If a high school student earns a 92 percent average in the fall semester of their honors calculus course, what grade do they receive?

Well, it depends on where they live.

If the student attends a Fairfax County Public School, she earns a B plus. If she goes to a school across the Potomac River in Montgomery County, Md., the student receives an A.

The discrepancy in grade point averages (GPA) for the same grade in an honors class is even wider. In Fairfax County, a 92 percent in an honors calculus class translates into a 3.5 GPA. In Montgomery County, the same score would earn a 5.0 GPA for that course.

Fairfax County employs a tougher six-point grading scale than the traditional 10-point scale used by Montgomery County and several other school systems.

In Fairfax, students must earn a 94 percent to receive an A, an 84 percent to earn a B and a 74 percent to earn a C. The 10-point scale awards an A for a score of 90 percent, a B for a score of 80 percent, and a C for a score of 70 percent.

Fairfax also adds a lighter "weight" to the GPAs of students who do advanced coursework.

Fairfax County will bump students up a .5 point on the GPA scale for a course an Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) class. But students who take an honors course receive no GPA benefit. In Montgomery County, students enrolled in both honors and AP/IB classes automatically earn a 1.0 GPA bonus.

Some parents and students said these differences in grading add up and ultimately hurt Fairfax students. Last January, a handful of county residents formed FAIRGRADE, a coalition that advocates for changes to Fairfax County Public Schools grading policies.

One McLean High School graduate speculates that his GPA would have been a 4.1 in Montgomery County, even though it was only a 3.4 in Fairfax. Had he received above a 4.0 GPA, the student would have been considered one of McLean’s valedictorians and said he might have been looked at more favorably by colleges.

In addition to college admission, a student’s GPA impacts whether they qualify for merit-based scholarships, college honors programs, collegiate sports programs and "good student" car insurance discounts.

According to FAIRGRADE, there is proof that Fairfax County students receive GPAs that are, on average, lower than their peers.
The organization’s analysis shows that about 10 percent of Fairfax students have a GPA of 3.75 or higher. In other comparable school districts across the country, the share of students with a GPA of that caliber is closer to 20 or 30 percent, they said.

"Our kids will be reviewed against kids from Montgomery County. … And our kids are competing with fewer A’s," said Megan McLaughlin, a co-founder of FAIRGRADE, parent and Braddock community member. McLaughlin has also worked for admissions offices at Georgetown and Duke universities.

Fairfax County Public Schools agreed to review the impact of its grading policy in response to the agitation of FAIRGRADE and other county residents.

Pat Murphy, an assistant superintendent with the school system, said he expects to issue a report on Fairfax County’s grading policies to Superintendent Jack Dale by late fall. The school system also held a "Grading Policy Round Table" — which more than 200 residents attended in the middle of a workday — Aug. 25. The round table featured college admission officers from the University of Maryland at College Park, George Mason University, University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University.
Of those admissions officers who attended the forum, the reactions to FAIRGRADE’s proposed changes to Fairfax’s grading policies were mixed.

None of the admission officers thought the change from a six-point to a 10-point scale would hurt Fairfax County Public Schools reputation. But most had doubts that it would have much of a positive impact on how Fairfax County students would be viewed by college admissions officers.

"I couldn’t care less if [an A means] 94 to 100 or 90 to 100," said Greg Roberts, the University of Virginia’s senior associate dean of admission. Roberts has also worked in admissions at Emory or Georgetown universities.

Virginia reviews its undergraduate applications holistically and the admissions officer has a profile of the school district and individual school the student attends. They try to put the students’ grades in context and not just judge by how high their GPA may be or how many A’s they might have, said Roberts.
"We try and get an understanding of what the grade means in that school and in that class," he added.

If Fairfax changed its grading policy and started awarding more A’s, Roberts and the other three admissions officers said it would not result in more Fairfax students being accepted to their institutions.

"This is not going to be a silver bullet. Don’t get too far out ahead as to how much this would change things," said Andrew Flagel, the dean of admissions at Mason.
Flagel added that, even if the grading polices changed, it is not clear that student grades would alter that drastically.

Teachers have a lot of discretion when it comes to grades and could continue to give the same marks regardless of the policy change, he said.

Hopkins undergraduate admissions dean, John Latting, said moving toward awarding more A’s could actually hurt higher achieving students. When more students receive A’s, it is harder for colleges and universities to discern whom the very high achieving students are, he said.

"If the number of A’s given out increases by three times, then the value of the A goes down," said Latting, who has also worked at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University.

Latting added that certain regions of the country, such as California, are famous for grade inflation. Other areas, like New England, are known for having "depressed" grades.

He suggested the school system first look at increasing the GPA "weights" awarded for honors and AP/IB classes, so that those students injecting more "rigor" into their coursework are rewarded.

But all admissions officers acknowledged that Fairfax’s grading policy probably drives down the amount of scholarship money students receive. Few national scholarship programs — such as those offered by large business organizations — "reconfigure" student GPAs to account for a tougher grading scale or "weighting" system the way a college admissions office would.

Many simply have a GPA cut off that Fairfax students might be less likely to meet.

"There is more substantial argument on the scholarship side," said Flagel.

A few FAIRGRADE members also point out that Fairfax County’s grading policies could put students at a disadvantage with colleges and universities outside of the region.

One panelist, Woodson PTA president Catherine Potter, said many schools farther away from Fairfax County are not familiar with the school district’s reputation and do not account for its tougher grading policies.
"FCPS is not well known once you leave the mid-Atlantic area," she said.

During her son’s college search last year, Potter said she discovered that some schools, including the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), do not account for "pluses" or "minuses" on grades, meaning that a B plus – or 93 percent in Fairfax County – would be looked at as a B.