I am the father of a Navy transplant family in Topsham, and we have come to value School Administrative District 75’s academic, athletic and social environment so much that we now choose to live apart as a family so our children continue to reap the benefits of living in this community while I continue my Navy career.

Accordingly, I am reluctant to criticize the leadership of SAD 75, but the school board recently made a decision that I believe merits further consideration and debate within our community.

After observing the academic experience of my oldest child at Mt. Ararat High School, I wrote a letter to the superintendent and school board in the spring of 2011 requesting a review of the Grade Point Average (GPA) and Rank In Class (RIC) calculation policy.

Mt. Ararat High School does not give additional weighting for grades received in Advanced Placement (AP) or Honors courses.

The Mt. Ararat High School principal, Dr. Craig King, led a comprehensive review of the weighted grades policy proposal, including student and teacher surveys and interviews with the deans of admissions from 13 colleges and universities ranging from local community colleges to Ivy League institutions.

King presented the results of those surveys to the Policy Review Committee during a series of public hearings, and ultimately the Policy Review Committee voted unanimously on April 12 to continue the current policy of not weighting grades.

One of the common themes of the student survey responses was that many students elect not to enroll in AP or Honors courses out of concern that they will receive a lower grade due to the increased difficulty of the class, which will therefore lower their GPA and RIC.

This student response illustrates two negative consequences of not weighting grades in these courses.

First, it does not incentivize student enrollment in the class of the highest level of difficulty commensurate with their aptitude.

Second, those students who enroll in AP or Honors courses will theoretically receive a lower grade than if they had enrolled in a lower level class.

Without weighting, this depresses their GPA, which subsequently depresses their RIC among fellow students.

GPA and RIC are important factors in the admissions processes for many post-secondary institutions, and therefore Mt. Ararat’s nonweighted grading system serves as a negative factor for our college-bound students in an increasingly competitive college admissions landscape.

However, this issue does not revolve solely around only those students who aspire to post-secondary education. In this era of fierce global economic competition, graduates of Mt. Ararat High School will compete not only with students from Maine or the rest of the United States, but with their peers around the globe — regardless of their ultimate level of education.

I believe we should inspire all of them to achieve the highest possible levels of academic achievement by incentivizing them to enroll in the highest level of courses available to them, commensurate with their aptitude.

The Policy Review Committee rejected that path, and instead elected to preserve the current course of incentivizing mediocrity.

Is that really the course that our community wants to set for our youth?

Sean Liedman lives in Topsham.

letters@timesrecord.com