Starting this school year, Dana Hall will include A+ grades on student transcripts in the Upper School. In the past, any grade on a Dana Hall transcript 93-100% would be considered an A. However, with this new grading system, grades 93-96% are considered A’s, while grades 97-100% are A-pluses.
According to Amy Kumpel, Director of the Upper School, it became apparent to the college counselors that “not having A+ grades was potentially disadvantageous to our students in the college process”, especially because we already had pluses for other letter grades, and she and other faculty members wanted “to make sure that our students are as competitive as possible”, leading to this decision made by the Department Heads Committee, including administrators like Lydia Stoye, Dean of Students, and Krista Falcone, Assistant Director of the Upper School.
This decision will not change grades earned in previous school years. As seen at the bottom of all 2024-2025 student transcripts, “A+ grades were instituted into the Upper School beginning in the fall of 2024. Any grades prior to September 2024 will not be retroactively changed.” Ms. Kumpel says that this was “a unanimous decision” amongst the committee of department heads. She says that for “other peer schools that have made different kinds of grading changes”, it is “actually a standard kind of practice” to not change grades retroactively. “We want to make sure that student performance is accurately represented for the time it was done under the parameters for which it was done.”
The new policy will not apply to Middle School transcripts. Lisa Robbins, the Assistant Director of the Middle School, says that because Middle School students are not yet dealing with high-stakes applications for scholarships or colleges, it felt unnecessary to add A-pluses into their grading system. She says that Middle School administrators “were concerned about the added stress and the competition that striving for an A+ could bring about”, since having A-pluses as a grade option “could make kids feel like they have to strive for perfection over excellence”; Ms. Robbins also says that these faculty “feel that an A grade demonstrates mastery of knowledge”, and therefore it is “not necessary to further distinguish an A+ from an A.”
Some students are really upset about this change; Micheline Reid ‘26 said “I think it’s unnecessary. It just adds a greater sense of pressure that raises the threshold of what makes people happy.” Others have more mixed feelings: Ginny Ke ‘26 says that A+ grades being available made her feel like she has to “try harder” than before, but that in some ways this pressure somewhat helps her to “strive for better grades.”
Faculty also have a wide range of opinions on this matter; Julie Sheldon, an Upper School math teacher, says that she “initially didn’t think it was a great idea” because it might make students “more stressed” about how high their grades were. However, given the benefit that A+ grades could have for students competing for scholarships and college admissions, she says that she now thinks the A+ addition “probably has more upsides than downsides.” Linda Derezinski, an Upper School English teacher who was involved with this decision, says that the addition of A+s has created some discomfort for humanities teachers. For example, she said that some students with an A- grade are now asking how they can get up to an A+, and while these kinds of questions are inevitable as a teacher, it can be a rather “unpleasant conversation.” While Ms. Derezinski worries that having A+ grades may “be a part of the engine that contributes to stress”, she also points out that there are many other factors at play: “It’s not like A-pluses are the only thing causing grade-worrying.”