“What HS grade inflation does lead to is lots of rude awakenings freshman year of college.”
I completely agree, @4gulls. But to some extent that has always been true. I remember an excellent high school teacher of mine, almost 40 years ago, giving out two grades on every essay in our senior year English class–the high school grade (which is the one he recorded for the course) and the college grade (just to let us know what the standards were going to be when we got to college). I remember watching anxiously over the course of the year as my grades went from B/D to A/C to A/B and finally to A/A. When I actually got to college I was pleasantly surprised to find his judgment confirmed and extremely grateful that he had prepared me for higher standards.