"A School Where Grades Are Tops, But Test Scores Are Not" by Emily Alpert, Voice of San Diego 1/17/2011
Excerpt
Students' report cards glow at this unusual, small school. Their test scores look good, too — but they don't shine as brightly as their grades.
Students at the San Diego Metropolitan Career and Technical High School, known as the Met, were more likely to get As and Bs than kids at any San Diego high school last year. Nearly three out of four students had at least a B average in grades 10 to 12, almost twice the average at local schools.
While Met students got the highest grades, they didn't have the highest scores on the range of tests eyed by colleges and the state, a voiceofsandiego.org analysis found. Other high schools with stellar grades also have top scores on state tests, SATs and ACTs. But the Met doesn't.
That doesn't mean the Met is struggling. The unconventional school scores extremely well compared to California schools with similar demographics. Graduation rates are superb. Very few students fail the high school exit exam. And almost all its students take and pass the classes needed to apply for University of California and California State University colleges, a big feat in a district where only 33 percent of students do the same.
But Met students don't do as well as their exemplary grades would predict in San Diego Unified. Other local schools with similar scores have significantly lower grades. For instance, John Muir School got the exact same score as the Met on state tests, but only 32 percent of its students had a B average or better, versus 73 percent at the Met.
The Met is already under the microscope after school district investigators found that grades were changed, an investigation now in dispute. But even if nobody did anything wrong at the Met, the gap between its grades and test scores begs a bigger question, one that goes far beyond the debate over grading at this small school: What are grades supposed to mean?
Grades matter intensely to students. They dictate whether kids go to San Diego State University or summer school. Yet grades are so subjective that nobody can really say what they represent. The As, Bs and Cs that decide futures aren't tied to any common standards, leaving different schools and different teachers to judge students in totally different ways.
Our analysis of grades had some shortcomings. High school grades include subjects that aren't on state tests. The Met is also very small, which means its scores can change dramatically even if just a few kids slip up. But the biggest problems with analyzing grades may be the inconsistency in grades themselves.
"Grades are probably the least effective way to compare anything," said Mike Price, the area superintendent who oversees schools from La Jolla to Kearny Mesa, including the Met. "Probably the only grade that a parent knows what it means is an F."
The gap between the Met grades and test scores may not be a bad sign. It could be that the Met just judges kids on different skills, ones that aren't measured well by the SATs or state tests. It could also be that when the Met eliminated the D grade, it spurred teens to work harder and not squeak by. The D lets a student pass but doesn't count on UC or CSU applications, which is why the Met got rid of it.
Bold emphasis mine
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