Each school district has the opportunity to set their own grading scale. For the Sioux Falls School District, the grading scale used is a little peculiar. To obtain an “A” in a class, students need a 93 percent average compared to the 90 percent average in most college settings. This 3 percent increase may seem miniscule, but to students striving for excellence, that small percentage can have a huge impact on their GPA as a whole.

“I’ve gotten two B’s during high school and they have both been around a 92 percent,” said junior Brianna Geis. “Anywhere else this would have been an A, so I would’ve had a 4.0 GPA but now I don’t.”

The current grading scale does promote more challenge and competition which upholds the district’s value of excellence. With a higher percentage needed to achieve an “A,” it urges students to work harder to obtain the desired grade. However, with grades being a representation of the amount of work a student puts in, students that just barely miss the cut off can feel cheated. When this emerges, it gives way to a different problem: grade inflation. Students who just barely miss the cut off go to their teachers and ask if there is any way possible to change the grade. This leads to a teacher manipulating the student’s past assignment grades in order to obtain the desired grade.

Grade inflation is an entirely different problem, but the reality is that often times it is because our grading system is not an accurate representation of how students are performing inside and outside the classroom. Anywhere else, they would have obtained a higher grade, but because our grading system is skewed, it often misrepresents a student’s performance. With the strenuous amounts of school work these students complete, they deserve the chance to have their grades accurately reflect their effort.