Do Grades or Standardized Test Scores Make the Student?

(By Julie Zhu -- Montgomery Blair High School)

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Why is his GPA low? As an example, look at his geography class, a required course. The first day of class, the teacher gave the students the state Standards of Learning exam from the previous year. My son passed at the advanced level with one question wrong, and he has mastered the course work for the year.

But the class is taught to the minimum standard. He got an F one quarter because he didn't do 65 percent of the 18 assignments, even though he still got 100s on the tests. He got a B for the class (3.0, not good enough for Virginia Tech). Students can test out of college classes but not high school classes. (He enjoyed reading almanacs and the atlas in elementary school, so there was not much to learn in a class where students thought Canada was one of the 50 states).

The good news is my son got the opportunity to letter on sports teams for three years, participate in Model UN and help his scholastic bowl team win many times. The school principal has been amazingly supportive.

My son has been accepted at Clemson, Iowa State and Kansas State universities, where he can study chemical engineering. The bad news is that Clemson costs $30,000 each year. After paying considerable Virginia taxes for the past 36 years, I feel cheated that top Virginia state schools won't let him in because of his high school record. If he had been home-schooled, they'd have had to look at his same test grades and SAT subject test scores and let him in.

Nancy Klimavicz

Nokesville

In a happy footnote, you told me that Virginia Commonwealth University just offered your son a four-year, full-tuition scholarship. Virginia Tech's associate provost and undergraduate admissions director, Norrine Bailey Spencer, told me her office highly values Cambridge courses, but also emphasizes grade-point average as a measure of persistence and responsibility. "When you go to Virginia Tech, you have to go to class and fill out your lab reports," she said.

I am more interested in hearing from readers about the standard high school educate-by-the-numbers system that for very quick students seems to condone busywork. I have a friend whose ninth-grader suffered under this system this year and became much more engaged with his studies when they switched to home schooling, just as you suggest. Isn't there something schools could do to save such students from so many hours of what is to them useless drudgery?

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