Courses at Orchard Park High School present four types of configurations when addressing grading issues.

Length of course, meeting times, and earned credit play into the calculations used in quarterly averages, course final averages, and cumulative grade point averages.

How are Quarterly averages computed?

One credit and half credit courses meeting every day have a quarterly calculation of 20%. Half credit courses that meet over the entire year, however, are calculated at 10% each quarter because students have only engaged in half the course curriculum at grade reporting time.  This is also true for physical education. The quarterly averages in the above example are calculated in this manner using a weighting of 1.05 for AP and Honors courses.

How are course final averages computed?

Each final assessment counts as one fifth of the final average (except in Physical Education). This weighting creates different mathematical configurations for the courses described above.

• Phys. Ed. -  (95 + 97)/2 = 96
  AP Gov't  -  (93 + 92 + 89 + 93 + 95)/5 = 92
  Tech Draw  -  ((83 x 2) + (87 x 2) + 83)/5=85
  Physics - (88 + 87 + 92 + 90 + 84)/5=88

How is cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA) computed?

Final averages are determined by adding all course grade point averages then dividing by the number of earned credits (excluding School Service, Lab classes).

Step 1: Final Average in each course multiplied by the credit earned for the course:

PE (96 x .25) + Tech Draw (85 x .50) + AP Gov't ((92 x .50)x1.05) + Physics (88 x 1.0) 

Step 2: Divide the total from the calculation in step 1 by the total number of credits awarded for the courses to get the Final GPA

( (96 x .25) + (85 x .50) +  ((92 x .50)x1.05) +  (88 x 1.0) ) / 2.25 = 90.133

Do NOT calculate GPA by adding the four quarters and dividing by 4:

This is an incorrect calculation:  (Q1 89.344 + Q2 90.536 + Q3 92.483 + Q4 92.55) / 4 = 91.228