HOW HE SEES IT Grade inflation causing problems

By SILVIO LACCETTI
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The college year has drawn to a close. Soon the high school year will finish.
Tests are taken, papers submitted and final grades are reported. As has been the case for many years now, 40-50 percent of the grades will be in the A range. Excellent -- or maybe not. So many A's are a result of grade inflation, and all is not well in the academic universe.
Just a few examples serve to define the problem. According to news reports, in one of my state's best high schools, 48 percent of final grades given last year to juniors were A's. At another top northern New Jersey high School, a straight B average resulted in a class ranking of 194 out of 225. According to a recent UCLA survey, 47.5 percent of all college freshmen had an A average while they were in high school. (In 1968, that percentage was just 17.6)
In contrast, SAT scores have bounced around in a very narrow range from 1976 to 2002. Verbal scores averaged 514 in 1976 and 506 in 2002; math scores came in at 507 and 516 for these years. As the frosh say, "What's up with that, anyway?"
Well, here's what's up. In determining excellence, our educational system has devolved from a holistic-organic view to a mechanistic one. In the ancient past -- before the early 1980s -- excellence was special: it stood out and it stood apart. Its attributes included, among others, uncompromised high quality, clarity, power, efficiency and -- especially -- grace. Excellence is always pleasing to the mind's eye.
When students would ask me how to get an A, I would reply, "Submit level 'A' work."
Nowadays, excellence is broken down into various components parts. Each is given a weighted value and all are somehow combined into a finished piece. For example, many classes assign a percentage of the grade, perhaps 10-20 percent, for class participation. What this usually does is to impede learning because students are forced to make inane points just to get credit. In high school, because of different schemes and weights, excellence can turn out to be a grade-point average of 5.2 on a scale of 4.
Final grades
At the end of each semester, I am faced with the sometimes daunting task of determining final grades. I can remember very well the time I came face to face with the issue of grade inflation. It was in 1992 when a bright student asked me to reconsider his final grade. He had received a B, but was hoping for an A.
Now in those dark days, my school issued only simple letter grades without a plus or a minus distinction. The student had an average of 88.86, close to an A-, but not an A. The student was one in a freshman class of 22. In studying the matter, I was uneasy at noting that only 1 student in 22 had obtained an A, but I wasn't moved -- yet.
Then I looked at the grade postings of my colleagues. To my horror, I found that other instructors with classes ranging from 15 to 22 students were giving five, six, and even seven A grades in a class. Holy Cow!
I quickly began formulating arguments in favor of changing the student's grade.
Corporations considered GPA in their hiring; graduate schools and professional schools like law, medicine, and dentistry were very competitive and each grade counted toward admission. Our own awards for graduates were determined by GPA.
By being such a hard grader I might be hurting my students' life opportunities.
The arguments were just, and compelling, but I knew they were irrelevant. I had suddenly and very belatedly come face to face with grade inflation. I changed the grade to an A.
Fortunately, my school has since instituted plus and minus grades, but we are still much behind other prestige colleges and universities whose average grade is about a 3.45 out of 4. Our average GPA is about 3.1.
This semester, I can report that in a group of 26 students, there were two A's and three A-minus grades. This is still not in line with current grade inflation, but I believe my assessment to be accurate and fair. But wait. There was this one student who had an 88.5. I have calculated his grade using lots of "methods" -- including class participation, which was brilliant for the first half and mediocre for the second. What grade should he get?
Do our schools suffer from an excess of excellence?
Make no mistake. America needs excellence; it doesn't need grade inflation.
X Silvio Laccetti is a professor of humanities at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services,