Try imagining the most obnoxious gradegrubber in your high school class. You know, the one who whined about the meaninglessness of scientific notation. The one who spent 30 minutes begging your history teacher to find out the format of the final. The one who asked everyone in class how well they did on their King Lear essays. Now imagine his or her parent.
Odds are, that parent is a lot like Simsbury, Conneticut’s Robert M. Hartranft. Hartranft, a retired nuclear engineer whose son recently graduated from the local high school, has a chip on his shoulder. Admist allegations that the teachers in Simsbury were too strict in their grading - thus hurting their children’s chances of attending elite universities - Hartranft devised a mathematical formula that weighted Simsbury g.p.a.’s against those of students at schools with “more lenient grading.”
Mr. Hartranft created an analytical method he calls the g.p.a. plot; it uses national data on grade-point averages and SAT scores to compare national grading norms with those at the local high school. The purpose, he said, is to reduce the variability and subjectivity of grades — and to make it absolutely clear to college admissions offices that a B or B-plus at Simsbury may be the equivalent of an A at most high schools.
Even though proponents at Simsbury think they are evening out the playing field for certain students, they are actually doing quite the opposite. For one, the whole process is highly presumptious; apparently Hartranft has attended classes all over the country, proving that the C his son got in social studies was unjust. But more importantly, the rubric overcompensates for Simsbury’s tough graders. By basing a system on the S.A.T., one presupposes that the test is a good indicator of academic performance. This has been proven false on numerous occasions, both in its cultural and economic biases and in it’s ability to predict collegiate academic performance.
Moreover, the system unfairly penalizes kids who perform as well as they can at schools without comprable resources as a school like Simsbury, where the average family income approaches $100,000. No child who works hard to achieve all they can should be passed over based on the arbitrary place of their birth.
Perhaps the most obnoxious part of this story is the complete lack of appreciation by the residents of Simsbury for the priviliges they enjoy. Do you know how many kids would kill to be graded critically and to utilize all Simsbury probably offers? The teachers at Simbury are giving students the anayltic skills necessary to become productive citizens, and the only thing they can do is to spit it back in their faces. I’d like to see Hartranft spend his time developing a system that creates equitable schools, thus eleviating the need for this greedy garbage.
-Adam Doster