In a faculty meeting on November 3, Principal Newman announced to Tech teachers that he will transition the school to a letter grade system starting in the fall of 2026. While Tech currently uses a 100 point scale, most public high schools in the country employ a letter grade system where percentages are converted to letters from A to F. While letter grades are further differentiated by pluses or minuses, they remain less precise and “riggable” than percentages.

As much as possible, Newman wants teachers “dealing in letters” such that students do not see numbers on tests, homework, or their final transcript grade. He suggested that grades are meant to be a rough approximation of effort and mastery, and giving precise 100 point scale grades leads to a hyper-focus on small fractions of scores that reflect little about these factors. 

“This is all about academic stress and mental well being,” he said. “Students are absolutely fixated on grades and the minutia of even decimal points of grades getting rounded up. There’s this pressure from ourselves, parents, and educators here. I’d like to see a culture here where we’re focused more on learning than on grades.”

By switching to letter grades, a degree of positive inflation occurs. Rather than concentrating on the difference between a 93 and a 96, a student sees an A. This also allows teachers to better assess subjective criteria, as they can give more general grades for assignments like essays. 

Some students, however, are dubious of this generalization. 

“At Tech where everyone is averaging A’s and high B’s, having letters doesn’t allow for differentiation,” said Saya Ramamurthy (‘28). 

“I want the control of seeing exactly what I lost points on and how many,” said another student who wished to remain nameless. “It’s nice to know exactly what grades you need to get your GPA up a point and I don’t like that so much is going to be obscured.” Given these concerns, Newman has assembled an Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) to decide on the details of the transition. Besides Newman and chairperson Kelly Lovelett, Assistant Principal of Teacher Development, the team includes an educator from every department, representatives from the school guidance department, and three school administrators. 

Though the policy has not yet been officially announced to students and parents in the Tech community, Newman made it clear that letter grades are a when, not an if. The most likely delay that could occur is if the ILT decides to phase in the letter system grade by grade.

The change was inspired by Staten Island Technical High School whose principal, Mark Erlenwin, joined the faculty meetings via ZOOM to explain why his school’s switch to letter grades systematically changed its academic culture. 

Ramamurthy rejected any comparison of the two schools. “Staten Island Tech is not as competitive as us so they can’t apply to us,” she said.

Erlenwein explained that the switch started when he observed an unhealthy perfectionism in his students that he had also experienced as a student at Staten Island Tech 33 years ago. When he became principal in 2013, Niche.com ranked the school #15 in America, but students were struggling with mental health challenges and many specifically with suicidal ideation. In his third month on the job, Erlenwein himself was hospitalized after a stress heart attack. After speaking to his student visitors in the hospital, he had a wake up call.

“I thought, ‘I can’t believe I’m surrounded by the same kids who never slept, did whatever they could do to get 100,’” he said. “My current student body was going to the hospital because they weren’t feeling well, they weren’t sleeping enough, they were unhappy with their grades (which were in the 90s), which was directly connected to my personal experience. That was one of my big whys [for the policy changes].” 

Erlenwein shared more of his reasoning and observations in a 2020 article on his own website. 

“The anecdotal and other numerical-based data showed increasing rates of lateness, absenteeism, grade obsession, fatigue, missing homework, academic dishonesty and stress-related health concerns,” he wrote. 

Newman cited these same symptoms as a catalyst for Tech’s switch to letter grades, particularly students coming to guidance counselors with suicidal ideation. 

Some students would rather see Tech’s administration focus on maintaining competitiveness rather than reduce academic pressure. 

“I don’t really like it to be honest,” said Máximo Welter-Gomez (‘28). “I understand why they want to implement this and I feel like it would have good effects on mental health, but at the same time we go to Brooklyn Tech. The majority of kids come expecting to compete. Look at the outrage about the three AP limit— you see that people aren’t afraid to work hard, and we came for a reason.” Newman disagrees. “To say that [students] came here to be in a pressure cooker sounds a little crazy to me,” he said. “I can’t imagine people coming to Brooklyn Tech to feel academic stress. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

In response to “students’ over-emphasis on numerical grades and perfectionism,” Erlenwein and other Staten Island Tech faculty spent 2016-2018 conducting an Academic Wellness Survey and working with students on the School Leadership Team to create an Academic Wellness Proposal that later evolved into their current Academic Policy. Newman also held roundtables with Tech’s Student Government Organization before bringing this proposal to faculty. 

In addition to switching to letter grades, Staten Island Tech also removed weighted grades from AP classes. In conversations with college admissions officers, the school found that colleges convert all transcripts to a 4.0 unweighted scale. Students with 100 weighted averages at Staten Island Tech expected admission to the most competitive schools, but became disillusioned with their acceptances. It is currently unclear whether Tech will unweight APs, but Newman said he wants to balance recognizing the extra workload inherent in AP classes while also amplifying the rigor of non-AP major classes. 

“Our classes in our majors are post collegiate classes, grad school classes,” he said. “I feel like the classes are above the AP standard.”   

Erlenwein added a final reason that letter grades make sense when college standards apply. 

“[Letter grades] are how colleges essentially give and assign grades,” he explained. “So it made sense as a school to go in a direction that would align with this [to be] college and career preparatory.”

Accompanying the grade policy changes, Erlenwein implemented a new assessment policy ensuring that students can retake any tests they perform poorly on, even if they did not fail. He also set up a Restorative Assessment Center with additional proctoring faculty so that students can “retake assessments during their lunch periods and after school” and not miss class time. The extra faculty reduced the burden on teachers, who are responsible for making alternate test versions but not scheduling or proctoring retakes. This helped significantly with academic dishonesty and absenteeism as students could afford to perform poorly on a test rather than cheating or skipping class on test days.

One final element of Erlenwein’s grading policies was removing the school’s valedictorian honor. The school’s Academic Policy now reads, “In the spirit of social emotional wellness, [Staten Island Tech] has a Non-Ranking Policy and therefore does not select a Valedictorian nor a Salutatorian.” 

Newman stated that he still supports Tech having a valedictorian, or potentially a graduation panel of the top 10 students as determined by weighting that is not visible to the students, along with and the consideration of extracurricular portfolios. 

All these policy changes were ultimately successful for Staten Island Tech. 

“When we first shifted to letter grades…students could only see letter grades in the absence of incremental numbers, and what that allowed us to do was to literally change what mattered in the building,” Erlenwein said “It changed the whole culture of the school’s students.” 

According to NYC DOE School Quality Reports, Staten Island Tech has also maintained excellent outcomes before and after they implemented their academic policy shifts: 98% for college and career readiness, 100% in college or career preparatory exam completion, excellent performance on Regents exams, and 100% graduation rates. These statistics suggest that students continued to maintain college competitiveness and content mastery levels even with a looser grading system.

For all the effort and benefit from these policies, Staten Island Tech will be returning to a number grading system next year because they use a new DOE grading platform. After a data breach on Pupil Path, a former grading software, the DOE launched its own grading platform which only allows for 100 point scale grades. Jupiter, the platform at Tech, is not restricted to numbers. Staten Island Tech will be staying with the DOE platform, with Erlenwein feeling that the letter grades specifically are no longer necessary. 

“This is 13 years we’ve been [using letter grades], so we’ve kind of created a culture,” he said. “Now we almost don’t even need the letter grades anymore, the way we have fixed some of the challenges in our building. I have all these other systems in place that support students.” 

It remains undecided precisely how much of Staten Island Tech’s Academic Policy will be implemented next year at Tech. Newman said he is “giving a lot of autonomy to the committee to make these decisions.”

“They’re tasked with implementation of this for next year, so they’re going to be working on this for the rest of the year to implement it in a successful way,” he continued. “Those questions like [unweighting APs, getting rid of the valedictorian, instituting the new test retakes for all] will really be answered by the committee, but likely we will just be switching to letter grades.”

Even if letter grades are the only change, Tech students who are aware of the switch are hoping these barriers do not reduce academic rigor. Timothée Bermont (‘29) is one of many students who feel frustrated with the safeguards. 

“We want to be the best of the best, the elite of the elite, we want to get 105’s so that you’re special in a good way,” he said. “We want to be able to say ‘I went to a top 15 school and I’m the top one.’”

Sophomores who will have split transcripts, with two years of numbers and two years of letters, have similar reactions to the pending change. 

“The fact that if my grades go up from a 93 average to a 96 average it won’t be reflected is discouraging,” said Welter-Gomez.  “Colleges like growth and that’s not gonna be as prominent with the split transcript.”   

Several anonymous juniors spoke of feeling especially disadvantaged by being the first class to experience the three AP limit after choosing majors, which dictate the APs you take, and now having a single year of letter grades on their transcript.

However, other students appreciate letter grades and wish they had been the standard all along. 

“I’d rather have had the letter grades since I was a freshman because of my freshman DDP teacher,” said Takuo Yamamoto (‘27).  “There’s positive inflation that makes the [bad grade] look better. I’d rather have a C than a 75.” 

Newman remains firm in his commitment to this transition. “I’m not saying everybody is going to be mentally well if we do this, but I think it’s a huge piece of the puzzle and we want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” he concluded. “I think the changes we made for this year such as limiting the number of APs to three was also a small piece in the puzzle of academic well being.”