Sewickley academy is another area school not doing pass fail. We have to compete against these schools, and we are deemed an affluent district, even if 10% of kids qualify for free lunch. This hurts Lebo, just like it’s lack of AP humanities selections at lower grades has hurt Lebo for years. Why be the outlier? How does this help us?

There are only 7 semesters for the college's to evaluate a kid. As each semester goes by, it is harder to pull up the GPA bc of the cumulative effect. Going pass/fail hammers the 2022 and 2023 kids who started their HS career a bit slow but got it going in year 2 and 3.

How about giving students the choice between P/F and a letter grade at the end of the semester. Many universities are doing this. The P/F removes the pressure, but the option to get a letter grade also gives students motivation to do their best.

I strongly urge Mt Lebanon School District to adjust their grading policy for the remainder of the school year. Students have worked too hard to simply receive a Pass with no percentage value. Why would the district not want kids to keep trying to reach their individual goals and feel that their schoolwork is important?

Thank you for looking out for our children. While most of us are still in shock, you are making such a valid point. A lot of schools award automatic scholarships by comparing GPA’s of the incoming freshman. My older daughter qualified for $20k/year at one school but missed the matching scholarship at another by a tenth of a point on her GPA.

This is especially important for junior year, when kids can take several AP and honors classes and significantly boost their GPA before applying to colleges. Watching all the hard-earned 3rd quarter grades go from As and Bs to meaningless Ps was so deflating for our kids.

It’s unfair that the decision for Pass/Fail was done rather quickly than waiting a few more weeks to see what other school districts were doing. at the very least, students should have had a choice to get a grade for 3rd quarter.

I appreciate how hard the district has worked through this crisis to support the community and all the students. Now that we are through the initial part of the crisis and can benchmark against other schools, I think the district should reconsider how to include GPA and QPA points for this semester. In a recent web meeting by the College Board, they stated that 86% of AP teachers are still giving A-F grades this semester, and they encouraged participants to speak to their districts if the districts were foregoing the bonus points this semester. I think we should reward our students for their hard work, especially in the midst of this crisis, and keep the MtL students on a more commensurate scale with the national community.