The Problem of Grade Inflation

As for the ongoing effort to destroy the minds of America’s children-- and yes, I do know that that sounds harsh, but sometimes the truth hurts-- one of the most effective methods is grade inflation. So says high school teacher Shane Trotter in a Quillette article, and he is surely correct. Via Maggie's Farm.

You see, it’s all about self-esteem. Educators no longer care to educate; they believe that they are ersatz therapists. They bloat children’s self-esteem with empty praise and cannot figure out why these students become dysfunctional adults and gullible cult followers. 

Better yet, children who have never been graded fairly do not know whether they know anything or whether their teachers are giving them good grades because it’s easier. 

Trotter continues, pointing out that college students have gotten into the habit of not making the effort, of not putting in the work to learn anything. If they can get stellar grades for doing nothing, why would they do something?

In a decade working in high schools, I’ve seen a consistent push to reduce writing, reading, and note-taking, expand late work windows, lighten workloads, dilute the weight of assessments, and, most fundamentally, to eliminate failures. The same can be seen at the university level. According to an article in the 2020 Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, the amount of time college students have spent on academic work has gone from 40 hours per week in 1960, to 27 in 2003, to just 15 hours in 2008. During that time, the average grade has risen in both public and private universities, while national SAT scores continue to decline. Today’s graduates are not smarter or more prepared for their future, but at least they think they are.

Yes, indeed. They think they are. But when reality dawns on their pea brains, they become angry. They tend to blame the system or the country or the world for the fact that they have been fed a bunch of lies about their own abilities. As for competing against their peers around the world, not a chance.

The roots of these trends can be found in generations of self-esteem culture and a gradual educational shift from a standards-driven approach to one of customer service. As consumerism enveloped society, our schools became more concerned with perception and appeasement than learning. School, in the eyes of parents and educators alike, became something to game—the lessons taught an arbitrary ritual that stood between students and the diploma they needed.

So, there are no fair standards any more. Obviously, if students were graded fairly some would do better than others. And we don’t want that, do we? And if those who did better belonged to one ethnic or racial group, we would immediately hear that standards are racist. 

Didn’t Larry Summers, a veteran of several Democratic administrations, get some serious blowback when he, newly installed as president of Harvard University, called out certain professors for inflating student grades?

Still, schools are moving further away from standards. Walk into any high school professional development and you won’t hear discussion about what skills students will need for an uncertain future or about specific competencies that students are struggling to master. Instead, there is a parade of new strategies to make learning effortless. 

So, we need academic standards, fair standards, ones that cast judgment on student performance. And yet, our therapy culture holds that it is bad to judge, and therefore, many educators inflate grades in order not to be overly judgmental.

Still, if you want to improve public education the place to start is by enforcing standards. We can debate what should be learned, how it should be taught, when, with how many breaks, or what the environment should look like, but when the grades stop reflecting mastery, the entire operation becomes performative. Grading becomes less meaningful. Teachers play the role of thermostat, cooling off grades as soon as they detect too many are in “hot water.” As a teacher of 20 years recently vented, “Just tell me what you want the grades to look like. I can make the breakdown whatever you like.”

Evidently, children who cannot do arithmetic are not going to be prepared for the jobs of the high tech future. In truth, they will only be prepared to break into shops and to steal luxury goods-- and then, of course, to burn the stores down:

Thus, education devolves into a lot of activity for the sake of activity, with little recognition for what skills truly matter or for the ability of education to improve lives. The same has happened with standardized testing. When improving education becomes a priority, states roll out some new testing regime. The test is supposed to better assess how well students are learning, but the grading criteria are manipulated so that it is very difficult to see how well students have actually learned.

When grades are distorted, they stop delivering feedback that would help teachers to accurately assess what was learned, students to accurately determine how well they are learning and prompt greater effort, and the entire system to adapt to the needs of students. This is especially the case among low-achieving students who are often passed through high school without developing the ability to write intelligible emails or to do basic addition. I’m constantly amazed by how many high-school athletes I train who simply cannot add weight totals in their head.

Trotter offers his solution to this problem:

Assign grades based exclusively on academic performance—the quality of the writing, the accuracy of the math equation, the understanding of the historical themes. Grade everything for mastery, alone, and consider it a breach of ethics to do otherwise. Most students would work far harder, learn far more, and come to enjoy it. They’d invest enough to cultivate more rewarding interests and become better citizens. Some would not rise to the occasion and would be left behind. But that is already happening.

So many students sit in algebra classes, lacking a grasp of basic arithmetic. We put students in positions where we know they won’t learn anything and, in the process, make a mockery of the entire system. What’s worse, this refusal to engage with reality precludes better adaptations—technical skill routes, reality-based community support initiatives, and focused remediation for those motivated to bridge gaps.

It makes a lot of sense. It is perfectly obvious if you think about it. Unfortunately, the culture is moving in precisely the opposite direction. Good luck, America.