Grade inflation/deflation

Kelowna · 10-30-2009, 11:50 AM

Would someone please explain?
How do I know if a school is practicing either???

MD Mom · 10-30-2009, 12:20 PM

I think that one way a person can judge this is how a school scores on standardized tests. We have a high school principal in our district who constantly brags that his school has the highest GPA in the district (we have about 14 high schools). However, he will not release AP scores. Kids in our neighborhood (at that school) have talked about getting A's all year in AP classes and scoring 1's on the AP tests: grade inflation.

If a school's students traditionally have less than perfect GPAs, but very high SATs, that is another indicator. The problem of course is figuring this out. Experienced adcoms usually are aware of how rigorous a school's curriculum is.

Consolation · 10-30-2009, 12:25 PM

Our local high school's profile shows that approximately 10% of the class each year graduates with an A or A- GPA. (They do not weight grades.) To me that would indicate that they are neither inflating nor deflating grades. If only 1% of the class were graduating with that kind of GPA, it would look like deflation to me. If 40% were routinely getting As in everything, it would look like inflation.

When I was at Wellesley in the 1970s, the average grade given was a C. It was not uncommon in an English class of 15 students for one student to get an A- on a paper (no As at all), a few more to get some kind of B, and all the rest to get Cs or worse. At one point, the administration sent out a memo officially informing us that there was no such thing as an A+, which caused a certain amount of hilarity. Meanwhile, Harvard was graduating 70% of their classes cum laude or better. I would say that our situation was a case of deflation, while the latter was experiencing inflation. (We were also subjected to an extremely punitive policy that made it almost impossible to drop a course. My understanding is that both institutions have modified their positions over time.)

MD Mom · 10-30-2009, 12:28 PM

As consolation says, the high school profiles are a great way to get information; some are posted on Web sites. Again, around here they aren't too free with the information.

BobbyCT · 10-30-2009, 12:37 PM

I brought this issue up once before regarding grade deflation. I can understand why a school would not want to be known as practicing grade inflation. However, I still really don't understand why a school would want to intentionally practice grade deflation. It does not seem to serve the interests of the students, especially those that want to get in graduate school. I personally don't believe the argument that all grad know if a particular college generally gives out lower grades.

Kelowna · 11-03-2009, 10:21 AM

Thank you!
Is the HS profile something that EVERY school has?
I have been to several meetings at the school so far and have not heard about it.

Hunt · 11-03-2009, 10:48 AM

Quote:

When I was at Wellesley in the 1970s, the average grade given was a C. It was not uncommon in an English class of 15 students for one student to get an A- on a paper (no As at all), a few more to get some kind of B, and all the rest to get Cs or worse. At one point, the administration sent out a memo officially informing us that there was no such thing as an A+, which caused a certain amount of hilarity. Meanwhile, Harvard was graduating 70% of their classes cum laude or better. I would say that our situation was a case of deflation, while the latter was experiencing inflation. (We were also subjected to an extremely punitive policy that made it almost impossible to drop a course. My understanding is that both institutions have modified their positions over time.)

I think there's another factor to consider, which is the philosophy of grading. If the philosophy is that grades should reflect mastery of the material, that might look like "inflation" at a school with a lot of high-performing students. If, on the other hand, the purpose of grades is to separate the students into performance tiers, then it might look like deflation at the same kind of school. It's a pet peeve of mine that it's somehow "wrong" for most of the students in a high-performing class to get As.

Consolation · 11-03-2009, 11:07 AM

Quote:

It's a pet peeve of mine that it's somehow "wrong" for most of the students in a high-performing class to get As.

I agree with you, Hunt. My feeling is that if all of the students in a class have mastered the material and exhibit that mastery at a high level, then they have all *earned* As.

I have a problem with the idea of grading on a curve. A student who has mastered the material presented in the course should not be punished by receiving an artificially low grade, nor should a student who hasn't mastered the material be rewarded with an artificially high grade simply because everyone else did even worse. If an institution finds that everyone is consistently getting an A, the obvious conclusion is that their students are ready for a greater level of challenge. If an institution finds that students are consistently unable to master the material in a course, they need to examine the course design/structure and teaching methods.

Kelowna, try visiting the web site of your high school. The profile is usually online, often in the guidance area.

appdad · 11-03-2009, 01:31 PM

Mastery is a relative term!
Of course all of our students want to earn 'As'. The key to this discussion is how we define 'mastery'. As the course instructor I have complete control of the curriculum and assessment. My assessments are built around a predetermined set of teaching goals and learning outcomes. In general, my goal is to help my students 'think like a scientist'. As a result my assessments are built to test a students evaluative, analytic and synthetic skills. In our larger introductory courses the average exam grade typically ranges from 60% to 70%. While the average final course grade is a 'B'. In general students find it easy to memorize the parts of the body or a metabolic pathway. Our goal is to identify students that demonstrate what is referred to as evaluative, analytic and synthetic knowledge. In other words the top students can use knowledge in much the same way as scientists and physicians. Historically, only about 15% to 20% of our incoming students demonstrate mastery of these attributes and earn an 'A' in our course. By the way we provide our students with the resources they require to improve their performance.
Our evaluations of a student's abilities (grades earned and LOR) are a key tool top graduate and professional schools use to evaluate an applicant. In general it is very difficult to judge a candidates qualifications for a program when average course grade is an 'A'. It costs ~80K to $100K per year to train a science engineering Ph.D. Graduate and professional programs instructors to provide reliable data on an applicants potential. Based on the feedback we have received most graduate programs think we are doing an excellent job.

mathmom · 11-03-2009, 02:00 PM

Harvard may have been graduating half the class cum laude in the 1970s but that only meant you had a B average back then. My experience (with a strong high school background) was that it was easy to get B's not so easy to get A's.

As for our high school I know that my son's unweighted average is 91 (weighted 97) and he's just out of the top 5% of the class. So I don't think our high school has the grade inflation some schools have.

Hunt · 11-03-2009, 02:00 PM

I teach an online college course, and the abilities of the students taking the course have varied widely in the semesters I've taught it. If I graded on a curve each time, the results would be unfair to the classes in which more of the students were able to master the material. Right now I have several students doing what I consider "A" work--but one student is far and away superior to all the rest. If would be nice to reward him more than the others, but I think it would unfair to other students who would have received As every other time I taught the course.