Giving Compass' Take:

• A study of student GPA and end-of-year tests in North Carolina revealed that students at affluent schools were more likely to participate in grade inflation.

• How can evaluations be designed to avoid grade inflation? What are the implications for education quality if grade inflation persists? 

• Learn how grade inflation hurts students. 

Grade inflation — the phenomenon of large numbers of students receiving ever-higher grades in class, regardless of how much they’ve actually learned — is more prevalent in higher-income schools than less affluent ones, according to research released today by the Fordham Institute. Many pupils who received passing grades nevertheless failed to score proficient on their end-of-course exam for the same subject, the author found.

The study was authored by Seth Gershenson, an education economist at American University. Fordham is a reform-oriented think tank that has issued influential publications warning against false notions of academic success common among American students.

Previous studies — including one last year from College Board analyst Michael Hurwitz — have also pointed toward steadily rising average high school grades occurring alongside stagnant SAT scores, and noted that the problem is particularly evident in wealthier schools. But critics have pushed back, arguing that organizations like the College Board (which owns the SAT) have an interest in maintaining the supremacy of college entrance exams. GPA, they assert, tends to be an accurate predictor of academic success in college.

Unlike the College Board report, which relied heavily on data from students who had taken the SAT, Gershenson gathered student-level data for more than a million North Carolina students enrolled in an Algebra 1 course between 2005 and 2016. Since that subject is accompanied by a mandatory end-of-course (EOC) exam, it provided a good vantage onto the divergence between course grades and test scores.

In an interview with The 74, Gershenson explained that false impressions of proficiency, even if delivered with good intentions, can be damaging if they instill undue complacency among students and parents.

“If you get a passing grade on your report card even though you’re failing to master the material … you’re not going to go out of your way to get more study time or tutoring or help to get caught up. And as a result, you move on to the next stage of your educational career set up to struggle.”

Read the full article about grade inflation by Kevin Mahnken at The 74.