I have no doubt there is grade inflation at our HS. My S got an 89 in 8th grade honors english (which counted for HS because it was honors), everything else was an A and he took 5 or 6 AP courses. But in SC, the scaling is determined by the actual score. For example, a AP course is weighted to 100 is 6.0, a 99 is 5.9,…90 is 5.0, 89 is 4.9… Honors classes start at 5.5, and go down similarly. So A’s and B’s don’t really matter as every 1 point drop from 100 is penalized the same. His unweighted GPA was around 3.99ish and weighted GPA around 5.2-5.3, which was good enough to rank 8% in his school that graduated around 400, and did not qualifying for the highest automatic in-state scholarship that cuts off at top 5% of class. Which wasn’t the driving factor but certainly didn’t hinder his decision to go out of state for college. The school is designated a “magnet” school for STEM, and there is general belief that grading in the designated STEM “majors” is not, shall we say, rigorous.
The other thing is, for some of the “honors” courses the state required end of course standardized testing is the exact same as the standard “college prep” courses. So the material covered is the same, and the final tests are the same, but maybe in the honors class there are a few more hard questions on the section tests. My D was considering transferring from an honors class to a CP class, and the teacher told her explicitly that it is the same material and the tests are not easier enough to make up for the .5 higher GPA weighting she was receiving in the honors course. And this was a teacher who we found out was relatively hard on grading because she believed grade inflation was a problem.