Our high school ranks only the top 10 students. Everyone else’s class rank is reported in deciles. They started that the year our kid was a HS senior.
All high schools send a class profile with applications. This includes the range of GPAs in the graduating class. It’s clear that my kid’s GPA was near the top of the range for her graduating class. Only two kids had weighted GPAs above 4.0…the Val and the Sal.
Because my kid was top 10, her class rank of 8/187 was noted on her transcript.
@bluebayou your DD and mine had very similar GPA, and very similar %ile rank in the class. No grade inflation at your kid’s school either.
And most have overall graduation rates between 80-90%, so despite any high school grade inflation going on, and the subsequent drop in GPA in first year, most students still make it to graduation, though not necessarily in their original admitted major.
Thumper: I’m old school, where the average should be a C+. But then as a boomer, I only have myself to blame since I participated in this inflation game, by awarding participation trophies to every ‘special snowflake’ that shows up for a game.
One thing that would help with grade inflation would be to move to a standardized system:
Grades are 0-100 (no chunking into an integer 0-4 scale, with 5 for AP)
Classes given a difficulty scale from 0-100 (i.e. BC is more difficult than Stat)
Online classes are not included in GPA (credit only)
EOCT or AP tests are 25-50% of overall result
Moving to a 0-100 scale would give you 10 gradations in the “inflated” grades where everyone gets an A right now. The difficulty scale would give an overall impression of the rigor taken. Online classes are prime for exploitation, so their contribution would be zip. The EOCT/AP test would relate the course grade to the “knowledge” grade from the test.
Of course, every system can be gamed but this one would help for a little while.
@droppedit Why would you suggest online courses are not in GPA? DS has taken several AoPS online courses that are more challenging than what is offered at his school. If you are worried about cheating, it is easily fixed by having tests done under supervision.
In our case, son’s online courses do not show up in his GPA but I think this is wrong. Most of the AoPS courses are not reflected in his academic record at all which is probably the case for many kids.
A real byproduct of this is will they be able to do the work (in college, in life). Grade inflation may make parents and students feel better, but how does it feel when they are used to As in HS and have to work their butt off to get a B or C in college? Especially at the more rigorous colleges.
The world or participation trophies is catching up with us.
@rickle1 Absolutely! I’m on a parents’ FB group for my daughter’s class and the number of freaked out parents’ after the first round of exams was crazy. Lots of comments of grading “not being fair to self esteem” and “tearing down good students”.
My daughter says the supplemental instructions and office hours are poorly attended and that so many students are already falling behind because they aren’t used to having to study. The other biggie is students not wanting to admit they need help. Like somehow there is a stigma to going to office hours.
One of the things that grade inflation is robbing students of is the ability to develop good study habits, and have some experience with working for those grades. We’re also setting kids up for horrible disappointment if they “gasp” get the mean on a college exam when they are in a program with students with the same level of smarts.
I think this article captures grade inflation rather well. If 48 percent of kids are getting averages, shouldn’t act/sat scores be reflective of this. For 2017, anything above SAT 1340 /ACT 28 is 90th percentile. While these scores are high, they fall short of of the competitive colleges.
“the seriously better prepared international students”
There’s gigantic variation on this point. When it comes to solving math or chemistry problems, I agree. With other kinds of skills, like writing papers, some international students may be at a huge disadvantage, even if they were educated in English.
Yes, the writing skills of some ESL students can be quite poor. Alas, the writing skills of some native English speakers in their native language can be quite poor as well.
In my highschool education in Korea 30 years ago, we had no writing what so ever. At all. Not even in Korean literature class. Everything was about memorizing facts and multiple choices. Math were also memorizing all patterns after basic understanding. Oh we copied a lot. Most of us had a great penmanship.
It had it’s strength and weakness. Well more weakness. So Korea has adopted a lot from the U.S. education. It’s math and science are still stronger overall up to high school. But past college and where innovation and real problem solving, and not better putting numbers in already solved(developed) formulas, is required, it’s far behind of it.
Those international students with strong math and science background are highly successful in the U.S. often because they are guided by those who are educated in the U.S. who have better problem solving skills, at least in the first few years of their new career.
After living decades in both Korea and in the U.S., and having translated some really poorly written technical documents written by highly educated people into English, I can attest that, in general, Americans writing in English are far better writers than Koreans writing in Korean.
None of them, well, almost all of them do not send their kids to study in Korea.
Just had dinner with S in his sophomore yr at a rigorous college.(Parents weekend) I asked him how this semester compares to freshmen yr. He said it’s much harder. More credits and each credit is more difficult. Very challenging.He’ll do well but he would struggle if he didn’t have the discipline which he learned at a tough high school (actually tough middle school too) . Their common theme was 'No excuses". Grade inflation would have hurt him. He was a top student, but he earned it. That’s definitely helping in college.
BTW - someone mentioned office hours. S never really needed help in HS. However, he met with every professor in office hours his freshmen yr. Really helped him get a better grasp of the material, not just to score well, but to really understand it. Great resource. In general, professors care about kids who make the effort.
