The purpose of this petition is to give 9-11th grade students the choice of receiving letter grades OR changing their grades to pass/fail for their spring classes. While some school districts have announced a simple pass/fail system for spring classes, that decision will severely penalize many students and provide unfair advantages to others. For example:

• Many students taking Honors or Advanced Placement (AP) courses that are weighted and boost GPA's will be severely penalized under a simple pass/fail system. Some students end up in these advanced classes in the fall and others in the spring semester. Depending on what semester students took the advanced  courses, one of two things will  happen:
  1. Many students will not receive the GPA boosts they deserve and will drop significantly in class rank. Such an impact will certainly knock students at the top of their class out of contention for scholarships and admissions to elite universities, simply because their advanced courses were in the spring semester. 
  2. Colleges heavily weigh grades from these advanced courses in the admissions process. Other districts or states may issue letter grades for the spring semester giving their students a significant advantage over Cumberland County students in the college admissions process.
  3. GPA's at the end of Junior year are the most important as they are used for college applications and scholarships. There's simply no way Sophomores and Juniors can take an extra 3 or 4 advanced classes to make up for the loss of grades from spring semester.
• Other students will receive artificial and unfair bumps in GPA and class rank. This applies for students that had their advanced courses in the fall. Under a simple pass/fail system, COVID-19 will effectively deny half of the students in each school from receiving the benefits from advanced courses. 

Giving students the option of receiving letter grades or a pass/fail grade is the most equitable option. The State has already announced that Seniors in year-long classes will receive their mid-term grades as letter grades. The year-long courses were at least three-quarter's complete and the spring block classes were at least half-way complete. Other systems utilizing an equitable solution are: 

• The NC University system is giving all college students the choice of receiving grades OR pass/fail. 
• The College Board is giving modified AP exams this year to be fair for all students. Tests will be taken remotely from home on materials covered by early March. This way students that took the courses in the fall will not have an unfair advantage over those that took them in the spring.

Another matter for consideration is the fact that many high school students take advanced courses online.  These online courses have continued unaffected by the closure of the brick and mortar schools. The online spring classes through NCVPS are nearing completion with fully documented grades. Obviously these students should be allowed to receive grades for these classes too!  However, if a pass/fail policy is imposed, even these fully completed grades are in jeopardy. 

The final solution must be equitable for all students, those at the top, in the middle, and at the bottom of their classes. Please join with me and call on everyone involved in this decision, from our wonderful educators to our district policy makers and our state representatives, to do the right thing...give us the choice of receiving letter grades OR opting for pass/fail for our spring 2020 classes.