How to Assign High School Grades

---

To Grade or Not to Grade?

The age-old homeschool question, to grade or not to grade? While in the early learning years mastering material is the key goal before moving to new material it is a different situation when your student is in their high school years. If your student plans on attending college it will be mandatory for the potential school to see transcripts of what your student has accomplished and how well they did in all of their subjects. Even if your student isn’t planning on education beyond secondary school most states do require a certain amount of credits and subjects in order for your student to graduate. 

 Methods of Grading?

It’s completely up to you as the parent how you decide to grade your students’ proficiency. Here are some ideas to help you get started.

Grade only tests and projects- 

This is normally how some classes work in college. They use homework assignments for the student’s learning process but do not grade it. With this grading method, it is important to make sure your teen knows how to review the information before tests and also how to stay on schedule with projects. 

Grade tests, projects, daily assignments, and participation-

If your child participates in a co-op or group class this method would allow you to also grade based on how much they participated and even how their attitude was with the learning process.

Using this method you might grade tests and projects 75%, daily assignments 15% and participation/attitude 10%. (adjusting percentages of course to your preference) 

Use a rubric-

In education, a rubric refers to “a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students’ constructed responses”. Rubrics usually contain evaluative criteria, quality definitions for those criteria at particular levels of achievement, and a scoring strategy. ( Wikipedia)  

HSLDA has some great resources about how to use a rubric in your homeschool- The Rubric: A Tool that Could Transform Your Homeschool

What About a Grading Scale?

When your child becomes a high school student it is much more important to evaluate their retention and understanding of their courses more objectively. College admissions officers need this information so they can make accurate assessments of your teen’s ability and potential. Here are a few examples of grading scales to use with your high school student-

Many high schools continue to use the 10 point scale:

• 90-100 A
• 80-89 B
• 70-79 C
• and so on.

Other schools often use the 7 point scale:

• 93-100 A
• 85-92 B
• 77-84 C
• and so on.

Another option might be to choose to add a + or – to a letter grade to provide greater detail of your student’s abilities in a course. For example, on a 10 point scale:

• 93-100 A
• 90-92 A-
• 88-89 B+
• 83-87 B
• 80-82 B-
• and so on.

How to go about determining GPA?

1. First, assign each class a credit value.
2. Next, assign each class a numerical grade.
3. After you have done that multiply each class credit by its numerical grade.
4. Add all the grade points for all the classes that are complete.
5. Divide the total grade points by the number of credits completed.
6. The answer is the current grade point average.

 

 

 

Here are some links to help with your grading process and in creating a transcript for your homeschool high school student-

• Homeschool High School Transcripts FAQ
• Homeschool High School Transcript
• Guide to High School Credits for Homeschool  (Infographic at the right)
• Calculating a Homeschool High School Student’s Grade Point Average
• Homeschool High School Grade Record Spreadsheet (Grade Book)
• High School Requirements for Higher Education Goals
• Homeschool Graduation Planner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

• Free Resources
• High School Information
• Homeschool Graduation
• Homeschool Transcripts
• Templates and Downloads
• Transitioning to College
• Uncategorized

July 20, 2019