Timeline for What does "I have straight A's." mean?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 22, 2017 at 0:55 | comment | added | fixer1234 | In the US, A used to be the best grade on an A-F letter scale. Then the social engineers decided it was too much pressure on young minds. Further, low grades hurt students' self esteem, high grades unfairly rewarded students privileged by good genes, there was often racial or ethnic disparity in grading (demonstrating teacher bias, culturally weighted tests, historical penalties, etc.). So now, everybody gets an A for showing up, or grading has been replaced by subjective written assessments where every student is good in some way, and other perversions of objective grading against standards. | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 19:22 | comment | added | LMS | @Nagora in England and Wales (and NI?) maybe, but in Scotland the system is different. There are eight bands, seven assigned letters: A (1+2), B (3+4), C (5+6), D (7) and No Award (8). A-C are passes, D is regarded as a fail. At higher levels, generally only the letters A-D are used, and there's less use of the eight bands. | |
| Apr 21, 2017 at 18:12 | comment | added | sucknennnnnn | You are still a "straight A" student if you have grades like an A–. | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 21:05 | comment | added | user6768 | @Floris I stopped paying attention to them altogether. Most teachers grade based on points, so I always just looked at my percentage of points awarded, and would always shoot for 95% or better. | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 21:04 | comment | added | Floris | @fredsbend - just goes to show... there is no uniformity in grading, and you need to interpret the reported grade in the context of the institution that awarded it. At Cambridge (England) getting a "1" (or as they call it, "first") is really good; in some countries that would be a "complete fail". | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 21:00 | comment | added | user6768 | @Floris At the community college I attended, they nixed the A+ and lumped every grade above 93% into 'A'. Also, if I remember right, before that, A+ was 4.0 while A was 3.7. Then A- was 3.5, B+ was 3.2 and B was 3.0. So with the removal of A+ all students in the former A category suddenly got a 0.3 GPA bump. Further, any GP below 2.0, C grade, was failing. So a C- was a failing grade. They changed that to 1.7, though, so C- was passing as well. | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 19:54 | comment | added | Floris | Also - in many US schools the grades are "subdivided" so there is finer gradation: A+, A, A-, B+, B, ... down to D-, then F. For the purposes of calculating "grade point average" (GPA), A=4, B=3 and the +- add or subtract 1/3 (so A+ = 4 1/3,A = 4, A- =3 2/3 etc). In that case, "straight A" refers to "no grades below A-". For convenience this can be converted to a 13 point scale (A+=13, A=12, ...) and divided by 3 at the end. | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 18:10 | comment | added | reirab | @DoubleDouble In the early grades in the U.S. (at least when and where I went to school,) 'E' actually did stand for 'Excellent.' It was basically the early-grade (i.e. K-2) equivalent of an 'A.' As for the normal U.S. grading scheme, it's not so much that 'E' is skipped, but rather than the grades are A-D or failing, with failing abbreviated as 'F.' | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 18:08 | comment | added | Au101 | @Nagora it's also worth adding that - in all exams I've ever taken, anyway - those are all passing grades. U (for unclassified) is the only fail grade - although it's only A*-C that most employers really care about. I got two Us in my time :P Not really important, but .... | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 17:31 | comment | added | Aant | And in Australian universities D means Distinction and is therefore better than a mere C for Credit… | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 16:15 | comment | added | Nagora | @cjm E is not normally skipped in the UK, FYI. Schools currently grade 16-year-olds on a scale thus: A* A B C D E F G (A*) being the best. The system is changing in2017 to a 1 to 9 scale with, bizarrely, 9 being best. The reason for this seems to be that, as standards drop, the govt can add a grade 10, 11, 12 etc. as needed, rather than adding more stars. Anyway, at the moment it is sometimes said that a UK student is "a straight A-star student". 18-year-olds are still to be graded from A* down to E. | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 16:14 | comment | added | DoubleDouble | About "E" in the U.S. : 'Apparently, some professors worried that students would think the grade stood for "excellent," since F stood for "failure." That said, there's no evidence of similar concerns over, say, B—which might just as well stand for "brilliant" as "bungled."' - short article on letter-grade system | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 15:43 | comment | added | cjm | Also, the letter E is normally skipped, so it's really A-D,F. | |
| S Jul 9, 2015 at 14:17 | history | suggested | Chad | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Clarified that this answer pertains to U.S.
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| Jul 9, 2015 at 13:57 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 9, 2015 at 14:17 | |||||
| Jul 9, 2015 at 11:54 | comment | added | Egor Skriptunoff | @Tonny - In Russia 5 means perfect score and 2 complete failure. Only four values (2..5), not elevel as in your country (BTW, that country you are talking about?). | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 8:57 | comment | added | Tonny | Grades A-F is typical in many English speaking countries. Not so much in the rest of thew world. We usually grade by number (0-10), 10 being a perfect score and 0 complete failure. | |
| Jul 9, 2015 at 2:55 | vote | accept | Leon | ||
| Jul 9, 2015 at 2:43 | history | answered | PerryW | CC BY-SA 3.0 |