As Beaufort County Schools continues into the second month of the school year, students, parents and administrators alike are also adjusting to the new 10-point grading scale.

The state Board of Education elected to move all high school students from the original seven-point scale to the 10-point one, effective this school year.

Rebecca Garland, deputy state superintendent for the Department of Public Instruction, said North Carolina made the decision to change the grading scale because surrounding states operate on that scale.

She said the state heard concerns from parents and administrators regarding how competitive N.C. students are in comparison to other states when it comes to college applications and scholarships.

Students in other states would only have to make a grade of 90 or above to have the letter grade ‘A’ on their transcripts, but N.C. students would have to make at least a 93. This was putting them at a disadvantage, Garland said.

She said the law only allows for the Board of Education to make grading in high school classes uniform, so the issue of how to grade the younger students was left up to the local school systems.

Taking advantage of this local authority, Beaufort County Schools Superintendent Don Phipps said the local school board went ahead and made the 10-point scale change down to third grade.

“For us, it’s a matter of us having to look at what we’re doing at a local level,” he said. “My fear is that people will see that and think they’re lowering the quality.”

Phipps said the local board didn’t think it made sense to have the majority of the lower grades still on the seven-point scale. Students typically begin standardized testing in the third grade.

“This is not a situation where things have gotten easier,” he said. “It’s consistent with colleges and university grading scales.”

Garland said the state originally planned to roll out the changes one year at a time, starting with this year’s freshman class. But she said parents and teachers were concerned, as students of different ages are often in the same classes in high school. Essentially, under the original plan, a freshman may make an ‘A’ under the 10-point scale in a class but a sophomore still under the seven-point scale would make a ‘B’ for the same quality of work, Garland said.

That issue is what prompted the state board to roll out the changes all at once starting this school year.

“This matters because un-weighted student GPAs are used as college admissions officers compare student achievement. Weighted GPAs are used to determine the coveted positions of class rank,” one concerned parent, who did not want to be named, wrote in an email. “Local school districts can look at ways to have an unofficial way to recognize student achievement that could be included with a transcript. Beaufort County has been wrestling with this, and school board members have heard from many parents concerned about how this issue is being handled.”

But Phipps said that for better or worse, state officials have said GPA calculations from previous years would not be adjusted to reflect the new scale.

“There’s nothing we can do about that,” he said, also saying the change is not expected to greatly affect class rank results. “We hope it’ll benefit in many more cases than it will hurt anyone.”

Dale Cole, principal at Southside High School, said the school held information sessions for parents to explain the changes and how grading will work for the students.

“The surrounding states, and actually most of the states, they’ve been using the 10-point scale for a while, as do the universities,” he said. “Our students were getting a negative impact. … That adverse effect, it wasn’t fair to our students.”

Cole said he doesn’t think the new scale will mean big changes regarding learning standards or teachers’ grading standards.

“A number only means what you want it to mean. … That’s one of the tough things about grading, and that’s one of the reasons we try to have our teachers collaborate closely,” he said. “My parents and students seem to understand.”

“The number’s just a number. It’s the rigor that matters.”