Grading system A+ through F , but no "grade E"?

I’m pretty sure when the letter grade system was first introduced it ran from A through E. Later they switched the E for F, probably since it is the first letter in fail.
Now tell me, where are all the B batteries?

I had a friend whose high school did use “E,” although never as a final grade for a course. I don’t remember what the numbers were specifically, but I remember that E and F were both failing grades. I guess E was just less hopeless than F? Made no sense to me!

Actually, the introduction of “E” instead of “F” as the lowest grade in some limited areas (especially the Midwest), was a later development (post-WWII). The “F” was a carry-over from a period before letter grades when one either got “P” (pass) or “F” (fail).

The first full-scale letter grade system for which there is documented proof was adopted at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts in 1897, Durm said:

· A: excellent, equivalent to 95 to 100 percent

· B: good, 85 to 94 percent

· C: fair, 76 to 84 percent

· D: barely passed, 75 percent

· E: failed, below 75 percent

The percentage equivalents were tougher than most systems today. The next year, Mount Holyoke tightened them further, making a B from 90 to 94 percent, a C 85 to 89 percent, a D 80 to 84 percent, an E 75 to 79 percent, and adding a sixth grade, the soon-to-be-famous F, which was anything below 75.

Source: The Washington Post

@AstroChuck Nice.

@AstroChuck Interesting artcle.
And B baterries?......
......another good question…

agree with Harp…nice

We used to make jokes about getting a D- or an F+, neither of which were ever used at our school. Recently I gave someone a grade of D+++, indicating they had satisfied the requirements of a D, but had left one thing out that when done, would raise them three grades to an A, which they did.

The elementary school I went to had A, B, C, D and U. They wanted to imply “Unacceptable” instead of “Fail.”

In my elementary school we had weird letters, E, G, A, and U. Excellent, Good, Acceptable, and Unacceptable, and once I got into “real” school with a regular grading system, I always figured they skipped E because they didn’t want us to get confused and think we did excellent when we really almost failed. Haha. It’s probably what Harp said though. He’s usually right about stuff.

The English GCSE (high school) system goes all the way to G, and uses U as the F (as “ungradeable”). You can score:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or a U.

A* is exceptional, but I think they’ve abandoned that since I left high school.

They skip the E because the people who made the grading system grew up in the school system.

@La_chica_gomela I’d never heard of that. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Orwell, but I read it as “Excellent, good, average, and ungood” next is doupleungood I guess.

@La_chica_gomela That was the grading system used in California schools for awhile too.

K-5 the grading system in my school was E, S and U, (Excellent, Satidfactory & Unsatisfactory) with + or – used on any of those letters, except for U. (So, E+, E, E-, S+,S, S- and U.) In grades 6–8, they added the letter I in between the S and U for “Needs Improvement.” I was the only one to go through this particular school system, so not having A, B, C, D & F was a little odd for my parents at first. In high school we had number grades for everything. When other people talked about averages of 3.0 and 4.0, I was very confused! My average in French was a 98%, not a 3.98.

When I was in 5th grade (I think) here in NC, we used to get E’s instead of F’s. I don’t know why it changed. I say I think because we moved alot and it could have been in Louisiana!

I believe they don’t use “E” in the grading system because it can be confused with meaning “Excellent”...when it obviously isn’t.

When I was younger, you got an “E” for excellent, “S” for satisfactory, and “U” for unsatisfactory. The “E” probably really would confuse me later if it was used in the traditional grades hehe.

@Zaku An Italian teacher actually did give an F+ to one student while I was in her class. When he asked why in the middle of class the teacher reasoned he “failed with a high grade” The whole room had a good laugh about that.

My elementary school Used numbers, junior high used E=Excellent, S=satisfactory, U=unsatisfactory, F=fail
and my first high school used ME=mastery with excellence, M=mastery, MC=mastery with conditions(basically the same as a D), and R= retention for re-education or something like that. Last high school used the typical A-F

Oh, and to confuse things more, C is essentially the passing grade. You need to get above a C to pass, B to pass well, and an A to pass very well. Anything below is “working up to a C” or “you suck”.

My experience has been similar to @tedibear39 We had Excellent, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactoy…also with – or +‘s. I remember our grading system changed from the
A- 90–100
B 80–89
C 70–79
D 60–69
F anything below.
that changed in middle school at some point to
A 92–100
B 82–91
C 72–81

or something similar to that. I know I have the one for A correct. I know an F was in the 60s though. I always thought it was weird there was no E, but figured F stood for fail.

Those of you who had E/S/U grading schemes, where did you go to school?
I remember dealing with that when I lived in Virginia (Up through grade 2) but never here in California.

I remember my mother not being so happy about “Satisfactory”. I never understood why “Done to satisfaction; adequate or sufficient” (definition thanks to wiktionary) was a bad thing.

@Sarcasm I grew up in Pennsylvania, those grades were only in grade school.

@Sarcasm The school my youngest son tried out (he was basically homeschooled) was in Ventura CA in the late 1980’s. He found it extremely boring and quit after a few months.

I had O / S / U for the longest time. Outstanding, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. And then little + / -. I grew up in southern NH in possibly one of the most progressive public school systems ever. High school students called their teachers by their first names, and no one ratted you out about attendance. We had senior projects before they became mandatory and this really confusing trimester system.

… Yeah, I think NH made it harder for itself because there’s not all that much to do there.

@Elle

Your high school sounds a lot like how mine was. :) Although we did have the traditional grading system, there was no “honor society”, no GPA was weighted, and we had trimesters too!

tear I really miss high school now that I’m in college!

well in other countries they dont use letters so go figure,. i think grading system is really a poor judgement of the learning that goes on

@seekingwolf Yup, we didn’t have an honors classes system (except for math). We believed in “integration.” Even in math, we had an “integrated” math curriculum, aka, we learned linear algebra and geometry at the same time! Ahh, liberal NH.

@Elle I really think that is the best way to learn. I believe I received the most comprehensive education out of my peers who went elsewhere. I also developed work ethic. :D Wonderful place!!!

@seekingwolf I really enjoyed integrating honors and non-honors because the vitality of the class on the whole was much stronger than in regular honors or non-honors classes I’ve taken at other schools. However, applying for colleges was a little weird. Lol.

@La_chica_gomela @YARNLADY- Primary grades (K-3) in the Elk Gove Unified School District (where my daughter goes to school) use this system: E for “excellent,” S for “satisfactory,” N for “needs improvement.”

During the years I was in 3rd and 4th grade (late 1970s Milwaukee), the grading system I had in school was O (outstanding), A (acceptable), U (unacceptable) and I (incomplete). When I changed back to a traditional school, it was back to the A, B, C, D, F business.

In college, it was something like: A (97–100), AB (93–96), B (89–91), BC (85–88), C (80–84), D (75–79), F (<75).

edit: Elk Grove

A: Awesome
B:Beautiful
C:Cute
D:Dorkable
E: Excellent!
F:Falling Far Below

My high school used E instead of F.

^^^What he said.^^^

Grade E does exist in Germany, but numbers are used instead of letters:

1 – A
2 – B
3 – C
4 – D
5 – E
6 – F

@sarcasm – I was in Western New York.

Speaking of grades and school and stuff…guess where I am….orientation! HA!
please hold the applause :D
I couldn’t wait to tell my flutherites friends.

@La_chica_gomela: Haha, we had weird letters like that in grade school too!

Ours were: O, VG, G, S, I, and U.
O = Outstanding
VG = Very good
G = Good
S = Satisfactory
I = Improvement needed
U = Unsatisfactory

In grades K-4 at my old elementary school they did E for excellent S for satisfactory and N for needs improvement too. Therefore I think that if they implemented an “E” grade up in the higher grades most kids would think the E meant “Excellent”, which could cause some problems judging by the fact it comes after D, which isn’t exactly a great grade.

Maybe that’s just California schools, but I think that may be why they don’t use it.

@Clair Congratulations…

@Zaku Creative, yet confusing and dffiicult to maintain consistency in the long run. Besides, why not give them a more positive yet equal score of A—- ?

@Zen Because the grading guidelines for the assignment were set up to require certain things in order to get a certain letter grade, and those were the things that were left out. Also the assignment was partly designed to get people (chronological adults) to see how they still relate to grades and assignments. And D+++ seemed funny and provocative, while A—-, I either didn’t think of, or I thought might have the person think “I got an A”, when really they were supposed to get a D and need to do the three things they left out to get an A. It had the desired effect: they did the three things and got upgraded to an A, while getting to see their resistances and the impact of them on people rating them based on whether they followed the letter of the assignment.

@Zaku Oh.

How come there is no such grade as an F+? If somebody earns a 59% that should be an F+ . In fact any score over 50% would be an F+. I understand why there is no F-, since that would be like a 0 or some other ridiculous score maybe 10 or 15%.

For example in the Simpsons episode “Bart gets an F” he earned a 59% on his history test, Mrs. Krabappel should have marked an F+ instead of “F” with old red. Either that or his 59 should have been an E which stands for conditional pass.

At that point, what difference does a plus or minus even make?

That’s not the point. The F+ has the same purpose as a D+ or A+; Give recognition. Like I said a student who scores above a 51% should receive an F+ instead of an F. Unlike the F-, F+ is still a feasible grade, since it is in the realm of possible scores. An F- is meaningless since any score next to 0 is meaningless. On a similar note, what is the point of an A+ or A-, since A is already the best grade. A+ and A- are just as meaningless as F+ or F-.

Yeah we had E from grades 7 to 13 in Ontario. Before that it was 1–5. Not a terrible system. We all knew what E meant.