The Seattle School Board just voted to give every student an "A"

The Seattle School Board just voted to give every student an "A"

— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) April 29, 2020

You say how is this possible? The Seattle Times reports:

Also Monday — and maybe not coincidentally — the Seattle School Board did the most Seattle thing ever: It voted that every grade this spring would be an ‘A.’

High-schoolers could also theoretically get an I, for incomplete. But district officials said those wouldn’t be handed out much, if at all, and wouldn’t count in grade-point averages in any case.

“Grading has historically rewarded those students who experience privilege, and penalized others,” said Seattle schools Superintendent Denise Juneau — signaling that a more permanent relaxing of grading scales may be in Seattle’s future.

Remember the old Lake Wobegon joke, about it being a place where “all the children are above average?” It’s finally coming numerically true in Seattle.

There more:

But giving everyone a 4.0 isn’t “do no harm,” it’s handing out candy. It gooses Seattle GPAs for no reason, at least compared with peers in other school districts — most of which are adopting pass/no-credit arrangements. It renders all Seattle GPAs effectively meaningless going ahead.

“This proposal makes a mockery of the grading system and will have negative implications for college admissions,” one parent wrote to the school board before Monday’s vote. “It sends a signal to all admissions officers that Seattle Public Schools is willing to artificially inflate student grades.”

A few board members asked Monday whether district staff had checked with colleges about this, and the staff answered “no,” they had not. But then the board backed the new policy anyway, 5-2, turning down a request from board member Leslie Harris to postpone it to explore the concerns.

If you are a college admissions officer who doesn't require SAT or ACT scores, would you have confidence in Seattle students ? Should some Seattle students consider homeschooling? Is this a mail and wire fraud scheme that should be looked into by federal authorities?