By Renzo Moran ’24
THE ROUNDUP
Brophy has a weird high school grading scale. It’s the same as almost all colleges in the country but is set apart from other high schools in Arizona.
Schools like Xavier, Pinnacle, and La Joya Community High schools all award A’s for scores of 90 and above, while schools like Notre Dame Prep and Brophy use a 93 and above system.
I believe that this system is fair because Brophy cares for their students and wants to properly prepare them for everything college related including the grading scale.
But many students don’t believe it’s fair that we use a different grading system than other high schools and think that we should switch to the normal grading scale.
The United States grading system has been using the letter grade system since the early 20th century. This means that schools use the required 90 for an A.
However, colleges have been using a 93 and above requirement to get an A. As a college preparatory school, Brophy tries to accurately prepare you for everything college related.
And with a graduation rate of 99%, Brophy has been the school for people who want to be accepted into a good college and or go out of state. Some believe it is due to how similar the campus and policies are to that of a college campus.
When asked if they thought the grading system was fair to the students, brophy junior Thomas Madsen ’23 said, “I don’t know if it’s fair, but I could understand why it is what it is.” The majority of people by a small margin believe that it is unfair.
Madsen, to back his statement, replied with, “Being a college prep school, there are higher expectations so it makes sense that they are harsher on the grading.”
While Brophy may prepare us for college, public schools and notably Xavier uses the 90 and above system. “There should be a switch, but the question is who should switch. A switch would make it more difficult in terms of stress and the only benefit would be not having to adapt to college,” said Xavier sophomore Kaitlyn Whallon ’24.
Many people including Madsen and Whallon find it odd that Xavier and Brophy have different grading systems, but there is an agreement that each school respectively prepares their students for college.
Public schools in the state of Arizona have a graduation rate of 78.7 percent. It was ranked 8th out of the western states for graduation percentage.
A student enrolled at La Joya Community High said that public schools in Arizona use the 90 and above system. Even they think that it’s fair we use a 93 system and that if there was a switch, it would be pointless.
The 93 system works. It has clearly been effective for years and there is no reason to fix something that isn’t broken. It is there to help us and Brophy knows this. They will likely continue to use the system and aid us in all 4 years of our Brophy career.
