Examining Grade Inflation in High School: My Daughter's Experience

[hotvette]

My daughter is a senior in High School (local public, not private) and just found out her GPA (4.0 unadjusted, ~4.4 adjusted for AP classes) ranks her 44 out of 450 seniors in her school.

While I'm delighted she is in the top 10% of the class, I think it's absurd that 43 seniors have better than 4.0/4.4 GPA. I'm aware of one major U.S. university (Princeton) that is engaged in an active program of grade de-flation. I sure hope the movement grows. It ultimately does a dis-service to the kids (yeah, parents too) to have such high grades resulting in a perhaps distorted perception of their standing against their peers.

[/rant]

 

[Evo]

My daughter is a senior in High School (local public, not private) and just found out her GPA (4.0 unadjusted, ~4.4 adjusted for AP classes) ranks her 44 out of 450 seniors in her school.

While I'm delighted she is in the top 10% of the class, I think it's absurd that 43 seniors have better than 4.0/4.4 GPA. I'm aware of one major U.S. university (Princeton) that is engaged in an active program of grade de-flation. I sure hope the movement grows. It ultimately does a dis-service to the kids to have such high grades resulting in a perhaps distorted perception of their standing against their peers.

[/rant]

Congratulations to your daughter! The major universities are deflating the grades as many of them do not take AP scores into consideration, from what I've been told.

 

[G037H3]

I agree. It's mainly an issue of lowered standards though, so that for a serious topic, a C student from the 50's likely knew much more than an A student in the present.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

It's mainly an issue of lowered standards though, so that for a serious topic, a C student from the 50's likely knew much more than an A student in the present.

Proof?

 

[G037H3]

Proof?

Just compare the rigour of New Math textbooks with the ones widely used today. I'm pretty sure that mathwonk would agree with me on this.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

Just compare the rigour of New Math textbooks with the ones widely used today. I'm pretty sure that mathwonk would agree with me on this.

All I'm asking for is proof of your claim. Excerpts from two textbooks showing the disparity in rigor might be a start.

My point is that your claim isn't actually defensible. There are plenty of very smart A-students today that would run circles around a 1950's C-student.

 

[fss]

While I'm delighted she is in the top 10% of the class, I think it's absurd that 43 seniors have better than 4.0/4.4 GPA.

It'll most likely just be viewed as a 4.0 in the admissions office. Higher than 4.0 is fairly meaningless, at least in my experience dealing with admissions.

It ultimately does a dis-service to the kids (yeah, parents too) to have such high grades resulting in a perhaps distorted perception of their standing against their peers.

On the flip side, higher grades- no matter how artificially inflated the grades are- tend to bring more funding and more recognition to a school just based on how performance is evaluated. It's a shame that the system puts so much emphasis on numbers, but it's hard to otherwise quantify educational ability.

 

[G037H3]

All I'm asking for is proof of your claim. Excerpts from two textbooks showing the disparity in rigor might be a start.

My point is that your claim isn't actually defensible. There are plenty of very smart A-students today that would run circles around a 1950's C-student.

You're free to not believe me. But from the end of WWII until the late 1960's, when the Civil Rights Act made it an impossibility, the US government and academia had a very different attitude towards developing education than the egalitarian model seen today.

 

[jtbell]

I think it's absurd that 43 seniors have better than 4.0/4.4 GPA.

When I graduated from a 2000-student high school in 1971, the valedictorian had something like a 3.96 GPA. (It wasn't me... I came in a smidgen behind her.)

This was in a steel-mill town where education wasn't a high priority for a lot of students, but even in a rich big-city suburb I don't think there would have been more than one or two graduates per year with a 4.0.

 

[CRGreathouse]

I agree. It's mainly an issue of lowered standards though, so that for a serious topic, a C student from the 50's likely knew much more than an A student in the present.

Proof?

I went to a talk at a math conference that showed textbook excerpts and syllabi from the 50s, 70s, and 00s at that university. I was shocked at how easy the material was -- you could take Calculus III for 400-level credit, or an introductory astronomy class for 300-level credit. In fact, in the 50s at this (good) university, you could graduate with a math degree (B.A., not B.S.) without taking Calc III. Now it's extremely rare for a math major to take the class later than freshman year! Also, a math major could get college credit for taking Algebra II...

So I would disagree with G037H3 on this one.

Now in fairness, because there were fewer of what we would call "advanced" classes required (or available), the students did get good with what they were taught. The person giving the talk (actually, one of my past professors) made a comment to that effect, at least.

 

[ƒ(x)]

Theres a school, Thomas Jefferson High school for Science and Technology, near D.C. for the "smart and gifted"--not that they aren't. I know someone who goes there and is brilliant--students. But, I was talking to him about GPA's, and he said he had a 4.6 or something because kids at TJ automatically get .5 added onto there grades. Then they get the +1 from AP courses

and...for my opinion, these days the general public has limited intelligence.

 

[zomgwtf]

I went to a talk at a math conference that showed textbook excerpts and syllabi from the 50s, 70s, and 00s at that university. I was shocked at how easy the material was -- you could take Calculus III for 400-level credit, or an introductory astronomy class for 300-level credit. In fact, in the 50s at this (good) university, you could graduate with a math degree (B.A., not B.S.) without taking Calc III. Now it's extremely rare for a math major to take the class later than freshman year! Also, a math major could get college credit for taking Algebra II...

So I would disagree with G037H3 on this one.

Now in fairness, because there were fewer of what we would call "advanced" classes required (or available), the students did get good with what they were taught. The person giving the talk (actually, one of my past professors) made a comment to that effect, at least.

I agree completely with this.

In grade 12 I took calculus as one math course and functions/vectors (I think) as another. My dad who took all 'advanced courses (we don't have that here anymore) doesn't know the first thing about calculus. It's not because he doesn't remember either, he's not particularly old... he never took courses involving this and they were never offered.

I think the level of work has gone up considerably from the 60s. I also think that kids now days are 100000x more intelligent than their parents are today let alone back in their prime!

As well at my school for consideration for admission you sometimes got your marks inflated by the university to make you on par.

 

[rootX]

I agree completely with this.

In grade 12 I took calculus as one math course and functions/vectors (I think) as another. My dad who took all 'advanced courses (we don't have that here anymore) doesn't know the first thing about calculus. It's not because he doesn't remember either, he's not particularly old... he never took courses involving this and they were never offered.

I think the level of work has gone up considerably from the 60s. I also think that kids now days are 100000x more intelligent than their parents are today let alone back in their prime!

I heard they reduced the Grade 12 Math curriculum to something like Grade 6 in Ontario ..

I believe it's more like 1/100000x looking at exams from 10 years ago and now for my courses :)

 

[airborne18]

At my daughter's high school she never had to take trig. Her AP classes were probably what we had at my high school in the 80's. But they didn't have the normal progression. She had to learn trig on her own.

 

[Evo]

At my daughter's high school she never had to take trig. Her AP classes were probably what we had at my high school in the 80's. But they didn't have the normal progression. She had to learn trig on her own.

Wow, trig and calculus are middle school subjects. (introductory level)

 

[airborne18]

Wow, trig and calculus are middle school subjects. (introductory level)

To her credit she did extremely well on the SAT's. The school didn't even have AP courses until she was a junior.

It is hurting her now. She is a Comp Eng major at UofDel and she has to fill the gaps on her own.

The odd thing is that the high school was very strong in science, but they never had the math to back it up. Physics with a weak Calculus program is almost pointless.

I actually think the school's curriculum is what killed her chances for some programs that were interested due to her SAT's and GPA, but I think the transcripts killed the opportunity.

 

[G01]

Wow, trig and calculus are middle school subjects. (introductory level)

Calculus as a middle school subject, even in intro form, is pushing it a bit, don't you think? I can see trig being covered in middle school, but calculus? The area I grew up in is not known for they're amazing public school system however, so maybe things are different elsewhere.

 

[BobG]

My daughter is a senior in High School (local public, not private) and just found out her GPA (4.0 unadjusted, ~4.4 adjusted for AP classes) ranks her 44 out of 450 seniors in her school.

While I'm delighted she is in the top 10% of the class, I think it's absurd that 43 seniors have better than 4.0/4.4 GPA. I'm aware of one major U.S. university (Princeton) that is engaged in an active program of grade de-flation. I sure hope the movement grows. It ultimately does a dis-service to the kids (yeah, parents too) to have such high grades resulting in a perhaps distorted perception of their standing against their peers.

[/rant]

When I graduated from a 2000-student high school in 1971, the valedictorian had something like a 3.96 GPA. (It wasn't me... I came in a smidgen behind her.)

This was in a steel-mill town where education wasn't a high priority for a lot of students, but even in a rich big-city suburb I don't think there would have been more than one or two graduates per year with a 4.0.

I'm not a great fan of the 4+ GPA's, but GPA has seldom been a great indicator anyways. There's big differences in the difficulty of courses taken by different students, and the differences should be based on what the student's future plans are, not by how his choices will affect his GPA. The 4+ GPA just makes the risk of taking the difficult courses less for those students concerned enough about their GPA for it to influence their decisions about whether to take the most difficult courses or not.

Used to be, GPA was a signficant determinant for college acceptance, but colleges took the difficulties of the courses taken into consideration themselves, with no 4+ GPA to guide them. A student wouldn't really know how much influence his GPA had vs the influence the quality of course work had.

I guess, technically, the 4+ GPA also discriminates between the student that got a 4.0 GPA taking easy courses and the student that received a couple B's because they took the tough courses when it comes to things like valedictorian and so on, as well.

Wow, trig and calculus are middle school subjects. (introductory level)

Calculus as a middle school subject, even in intro form, is pushing it a bit, don't you think? I can see trig being covered in middle school, but calculus? The area I grew up in is not known for they're amazing public school system however, so maybe things are different elsewhere.

It depends what you mean by introductory level calculus. I've seen middle schools at least laying down the foundation in ways they present graphs for position, velocity, and acceleration and how they compare them, etc. I think it would be a stretch to say they're teaching calculus, but what the book is preparing them for is obvious.

 

[zomgwtf]

Wow, trig and calculus are middle school subjects. (introductory level)

I don't remember exactly what I learned in middle school but I can say that it was definitely not calculus or trig.

If anyone can learn trig or calc at the middle school level then I would say they don't even have to complete high school just send them to uni. Perhaps not so much with trig but calculus? Lol.

I wonder Evo, how do you expect a middl school student to learn and understand calculus when they don't even know how to graph properly yet.

 

[G037H3]

Pure analytic solution without any physical intuition?

lol.

 

[zomgwtf]

I'm not a great fan of the 4+ GPA's, but GPA has seldom been a great indicator anyways. There's big differences in the difficulty of courses taken by different students, and the differences should be based on what the student's future plans are, not by how his choices will affect his GPA. The 4+ GPA just makes the risk of taking the difficult courses less for those students concerned enough about their GPA for it to influence their decisions about whether to take the most difficult courses or not.

Used to be, GPA was a signficant determinant for college acceptance, but colleges took the difficulties of the courses taken into consideration themselves, with no 4+ GPA to guide them. A student wouldn't really know how much influence his GPA had vs the influence the quality of course work had.

I guess, technically, the 4+ GPA also discriminates between the student that got a 4.0 GPA taking easy courses and the student that received a couple B's because they took the tough courses when it comes to things like valedictorian and so on, as well.

Don't the colleges have pre-req courses? Here in Ontario when you apply you give them 6 grades and they average out. But included in those 6 are mandatory pre-reqs.

For instance if you want to apply for the sciences you have to have
English
2 Sciences
Math (some require both university level maths)

All have to be at university level. Your last 2 other courses would be two courses with the highest mark at university or mixed level. Then this gets averaged out and that's your entrance average.

So this wuold be the university making sure you took difficult and related courses.

If you look at the Arts programs however all that's required is English

 

[Dr Transport]

I am aware of a college completely ignoring class rank and GPA from high schools and taking into account only the ACT or SAT. They are aware of grade inflation and have taken a stand.

 

[Chi Meson]

I am aware of a college completely ignoring class rank and GPA from high schools and taking into account only the ACT or SAT. They are aware of grade inflation and have taken a stand.

This is more and more true. Our High School is trying to do away with GPAs, but pressure from parents prevents this action. The reason is that it is so closely associated with college acceptability. The problem is, with inflated grades, you can have a class where a quarter or third of the class has a grade "above 100%." When so many students are getting such high marks, you lose the ability of finding out who is really the strongest student, because a 97% average produces the same GPA factor as a 107% (in other words, an A+ is equal to an A+++).

This creates problems for classes that are truly challenging (Honors Physics for example, where the teacher still believes that a B is a "good grade," and maybe one student per class might end up with an average at or slightly above 100%): when a student sees a B+ coming around the corner, they bail out because they are "worried about their GPA."

So yeah, grade inflation is a pervasive problem. I would love to do away with grades, myself, but ...

 

[BobG]

This creates problems for classes that are truly challenging (Honors Physics for example, where the teacher still believes that a B is a "good grade," and maybe one student per class might end up with an average at or slightly above 100%): when a student sees a B+ coming around the corner, they bail out because they are "worried about their GPA."

So yeah, grade inflation is a pervasive problem. I would love to do away with grades, myself, but ...

Aren't honors classes the main reason for GPA's above 4.0? At least at the high school my kids went to, a A in an honors class was a 5.0 and a B a 4.0, while normal classes used 4.0 for an A and 3.0 for B (along with whatever + or minus, so a person could earn 4.0, 3.7, 3.3, 3.0, 2.7 in a class and so on).

 

[Office_Shredder]

This is more and more true. Our High School is trying to do away with GPAs, but pressure from parents prevents this action. The reason is that it is so closely associated with college acceptability. The problem is, with inflated grades, you can have a class where a quarter or third of the class has a grade "above 100%." When so many students are getting such high marks, you lose the ability of finding out who is really the strongest student, because a 97% average produces the same GPA factor as a 107% (in other words, an A+ is equal to an A+++).

This reminds me of something that happened when they switched to the new SAT scores... someone at the high school in my town said to a group of parents at a college application Q&A type session that it was a good year for college applications, because the colleges wouldn't know what a "good" score is. Keep in mind that differentiating the top students is only a good thing for the top students, so it shouldn't be entirely surprising that there are people who would resist it

Aren't honors classes the main reason for GPA's above 4.0? At least at the high school my kids went to, a A in an honors class was a 5.0 and a B a 4.0, while normal classes used 4.0 for an A and 3.0 for B (along with whatever + or minus, so a person could earn 4.0, 3.7, 3.3, 3.0, 2.7 in a class and so on).

GPAs above 4.0 on their own aren't a problem. Grade inflation in the form of everybody getting a higher number doesn't make a flying wit of a difference. The problem is when the ability to differentiate students goes out the window because the lowest allowable grade increases, but there are no higher grades to attain.

 

[jhae2.718]

I'd say there's a general trend of grade inflation; at the high schools in the district where I went to, they operated on an 8.0 scale, where 4.0 was an A in a standard class. (I'm not quite sure how they got to 8.0 points; it defies all logic.)

 

[zomgwtf]

GPAs above 4.0 on their own aren't a problem. Grade inflation in the form of everybody getting a higher number doesn't make a flying wit of a difference. The problem is when the ability to differentiate students goes out the window because the lowest allowable grade increases, but there are no higher grades to attain.

Don't you get differentiated by your SAT scores? Isn't that what really matters?

Why do Americans use GPAs in high school anyways? Isn't the GPA meant to differentiate between large groups of students? For intance Honours is say 3.60+ and to pass you have to get 1.0? I mean you don't really use it for entrance into anything... just to be part of that 'group'.

 

[G037H3]

Don't you get differentiated by your SAT scores? Isn't that what really matters?

extracurriculars are considered just as important, and if you're applying to a top-tier school like MIT, they want you to take at least two SAT subject tests, and more universities are now pushing for students to take language courses in high school (despite these classes teaching basically nothing)

Why do Americans use GPAs in high school anyways? Isn't the GPA meant to differentiate between large groups of students? For intance Honours is say 3.60+ and to pass you have to get 1.0? I mean you don't really use it for entrance into anything... just to be part of that 'group'.

I dunno. I think the 1-6 grading scale, or some variation thereof, makes much more sense. But the decline of public education means that standards are becoming yet more lax. The US is in a strange situation: on one hand, egalitarianism is pushed constantly, on the other hand, the public schools suck despite all the money poured into them, but the universities are the best in the world.

Natural intelligence differences overcome egalitarianism propaganda, apparently. (excluding affirmative action) ^_^

 

[xxChrisxx]

There is the same debate that happens every year in the UK, more people get a higher % of the grades at GCSE and A level.

Exams aren't getting easier, the subject material is very much the same year to year. Teachers are just getting much better at putting children through exams. For example there are now endless learning and teaching resources resources, practise papers that are available now, but were not in the past. You can optimise teaching for passing exams. The only downside to this is, you learn to pass exams, you don't learn to solve problems.

One way to solve this is to use the old fashioned method that Universities use to calculate grades, by giving out a set amount of grades as a % of the people who took the exam. Then you have very bright people who get stiffed of a 'good grade' becuase they were in a particually bright year.

 

[BobG]

My daughter is a senior in High School (local public, not private) and just found out her GPA (4.0 unadjusted, ~4.4 adjusted for AP classes) ranks her 44 out of 450 seniors in her school.

While I'm delighted she is in the top 10% of the class, I think it's absurd that 43 seniors have better than 4.0/4.4 GPA. I'm aware of one major U.S. university (Princeton) that is engaged in an active program of grade de-flation. I sure hope the movement grows. It ultimately does a dis-service to the kids (yeah, parents too) to have such high grades resulting in a perhaps distorted perception of their standing against their peers.

[/rant]

GPAs above 4.0 on their own aren't a problem. Grade inflation in the form of everybody getting a higher number doesn't make a flying wit of a difference. The problem is when the ability to differentiate students goes out the window because the lowest allowable grade increases, but there are no higher grades to attain.

I must have misinterpreted the original post. It sounded to me that he found the idea of GPA's higher than 4.0 to be a little absurd. He disagreed with the idea that two people could both achieve straight A's through high school, with one being valedictorian and the other not even being in the top 10% of their class.

The fact that a student has almost no excuse nowadays to get less than a B in most high school classes is a completely different issue. (With some of the reasons being improvements in the system and some being dilution of the system. The need to achieve good scores on standardized tests has had both positive and negative effects - not just one or the other.)

Either way, the problem is too much focus on GPA's being a way of ranking students. In theory, test results should tell a student what items they need to spend a little more time on (instead of just tossing their test in the trash and sighing in relief that they'll never need to remember all 'that stuff' again). In theory (i.e. - magically eliminating all time and resource constraints), every student should be able to retest until they finally master whatever the course was supposed to teach. If not for the constraints of reality, a GPA would be completely meaningless.

 

[twofish-quant]

You're free to not believe me. But from the end of WWII until the late 1960's, when the Civil Rights Act made it an impossibility, the US government and academia had a very different attitude towards developing education than the egalitarian model seen today.

You are in a forum with scientists that are used to asking for evidence whenever a claim is made. What you've just said is not good enough for much of anything.

It was rather rare for people to graduate from high school until WWII.

http://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco4361/readings/intro/goldin.pdf

And the attitude until the 1960's was that certain people with high melanin content just shouldn't get an education.

 

[twofish-quant]

The US is in a strange situation: on one hand, egalitarianism is pushed constantly, on the other hand, the public schools suck despite all the money poured into them, but the universities are the best in the world.

US public schools are actually rather good. One thing that I find is that people that believe otherwise tend to either have very little experience with schools in other countries, or when they do they do apples versus oranges comparisons in which the best schools in other countries are compared to average or below average US schools. There's also the tendency to use rather bogus statistics to compare countries.

Egalitarianism looks pretty awful if you think that you are going to be in the top of the heap. Once you find out that you are not, it looks pretty good. I'm all for egalitarianism because I doubt I'd be able to get the chances that I got in the US in most other countries.

 

[twofish-quant]

Don't you get differentiated by your SAT scores? Isn't that what really matters?

Not really standardized test schools are only one small part of college admissions. They aren't the end all and be all of college admissions.

 

[twofish-quant]

I went to a talk at a math conference that showed textbook excerpts and syllabi from the 50s, 70s, and 00s at that university. I was shocked at how easy the material was -- you could take Calculus III for 400-level credit, or an introductory astronomy class for 300-level credit. In fact, in the 50s at this (good) university, you could graduate with a math degree (B.A., not B.S.) without taking Calc III. Now it's extremely rare for a math major to take the class later than freshman year! Also, a math major could get college credit for taking Algebra II...

I did a mini-research project on how the physics and engineering curriculum at MIT has changed since the mid-19th century, and I found essentially the same thing. Looking back at the curriculum in 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940, and 1960, I was quite surprised at how low the standards where. It wasn't until the 1960's that you had something that resembled the curriculum that you have today.

One thing that I noticed was how much a lot of the improvement was due to better teaching methods. Someone in 1920 just knew less about how to teach calculus than someone in 1960 or 2000.

Personally, I'm all for grade inflation. Anything that makes grades bogus and meaningless is a good thing, IMHO.

 

[G037H3]

You are in a forum with scientists that are used to asking for evidence whenever a claim is made. What you've just said is not good enough for much of anything.

It was rather rare for people to graduate from high school until WWII.

http://faculty.smu.edu/millimet/classes/eco4361/readings/intro/goldin.pdf

And the attitude until the 1960's was that certain people with high melanin content just shouldn't get an education.

I asserted a cultural/political opinion, these are impossible to 'replicate', as history is impossible to replicate. The "social sciences" are politicized by the leading school of thought, which has been for the longest time, the Frankfurt School and the results of such.

 

[twofish-quant]

I asserted a cultural/political opinion, these are impossible to 'replicate', as history is impossible to replicate.

That's a philosophical position which I very strong disagree with. It's impossible to replicate the big bang, but that doesn't mean that you can't make empirically grounded statements about it. My own philosophical tradition comes from the evidential school of Confucianism which views social history as just a part of the history of the universe.

One interesting philosophical problem is the problem of replication, and I've found that being an astrophysicist helps me think about economic issue. I can't replicate the financial crisis of 2008. On the other hand I can't replicate the creation of the earth. So how do I make well-grounded statements about the formation of the earth?

The "social sciences" are politicized by the leading school of thought, which has been for the longest time, the Frankfurt School and the results of such.

I happen to be a strong fan of the Frankfurt School especially Jurgen Habermas, and I think you are strongly mischaracterizing what they believe. Curiously, I became a fan of the Frankfurt School and various post-modernist schools of thought, after I read Alfred Bloom and Dinish D'Souza trash them, and I figured that I ought to just go and *read* works from the Frankfurt School, and I found that what Habermas talks about really made a lot of sense to me. I ended up with a much more positive opinion of Derrida than I did with Alan Bloom.

I mentioned elsewhere that I'm an ardent Marxist, and being an ardent Marxist is why I ended up on Wall Street.

 

[twofish-quant]

One reason I hate grades as much as I do, is that I got ranked lower because I did things like go to the library and read up on post-modern critical theory rather than study harder to get that extra three points on the physics exam. Something that I disliked about my high school and undergraduate years, was that you got docked points if you did some reading that wasn't on the assigned curriculum.

One thing that I found once I got to graduate school and the work place is that things didn't work that way. You don't get an assigned reading list. People expect you to figure out stuff on your own. You do get "graded" in some sense at the end of the year (i.e. how much your bonus is), but there isn't a piece of paper that says how that number is calculated. A fair amount of how much you get depends on politics both at the micro-level and the macro-level. So learn politics...

Something that I did learn from reading all those critical theorists is how power works. If I'm a janitor and I say "grades are bogus" then well boo hoo on you. If I'm a hiring manager with access to money and jobs and I say "grades are bogus, and I want to hire people who think that grades are bogus" then people *will* take me seriously and rearrange the curriculum to fit the objective realities of money and power.

See how reading Karl Marx is useful?

 

[Dr Transport]

Aren't honors classes the main reason for GPA's above 4.0? At least at the high school my kids went to, a A in an honors class was a 5.0 and a B a 4.0, while normal classes used 4.0 for an A and 3.0 for B (along with whatever + or minus, so a person could earn 4.0, 3.7, 3.3, 3.0, 2.7 in a class and so on).

Exactly, grade inflation at it's finest. I had to work like a dog to get B's in my honors classes in high school and they counted the same as any other course towards my final gpa. We didn't get extra compensation for trying to take harder courses, just more work and the satisfaction of passing them.

 

[Moonbear]

Exactly, grade inflation at it's finest. I had to work like a dog to get B's in my honors classes in high school and they counted the same as any other course towards my final gpa. We didn't get extra compensation for trying to take harder courses, just more work and the satisfaction of passing them.

I think the change was made to account for all that extra butt busting, so it didn't hurt you in competition for college admissions. When first cuts for admissions are based on just SAT/ACT scores and GPA, you could be hindering your honors students from getting into college if they only earn Bs because they are taking harder classes rather than if they just took the non-honors classes and got straight As. On the flip side, college admissions officers aren't stupid. When they see students with GPAs over 4.0, they know that school offers honors courses and that student took them. I actually thought it was an approach to limit grade inflation. In other words, teachers aren't pressured to curve the honors courses higher, but rather can be just as tough about assigning grades as they should be, and it doesn't ruin a good student's chances of getting into college.

What does it really matter what the overall scale is for the GPA? If the highest possible for an A in an honor's course is a 4.2 or 4.5, then the GPA is really a score out of 4.2 or 4.5, not 4.0.

I don't think that having different GPA scales is what people usually refer to as grade inflation, they usually refer to too many students being given As and Bs vs Cs and lower, and reducing the standards to earn those.

It's a pretty controversial topic. Here's an example...over the 3 years I've been teaching one course I teach, I've been tracking my student exam scores as I make various changes to the course. The overall class performance has been increasing significantly, particularly for those in the 3rd quartile of the class, with higher passing rates for the class. Some could look at those data and claim grade inflation. But, it's not. I have not changed the difficulty of my exams, and in fact, have made the course as a whole more challenging (my sophomore nursing students now are expected to answer in-class questions that I borrow from the material presented to the medical students, and score well on them). The students do better on exams because I have made changes to the course that help teach the material better and challenge them along the way to work harder. Another factor is that admissions to the school have gotten more competitive, so some of the students who were admitted the first year I taught, who failed the course or had to withdraw early to avoid failing, simply wouldn't have been admitted if they had applied in the current year. The admissions committee has decided it's better to admit a smaller class who all are capable of passing is better than admitting a larger class and having so many drop out or fail out after admission.

So, I'm cautious. It could be that so many students are getting such high grades because the teachers are passing out grades of A like free candy, or it could be that your daughter is fortunate to attend a school where the teachers really do a great job teaching and motivating the students to learn and study hard, so the students really are doing that well. This is of course the reason for standardized tests...as controversial as they are too, they tend to help provide a way to normalize for varied grading standards across schools.

 

[Feldoh]

Grade inflation sucks. I graduated with a GPA of 3.9-something. My high school schedule went something like:

Freshman:
Honors English
History
Algebra II
Biology
Spanish
Band

Sophomore:
Chemistry
Pre-calc
Honors English II
AP US History
AP World History
Spanish
Band

Junior:
AP Calc BC
AP Chemistry
AP Government
AP English (Lit)
Physics
AP Statistics
Band

Senior:
AP Biology
AP Physics C Mech & EM
AP English (Comp)
AP Comp. Sci.
Band
Calc III and Differential Eqns (At a nearby college)
AP Music Theory (Summer before senior year)

Anyways I got 2 B's in AP English and didn't not graduate with any school honors.

Our valedictorian had a 4.0, never took an honors class, never took an AP class. Senior year students can opt to leave school at 1pm instead of 3pm and just not have the 2 classes in the afternoon. Our valedictorian did just that.

Our salutatorian had like 1 B and was in the same boat as me and a few other people.

Needless to say we pretty much got shafted.

 

[jamesnb]

I teach high school physics and I don't participate in grade inflation. In spite of the student and parent whining, I don't give extra credit, partial credit, bonus questions. I don't let the students correct quizzes for a 70 and I don't curve grades. Sometimes I have a substitute question on tests that can replace an incorrect answer but nobody can get higher than a 100. When the students start whining about curving a test score, I tell them I'll start curving all of their grades up AND down so the class average is 75. They shut up for a while. I have about 8% of my students consistently score in the A+ range.
In Texas, a number of years ago, the courts ruled public universities had to accept any applicant who graduated in the top 10%. This has led to parents thinking their darling won't get into UT or A&M unless they are in the top 10%.
Likewise, the administration puts a lot of pressure on teachers to raise the grades of students with a 68 or 69 to passing because the failure rate drops the school's state ranking.
Finally, the State's Pedagogy Exam has a question to the effect that if the teacher gives a test and 80% of the class makes a 100, the teacher should: a. make the tests harder and challenge the students more, b. feel good because the teacher engaged the students and was able to deliver the material effectively... answer is... b. feel good.
We are moving to a State-wide End of Course Exam, which I think is good. This way there is some sort of accountability. I've had several students transfer from other schools with "A"s and struggle to get a "C" in my class. Once they woke up and realized they had to work in my class, their grades went up 10 points or so.
Maybe I'm too hard on them or maybe I'm a bad teacher or a mean teacher but I think if their transcript says Honors Physics and get a little bump to their GPA, they need to earn it.

 

[mege]

http://popecenter.org/clarion_call/article.html?id=2516

Recent article from a Ball State Univ. professor. (includes a chart comparing 1990 to 2009 grades in many classes)

If you poke around, popcenter.org and nas.org have other similar studies dealing with undergraduate grade inflation.

The immediate thing that stands out is that grades rose substantially between 1990 and 2009. Of the 26 courses, the percentage of A’s and B’s rose in 24. Grade point averages rose in 23 courses.

Just to cite one example from the table, in 1990, 52 percent of the students enrolled in Principles of Marketing received grades of A or B; by 2009, 80 percent received A’s or B’s.

 

[mathwonk]

Here is some anecdotal data, since my memory is fallible. I read some years ago in the Harvard alumni magazine an article on this subject. They reported that from the 1960's to the 1990's or so, the average grade at Harvard had gone from something like a C+ to roughly an A-. When then current students were asked about this possible sign of inflation, their response was that current students were smarter than earlier ones. However in the same period average SAT scores, which was then considered a sort of intelligence test, had actually gone down. I conclude that quite possibly a C+ student from the 1960's did indeed know as much as or more than an A- student from the 1990's.

One reason for this claim is that when a student receives a low grade for poor performance, I believe that student feels he has to improve. When a higher grade than deserved is given there is no such motivation. I myself experienced this. When poor performance caused me to be required to leave school and work in a factory for a year I definitely worked harder the next time around, and eventually realized my goal of becoming a mathematician. I also spent time in schools where grades were given easily and those years were essentially wasted ones lost from my useful life experience.

For more recent data, the Hope scholarship in Georgia provides some. A student gets the Hope is he/she has a B average in high school, and something like 90% of all entering freshmen have them. However after one year, most lose it in college based on the same criterion.Note: The Ball State article linked just above does not mention any math courses.

 

[hotvette]

Being that I started this thread more than a year ago (before my daughter applied to colleges) I thought I'd provide additional insight I've gained since then.

There actually is a lot of value in the higher GPA's due to AP courses, assumming the AP courses are truly higher level than the standard courses. It makes the kids with superior academic achievement stand out.

For top schools (i.e. Harvard etc.) grades win over outside activities (sports, community service, clubs) unless perhaps your sport skill is college level. The outside activities can be tie breakers, but the grades are more important. My daughter had a raw 4.0 GPA including a healthy number of AP courses, but kids with a heavier load of AP courses got into better schools. I think what the top schools are looking for are kids that have top grades AND a bunch of outside activities, but the top grades are mandatory.

I've talked with parents who sent their kids to college prep high schools who claim the prep school didn't in itself result in acceptances at better colleges. If anything, it may have been worse because they had such competition within the school for grades. Of course, kids with top grades at prep schools got into great colleges.

In the end the most important thing is a good match between your kid's skills, personality and aspirations and the school they go to. It is far better to thrive where you go (as long as you are challenged) than to be miserable at a school that isn't a good match.

 

[mathwonk]

"In the end the most important thing is a good match between your kid's skills, personality and aspirations and the school they go to. It is far better to thrive where you go (as long as you are challenged) than to be miserable a school that isn't a good match."

That sums it up well.

 

[ColonialBoy]

Proof?

Meh, your average 16yo needed to know a lot more in 1870.

http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/

 

[mathwonk]

the 10 year olds in my 2011 summer class could pass those mit exams. of course there had been over 100 years of inflation since euler. here is euler's algebra book which he wrote for his uneducated butler. it includes solving 3rd and 4th degree equations, more than we usually teach grad students today.

http://www.archive.org/details/elementsalgebra00lagrgoog

 

[twofish-quant]

Here is some anecdotal data, since my memory is fallible. I read some years ago in the Harvard alumni magazine an article on this subject. They reported that from the 1960's to the 1990's or so, the average grade at Harvard had gone from something like a C+ to roughly an A-.

Talking with a dean the story that I hear was that there was a lot of grade inflation in the 1960's. The problem is that if your grades were too low, you were likely to get kicked out of college, and if you got kicked out of college, then your draft deferment expired and you were on the next boat to Vietnam.

Since professors didn't a dead student fighting in a war that they disagreed with on their conscience, the grading standards were changed so that it was difficult to flunk out.

 

[twofish-quant]

Meh, your average 16yo needed to know a lot more in 1870.

http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/

The average applicant to MIT in 1870 was not your average 16 year old. Also I'm pretty sure that anyone that stands a change of getting admitted to MIT in 2011 would ace the algebra, geometry, and arithmetic section. It's probably much too easy.

 

[twofish-quant]

Also at MIT and at a lot of other universities, one of the goals of the faculty is get the students to *STOP WORKING*. If you put a lot of hypercompetitive students in one place, and make the grading hard, then what will happen is that you'll have students working themselves to points that are unhealthy.

Every now and then you need the faculty to tell students to *stop studying and get some sleep*.