The Frisco Independent School District Board of Trustees voted to extend the 6.0 weighted GPA system to encompass dual credit courses. This adjustment aligns dual credit courses with Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes on the 6.0 weighted GPA scale.
Three weighted tiers will be implemented as follows:
- Tier I (5.0 GPA scale) — on-level courses
- Tier II, (5.5 GPA scale) — Eligible Advanced courses, Eligible Project Lead the Way courses, Independent Study and Mentorship, Academic Decathlon, and other applicable courses designated in the course catalog
- Tier III (6.0 GPA scale) — Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Dual Credit
The broadening of Tier III is expected to increase interest among students in engaging with college-level coursework. “Current and former Frisco ISD students have advocated for this shift for several years,” said Dr. Amy Harp, managing director of academic programs.
The proposed change was presented to the board in March, where trustees heard feedback from the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council and the District Advisory Council’s Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum Committee.
Feedback gathered from the Superintendent Student Advisory showed that 70% of students supported dual credit courses carrying equal weight with AP courses in terms of GPA. Conversely, 23% of students disagreed with this proposition. Similarly, in the District Advisory Council (DAC), 58% of participants favored dual credit courses being on par with AP courses in GPA weightage, while 25% opposed this idea.
In the fall 2023 semester, FISD students collectively enrolled in 3,419 dual credit classes. Now, in the spring semester, 3,117 dual credit classes are currently being taken by FISD students. FISD students have access to 77 distinct academic or technical dual credit courses through Collin College. The educational opportunities extend beyond Collin College, with UNT Frisco providing eight online courses along with the North Texas Now! Program.
GPA is used to measure academic achievement and contextualizes individual student performance by comparing a student to others in a graduating class. View the current course grade weights for GPA calculation as determined by Board Policy EIC (local).
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