A few Democratic lawmakers have gotten together with the goal to change the grading scale for school performance evaluations in North Carolina, ABC 11 reports.
House Bill 145 was filed on Feb. 21, and suggests changing the scale from a 10-point system to a 15-point system. The bill passed its first reading on Monday, and would only affect school evaluation scores and not student grades.
The 15-point scale would allow an 85 to be an A instead of a B, a 70 to be a B instead of a C, and so on. The grades would be used to determine the school’s comprehensive performance score. Here's how they would shake out:
A: 85-100 percent
B: 70-84 percent
C: 55-69 percent
D: 40-54 percent
F: 39 percent and lower
The North Carolina Board of Education changed the grading scale from a 7-point system to a 10-point system in 2015. The new scale helped balance the playing field for in-state students vying for scholarships and college admittance against students from states with a 10-point system. The new bill won’t impact the 2015 bill. While the proposed bill is new, if it does pass, it’ll be enforced during the 2019-20 school year.
The 12 House members who sponsored the bill are Democrats, with a majority of them from the Charlotte area. Wake County’s Rep. Rosa U. Gill and Durham County’s Rep. Zack Hawkins are the bill’s two local sponsors.
