SPHS Honor roll....a different view

The recent Sun Prairie High School Honor roll error has caused quite a stir. In fact, the news tidbit has been picked up by a number of news services: north as far as Eagle River, east to Sheboygan, west to Eau Claire, and even south as far as Chicago. Google "sun prairie honor roll" and see for yourself. Slow news day? Or was the information of value for some other reason?

What we have learned is this:

1. The "error" was that instead of printing out a list of students with a 3rd quarter GPA of 3.2 and above, the list included all students with a GPA of 2.0 and above.


2. "We should have had 694 students that were listed as making the honor roll," said Sun Prairie High School Principal Paul Keats. "Because of the mistake we had 1,339 that were listed."

SP-EYE requested the corrected numbers from Mr. Keats and learned the following:

.......................Honor Roll......TotalStudents
12th grade:.........167...................358................47%
11th grade:.........171...................398................43%
10th grade:.........160...................400................40%
..9th grade:........196...................457................43%
____________________________________
Total...............694..................1613................43%

Certainly, the original list was a cause for concern as it meant that 83% of SPHS students had achieved a 3rd quarter average grade of about a B+ or better (standard grading for a B+ is 3.3 out of 4.0 GPA; SPHS uses 3.2 as a cut-off for honor roll).

What else does the information tell us?
If 1339 of 1613 students had a GPA of 2.0 or above (83%)
and the actual number of students with a GPA of 3.2 or above is 694,
then 1339 - 694 = 645...and that's the number of students with a GPA of 2.0 to 3.2.
The # of students with a GPA below 2.0 would be 1613- 1339 or 274 (17%).

How does all this stack up against a statistically "normal" distribution? 68% of students would be expected to obtain a grade of C (1.7-2.3). 13.6% would be expected to earn a grade of "B" (2.7-3.3". Another 13.6% would be expected to earn a "D" grade. Under a normal distribution, 2.2% of students would earn an "A", while another 2.2% would be expected to fail.