This was the recurring dream for a good number of years. Haven’t had them lately, but the other night it was college/work (some weird hybrid, not sure I understood), and I had the syllabus and references list, but couldn’t find materials online.
i started in 1st grade.
hs had A-F, including E!. A+ was no more than A, 4.0. We had A- but no other minus grades. E was 0.0. F was -1.0. Yeah. GPA got weighted with honors and AP. All in the name of something…that wasn’t worth tracking except for like 5 kids. (all of whom could have calculated it in 5 minutes anyway.)
We didn’t get letter grades until 6th grade. Not sure what the categories were before that.
Mrs. Outdoor teaches 1st grade and they have a number system 1-4. Except you can’t get a 4 unless the student gets everything correct and the teacher has time to teach stuff above grade level and they also get all that correct. Getting perfect scores on grade level stuff is only a 3. You also can’t get a 1 if you did any work in the quarter because we don’t want to leave anyone behind in our state. So pretty much just a 2-3 scale.
I had something similar to this through second grade, near certain A/F grades started by third but 100% by fifth.
I started getting letter grades on my report card when I finished up elementary school (K-3rd) and entered “grade” school (4th grade+)
I have the “missing homework / need to do this class” dream semi-frequently. I used to wake up and be bothered by it, but for a while now I realize in the dream I’m graduated / have my degree / etc. and they’re never taking it back from me, so when I’m pressed to get stuff done or “you won’t graduate / we’ll take back _____” I respond with go ahead, do it, you can’t and we all know it, I’ve completed everything I needed to, see if I care.
In grammar school, my son had grades 4, 3, 2 and 1. They are similar to O, S+, S and N/U. Though, as I understand it, a 4 means you are like more than a grade level ahead. My son was going to the next grade up for his reading groups and he still got 3’s in reading. (same w/ math).
Now in Junior high (“it’s ‘Middle School,’ Dad. Jeez!”), he gets strictly number grades.
We had letter grades all the way from first grade on. That’s probably what’s wrong with me.
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I didn’t get letter grades in high school but you could equate numbers to letters. Honors classes were worth 10% more toward your GPA.
Going back to Delaware in April to see my French teacher for the first time in 34 years. The physics teacher was like my 2nd dad though (I’ll be staying at his house).
In college it was the quarter system and A / B+ / B = 4.0 / 3.5 / 3.0. They have since switched to the semester system (facilitates transfer credit) and you can get an A-.
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Middle school.
Pretty sure first grade had letter grades for me. I know when we moved to KS for third grade I was getting letter grades.
The Episcopal school I went to for 1st and 2nd grade used E/VG/G/… for everything.
The Roman Catholic school I went to for 3rd and 4th grade used A/B/C/D/… for academics and E/VG/G for conduct items on the report cards.
I don’t know when the Episcopal school transitioned students to letter grades, or when the RC nuns started using letter grades in their quest to torment students.
I think it was 4th grade for me
Before then my teacher just wrote my percent score accompanied by words like Excellent! Or Good!
At least 4th grade, because I got a D in one subject for one midterm and was really distraught about it. But my kids don’t get real grades until middle school.
I believe I got grades in 1st grade. I don’t remember if kindergarten used it, too. The thought seems ridiculous. Chicago Public Schools used a weird scale at the time. I believe it was E, G, F, and U for excellent, good, fair, unsatisfactory. They also had mostly-behavioral subcategories under them where you either got nothing (good) or a checkmark (bad). High school was when we went to the more standard ABC stuff.
As a kid, I bought in to the concept of grades. I did note that “talks during class” was the surest way to get a low grade, but I somehow thought that there was some sort of correlation between “talks” and, I guess I would have thought of it as, being dumb. I was pretty shocked when we went to HS and many of the kids I just assumed were academically dumb turned out not to be at all dumb, and got good grades once a new set of teachers who weren’t familiar with their previous grades rated them. So in retrospect it became clear that “talking” in K,1,2 got you a reputation that was passed on from year to year and kept you in bad grades. You only escaped by leaving the school. Fortunately 1) I already started with a good reputation from my brother, who preceded me 2) I didn’t talk much in class. So I got the A’s (or E’s).
Not a letter grade exactly comparable to A,B, etc, but there I remember there was an AO poster PNWTOC
Plays Nicely with the Other Children