ばか！バカ！　馬鹿ー月！

Does anyone know if the Japanese grading scale is similar at all to the US one?

I commonly see characters getting mid 40's on their tests and getting called stupid, yet not actually failing their classes--in the US, nobody getting a 43 on their final exam is going to be passing.

And yet, when characters do well, the get the 99 or 100, just like one would expect of a high grade.

So, any ideas?

I think it's because no partial credit is given out. That's how it was for my mom's O-levels in Ireland when she was young. If you got an A you were really smart. B's you could get through hard work, and the average (as I think it should be) was a C.
Personally, I think school systems are doing a disservice by given out good grades so easily. Not to say that those who do well in school haven't worked hard, but the ease that good grades can be obtained is not preparing people for further study. I even went to a private college prep school and I still struggled my first year of uni. It may seem like you're not going to go far without a college education, but it isn't for everyone. Even elementary schools need to help those who cannot handle/don't wish to do the work necessary find this out. If you find out at college that it's not for you, you've probably already taken on some student debt and it won't help your confidence that you had to leave either.

from what i learn from my education class the problem with grading is labeling. Meaning grades "define" the student rather than being used as a guiding system on how you can improve. if you get a C, there must be a reason why you got it and how you improve on that. You aren't a C-level person, an average person, a person who cannot advanced. I despised how it is used to judge people.

I think that the most irritating part of the grading systems across the world is that there is no discrimination among subjects. Instead, everything in taken into account as a whole, and universities judge a person based on that.

For example, I am absolutely horrible at math, but am extremely good with history, social studies, languages, and English. Why, then, should I not be able to get into a good college simply because I am not good at math, when I am not even taking any math classes in that said college in the first place? How does this make sense?

From what I understand the grading in the japanese system is a bit more loose. a 60 isn't necessarily a D and a 50 isn't necessarily an F. Not only that, but not all tests count towards one's final grade. What happens is some tests are just for you to see how well you know everything, and the teacher will tell you if the test actually "counts". Your actual grade comes in with a report card at the end of every trimester as a number between 1 and 5 for each subject (obviously a 5 is full-near full marks, 3 is average, 1 and 2 is failing).