to take classes that she can’t get an ‘A’ in.” I was dumbfounded.
I had questions. Was this mother accusing me of making the class too hard? (Over half the class was earning an ‘A.’) Too time-consuming? (My class probably takes less time than a brick-and-mortar course with 5 hours per week in a classroom and homework besides.) Too fast-moving? (We’re on pace for our students to do well on the National Greek Exam, but well below the pace of a college course.) Or was she punishing Celeste for not getting an ‘A’ in a class, even though she clearly enjoyed it?
I don’t think it was any of these things. I think it was the quest for the perfectly curated transcript. Many believe that a transcript boasting a perfect 4.0 GPA (or higher!) puts the world at your finger-tips. It’s your ticket to the best colleges, the brightest careers, the highest income. But is a ‘B’ enough to bring all of this crashing down? If this has been your thinking, either consciously or sub-consciously, let me offer these points for your consideration.
GPA is important, but it’s less important than it was in the past. Studies have documented that grades (both in high school and college) are going up these days, while SAT scores are falling. Grade inflation is rampant, to the point that “gains in high school GPA raise questions about the ability of colleges to rely on the statistics in college admissions.”[1] There are lots of egos in the grade inflation race: administrators want to demonstrate their schools are performing well, teachers want to graduate that brilliant class, and parents want to brag about their child’s stellar performance.
Most admissions departments now recognize that a 4.0 on one transcript is not equal a 4.0 on another. Some colleges are even dropping the standardized test requirement (SAT, ACT, etc.).[2] To compensate for the disparity and imprecision of grading metrics, college admissions programs are placing greater emphasis on finding the well-rounded students rather than searching for the elusive “perfect” student. Extra-curricular activities, achievements related to the student’s chosen field, the content of recommendation letters, and class rankings all matter more than they did in the past.
There’s no doubt that a good GPA still matters, but a B or two among a sea of A’s will not knock you out or the running. We should all stop viewing the 3.85 as a failure. It’s not.
Learning matters as much as grades. Celeste didn’t have the highest grade in the class, but she was learning, making progress, and enjoying success. Greek is a challenging language, especially when taken online. Students must learn to both read and type in a new alphabet. Did it stretch Celeste? Clearly. But she was rising to that challenge. She was learning Classical Greek.
When we instill in our children the belief that the grade is all-important, all sorts of distortions can result. In Celeste’s case, that perfect 4.0 came at the price of only taking easy classes. In a year or two she may be sending a stellar transcript along with her college applications, but will she have truly been challenged? Will her transcript reflect how she does in a subject that doesn’t come easily to her?
In other cases, students are under so much pressure to perform that it leads to nearly incapacitating stress. When we first began The Lukeion Project back in 2005, parents rarely contacted us to say that their student was so anxious and apprehensive that they couldn’t take a quiz or complete a paper. Sadly, it’s becoming more frequent.
Still, other students are driven to actions they normally wouldn’t consider. We have a strict honesty policy at The Lukeion Project and we make our students aware of it at the beginning of each class. Nevertheless, each year we catch one or two students who have copied a Latin or Greek translation from a website. When we confront them, the answer is often that they are overscheduled, taking 4 AP classes, and didn’t have time to complete the translation honestly, but they just had to get that good grade.
Then there are those who try to game the system. They know when they’ve reached that ‘A’ according to the published grading rubric and that’s where they stop. They’ll do just enough homework to get credit, but no more. They’ll skip the last quiz if they know they have an ‘A’ without it. They’ll resort to distorted logic to argue for one more point on a quiz. Any teacher would rather have a Celeste than that student in their class
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Students rise to challenges. I don’t know why Celeste’s composite average was an 88 instead of a 93. Perhaps she wasn’t spending an appropriate amount of time working on her Greek. Perhaps this was her first language and she had never had to do any memorization before. Perhaps she was truly working at her full potential, given everything else going on in her life at the time. Perhaps there was something more than the withdrawal email mentioned. But that email suggested that Celeste was expected to get an A in every class she took, or it wasn’t worth it.
I beg to differ. Sooner or later, every student will rise to the level where they must do more work in a class than they’ve had to do in the past. For many students, especially those who are used to easily getting top grades, languages are that challenge. Rather than shaming a student into feeling disheartened, we should challenge the student to find new paths to mastery. This is not a time to teach our students that quitting is their first response. It’s a time to teach them to push a little harder, study a little smarter, focus a little longer. It’s a time to tell them you believe in them, and they can do this hard thing.
This article is timed perfectly! I am trying to help myself and my child get over the shock of loosing the "precious 4.0 average" in college. I'm certain we will both survive and come out fine on the other side.
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