When I鈥檓 working with school leaders, we usually wind up spending a lot of time on the fact that 鈥渢alk is cheap.鈥� A principal can tell teachers how much she values their time, but if she starts staff meetings late or swamps them with trivial tasks, they won鈥檛 believe a word of it. Similarly, most adults who work in and around schools say they believe in excellence, responsibility, and rigor. And yet we鈥檙e sending a very different signal to students.
This fall, ACT released a new tracking high school grades over the past decade鈥攆inding a dramatic bout of grade inflation, even as the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed in academic performance. The results should raise hard questions for those concerned about instructional rigor, sky-high graduation rates, and whether lenient grading policies adopted in the name of equity and student well-being deserve a closer look.
At this point, the evidence of grade inflation is incontrovertible. Between 2010 and 2022, student GPAs climbed markedly. According to the ACT study, the average adjusted GPA increased from 3.17 to 3.39 in English and from 3.02 to 3.32 in math. In 2022, more than 89 percent of high schoolers received an A or a B in math, English, social studies, and science. Moreover, the 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study that students were getting better grades than those a decade earlier but were learning less. In Los Angeles, the nation鈥檚 second largest school district, 83 percent of 6th graders A, B, or C grades in spring 2022鈥攅ven though just 27 percent met or exceeded the standards on state and national assessments.
Grade inflation isn鈥檛 a new phenomenon in American schooling. In 2009, Mark Schneider, now the director of the Institute of Education Sciences, that, even as the share of students finishing Algebra 2 grew by a third between 1978 and 2000 and math GPAs rose, assessed high school math performance actually fell between 1978 and 2008.
Increasingly impressive transcripts and rising grades have yielded less actual student learning. How can that be? It鈥檚 because course titles and grades are cheap. What matters is not the grades students get or the labels of the courses they take but what is actually taught. And here is where it has been far too easy to slouch into , famously described by Ted Sizer: 鈥淭he agreement between teacher and students to exhibit a fa莽ade of orderly purposefulness is a conspiracy for the least, the least hassle for anyone.鈥�
Just the other week, in an essay that offered a damning portrayal of the student-level consequences of easy grading and missing rigor, Teach Like a Champion author Doug Lemov a related observation: 鈥淎 sort of tacit collusion emerges: when almost everyone gets what they want, the school becomes easier to run. Teachers are happy because no one calls them to argue about grades, and kids aren鈥檛 competitive and pushy.鈥�
Harvey Mansfield, the iconic Harvard political philosopher, has the roots of grade inflation to social and cultural shifts that started in the late 1960s. (Decades ago, Mansfield became known for his practice of giving students two sets of grades: one that reflected Mansfield鈥檚 own assessment of the students鈥� performance and another 鈥渂ased on the system of Harvard鈥檚 inflated grades.鈥�)
Today, polling that 44 percent of educators say that students today often ask for better grades than they鈥檝e earned. Four out of 5 educators say they鈥檝e given into the demands of pushy students or helicopter parents, partly because so many report having been harassed by students and parents over grades.
The insidious thing is how easy grade inflation is for everyone involved. Meanwhile, advocates with loud voices have sought to make all of this newly respectable, using the fashionable language of 鈥溾�� to push schools to eliminate zeroes, end graded homework, drop penalties for late work and missed assignments, and offer endless retests. The upshot is to teach students that deadlines are optional and consequences aren鈥檛 real.
For teachers squeezed between helicopter parents and anti-grading ideologues, it can be tough to hold the line on high expectations. Educational leaders need to stand up for rigor, and they need to support classroom teachers who are committed to putting that into practice. And this means there鈥檚 an important role for states when it comes to providing honest assessments on student learning and ensuring that graduates have mastered essential knowledge and skills.
After all, there are real, unfortunate consequences to giving nearly every student an A or a B. Such grades tell students it鈥檚 OK to coast, give parents a false sense of how their kids are doing, and allow students to graduate without essential knowledge or skills. Worst of all, it teaches students that we don鈥檛 mean our big talk about hard work and excellence. That lesson鈥檚 not good for anyone.
