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Why aren’t people content with a C?</p>
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I blame it on the existence of numbers and letters that distort and oversimplify learning outcomes.</p>
<p>“When everyone’s valedictorian, no one will be.” Too many valedictorians defeats the purpose of the title.</p>
<p>Not that it was very purposeful in the first place.</p>
<p>I live in the same place that muaythai presumably went to HS. While I agree that diplomas (50% of your mark - standardized tests) can be useful, I think 50% is a hell of a lot of pressure. What if you have a bad day or are sick or whatever? I think also a lot of classes are geared to studying for or passing the exam as a result.</p>
<p>Now, that may be a good thing if you believe the exam accurately reflects what should be taught, but I think it also encourages some teachers to be less creative.</p>
<p>@tomatox:
I would normally agree with you, but unfortunately there are mountains and mountains of evidence that there is widespread grade inflation, as in a raise of numerical grades without a raise in knowledge, across the nation:
<a href=“http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/issues.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/issues.pdf</a>
[Straight</a> A?s ? but still not ready for college |](<a href=“http://collegetrackservices.com/resources/straight-as-but-still-not-ready-for-college/]Straight”>http://collegetrackservices.com/resources/straight-as-but-still-not-ready-for-college/)</p>
<p>Though, I also have to agree with the statement about how grade inflation tends to be overblown in the media, as Cs, Ds, and Fs, are still commonly given in classrooms, just not as readily as they were used to.
Building on your point, I also disagree with grading in general due to how ridiculously subjective it may end up getting, especially in the humanities, yet unfortunately grades are needed in order to give at least a rough idea of a student’s progress.</p>
<p>@Halogen:
The title of valedictorian is supposed to signify exemplary scholarship within an institution. It’s not very significant, but it certainly can be used a tool to inspire other students, to put it informally, step up their game.</p>
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<p>because of mankind’s inherent unrelenting drive toward success and happiness over their peers? Wouldn’t you like success? Does “average” sound like success to anyone except a select few special-ed kids?</p>
<p>@Tomatox, you wouldn’t have got 100% in my old AP calculus class. The questions must have been fluff for you to get 100% on every single test.</p>
<p>Just curious, in your opinion, did you feel that you got 100% on the AP Calculus test? I’m assuming you got a 5, which is not very hard, but did you feel that you answered every question completely correctly?</p>
<p>“Why aren’t people content with a C?”</p>
<p>Because it doesn’t mean average with grade inflation. The average high school GPA now is something like 3.0 when it should be 2.0 if a C is average.</p>
<p>'Numerical grades such as 95 and 100 are similarly awful. Doing numerical grades encourages luck. It may not be fair if the top student in a class can only receive a 95, while in the same class with a different teacher a slacker can receive a 100. Of course, this can still happen with GPA, but most of the time teachers are obligated to give out at least one 4 or they look extremely difficult, but with numerical grades teachers are encouraged and competing to give out higher and higher 90s grades to make their students look good."</p>
<p>The original topic was too many Vals–I guess we either accept that 29 students are academically equal or we use a grading system that differentiates, even if flawed. I agree with different teachers grading differently, but hopefully by graduation time that has balanced out, but yes luck is involved. One thing that helps in our school district is standardization of unit tests and finals. Many schools have gotten rid of ranking altogether, perhaps for all of the reasons previously noted.</p>
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Sure, but not everyone can be above average. As you say, this is all relative, and there are going to be higher achievers no matter what the gradebook says. If the letter grade system doesn’t contain this information, another source will be found.
With a stricter curve there wouldn’t be such grade inflation.</p>
<p>No one in the history of my school has gotten a 4.0 UW GPA… Sometimes we can even do the work for honors credit in a class and we’re not given it because they don’t want to give honors credit to that many people… Go grade deflation!.. at least we still produce ~10/45 going to ivies or other top universities every year…</p>
<p>@Ach7DD</p>
<p>If you look closely to their chart, you will notice that there is a greater inflation at the lower end of the scale, that is, for the lower ACT scores, while at the higher end the ACT and GPA correlation for 1991 and 2003 are very similar. If grade inflation were actually that drastic as some claim, the trend should be reversed; there should be greater grade inflation at the higher end of the scale. In other words, instead of people who should get 3.5 getting 4.0, people who should be getting 3.5 are getting 3.6. However, the people who should be getting 2.5 are now getting a 3.0 and stuff.</p>
<p>Why? This is my theory. There are much more smart people now than there were 20 years ago. College admissions are getting much more intense. I read somewhere that if a certain college reevaluated its Class of 1990 or something, 80% would not qualify for admission. Thus, there happen to be more As.</p>
<p>However, at the lower end of the spectrum, there are also more stupid people. High school has become more polarized in terms of knowledge: the overachievers vs the underachievers. People invariably fall into one of these two groups. Due to the stigma attached to “average,” most people either try really hard to do well in school OR don’t try AT ALL and get really bad grades. I’m not saying the average person who isn’t an overachiever or an underachiever doesn’t exist any more, but he is much rarer nowadays.</p>
<p>However, our school system values equality. “ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL,” all politicians proclaim for the sake of political correctness. They disregard genes and inherent differences. Teachers also inherit this mindset. They see a subset of their class doing really well and a subset of their class failing. However, they are not content to see the latter subset fail, for many reasons, both compassionate and political. Thus, they tend to give failing students better grades than they should.</p>
<p>In other words, grade inflation is because of the higher numbers of smarter and stupider people. It is highly unlikely that he who got a 4.0 did so due to grade inflation primarily, while it is likely that he who got a 3.0 did so due to grade inflation partly.</p>
<p>tl;dr Grade inflation happens to only a small extent, but when it does it is the inflation is not due to vested interests, but due to forces of technology and polarization out of the teacher’s control.</p>
<p>Indeed, my observation that grade inflation mainly occurs on the lower end of the spectrum while being minimal at the high end is an interesting one in itself. It means that these 29 vals did not rely solely on grade inflation.</p>
<p>It makes a lot of sense that apparent grade inflation at the top is due more to the increasing amount of students who care about grades and improvements in education than to decreasing standards.</p>
<p>Much more could be done to differentiate between the top 1%, and the top .1%, and the top .01%. I guess that’s the purpose of competitions like olympiads, debate, FIRST, etc.</p>
<p>Perfect GPA and valedictorian are frivolous.</p>
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<p>Why do you think this stigma exists now when it apparently didn’t a couple decades ago (or at least not as much as it does now)?</p>
<p>I guess no one wants to work really hard just to be mediocre. Wouldn’t suck to spend 4 hours studying just for an 80? Also, you’ll see one kid make 90 -100s with minimal effort. This crap can really hurt. It’s so much easier to stop caring.</p>
<p>About different teachers and grade inflation…I’ve experienced that. I had the highest grade in one teacher’s class but it was a B+. The other teacher had people with 100s asking how on earth I got such a low grade in a really easy class.</p>
<p>^Get off. Now.</p>
<p>I think 1 or at most a ‘few’ individuals should be the valedictorian or the title become meaningless. Besides a perk at graduation, not even sure that it means anything. College applications look at GPA and/or class rank. Does this high school say ALL of those individuals are ranked #1???</p>