Wyatt McCabe 397 Little Creek Road Milton, WV 25541

December 2, 2013

William A. Smith Cabell County Board of Education Superintendent 2850 5th Avenue Huntington, WV 25702

Dear Mr. Smith, My name is Wyatt McCabe, and I am a current junior at Cabell Midland High School. I have just recently heard of the new grading scale that is being implemented in Cabell County Schools, and I am extremely unhappy. Now, as I am sure you know with the new scale, students are required to maintain a 95% or above to receive a four-point credit for the class, and I think that this is totally unfair for multiple reasons. To start off, West Virginia is ranked nationally at 47 out of 50 states in education. It is totally irrational to expect students to perform at a higher level to maintain a 4.0 while our education system as a whole sucks. I, along with many others whom I have discussed the matter with would be much more comfortable being required to perform higher for their 4.0 if the prerequisites for teacher hirees were raised. Students can only perform as well as they are taught, and individuals who have a minimum four-year college education are becoming responsible for equipping future generations with the tools to make a living for themselves in the real world. In all honesty, in some of my classes I have to teach myself the material that we are going over in class due to extremely poor instruction by teachers. For example, I have not learned a single thing from my trigonometry teacher throughout this entire year; when students ask this teacher for help, they are declined and told to, Earn their honors credit. This is shameful; it was not a test or quiz that we have requested help on, but the simple material and worksheets that are meant to be gone over in class. Due to lack of instruction by this particular teacher, I, who has taught myself the material in my spare time have been required to teach other students how to do their work in my spare time, because the teacher refused to help them. On the rare occasion that the teacher attempted to

help, she could not do so very well due to an apparent lack of understanding for the subject, and she has even asks me how to do problems that she cannot do on a regular basis. Although I have caught on to the material myself and currently have a high grade in the class, others do not, and they are suffering because of poor teaching when they are trying their absolute hardest in the class. Reasons such as these are why West Virginia ranks so poorly in education. A teachers job is not to just give students worksheets and tests; they are there to do everything in their power to ensure that their students understand the material that has been discussed in class, so that they can apply such things to their lives later on. It seems now as though individuals are turning to a job in education due to large demand, rather than a passion to help children. Another aspect to take into consideration here is college grading scales. In college, a 90% serves as an A for the class, and now for our schools in Cabell County, a 95% serves as an A. That is an enormous stretch, and given the fact that teachers talk of how they are preparing us for college, raising the grading scale is making our work more rigorous for an A than that in college. I do understand, however, that college work is more difficult, but it goes along with grade level; a junior in high school cannot be expected to do college-grade work, but the work they receive is just as difficult at the time to them based on a higher intellectual level that they would hopefully have by college. Due to this, if high school is meant to be something to prepare students for college, the grading scale should be equivalent to colleges as well. I am a student who takes my school work very seriously, and seeing such a harsh grading scale being implemented honestly frightens me. I work diligently and perform at my very best at all times, and I still do not have a 95% or above in all of my classes. Also, I do not feel as if all of my teachers have equipped me with enough knowledge and instruction to maintain a 95% either, and as stated previously, higher teaching standards should be implemented to ensure more intimate, thorough education in the classroom. I hope that you take my words into thought and consider adjusting the grading scale back to normal, where a 93% would serve as a four point credit and an A.

Kind regards,

Wyatt L. McCabe