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Analysis on the dangerous myth of grade inflation
Grade Inflation Gone Wild
Grade Inflation Gone Wild
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The Consequences of Grade Inflation
When students arrive at university, professors expect them to understand the material to an exceptional standard. The problem is that grade inflation is occurring more regularly in secondary schools and universities across the country and when these students’ marks are sent to universities or colleges, the student may be given multiple scholarships for something that he/she should not have earned. Grade inflation is conceived between both students and teachers, meaning that the students are given higher grades when they have inadequate learning, reading, and verbal skills, while the teachers do not have to grade as many papers as they should in the real curriculum. There have been multiple examinations that have confirmed that grade inflation is very real and still occurs today. Students seem to think that they do not need to put forth much effort in school to do well and grade inflation encourages this thought.
While some secondary schools do not disregard all standards of teaching, it is becoming more and more common for educators to converge with the increase of unearned grades of students. When such occurrences as this happens, the “disengagement compact, a term coined from George Kuh, [where there is an] agreement between teachers and students, ‘I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone.’ ” (Allahar and Côté 2). This means that the teacher will not put in too much effort into teaching the students, so long as he/she does not have to mark as many papers or worksheets. This lack of effort from both groups is a main cause of grade inflation. Without anyone pushing students to the fullest extent of their comprehension in certain subjects, there will not be enough material for the educator...
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...esome marks to students who do not deserve them just to see if they will put more effort into their work is completely wrong. Instead of encouraging them, it does the opposite. It will give such students “false feedback about their ability,” making them believe that what they are doing is proper, that it is the standard set of skills that everyone has, and that they will succeed in almost anything with the same attitude. This misconception will act as a disservice to these students because they believe that they “do not [need to] improve their mastery of a subject.” And once he/she reaches a point where they have to make a decision in the career path that they have chosen which requires said mastery and skill, they will realize that they have been misconceived and that they are not the intellect that they once believed they were.
In the end, grade inflation is
In his essay, "Why Colleges Shower Their Students With A’s,” Staples claims that student grades are increasing for the wrong reasons, causing college degrees to become meaningless. Staples provides evidence that average grades have increased significantly over the last several decades, but claims that it is not because students are working harder. The real explanation for grade inflation, he argues, is the effect of grades on both students and their professors. Teachers give more A’s to receive better evaluations and increase job security. Students give more importance to their grades as a result of the rapidly increasing cost of a college education. Staples argues that modern
However, such accusations such as laziness and entitlement, although common, have been prevalent amongst those of college age as proven in “A’s for Everyone.” Shepard had investigated the cause behind this and had put the blame on grade inflation in the years prior to entering college, the pressure to get superb grades due to high tuition costs, and most importantly the belief that “effort” constitutes a grade bonus. However, if one has entered the school system in America, one could see the relative ease in which one could improve their grades through inordinate amounts of extra credit. Multiple students have heard and even seen fellow students ask their parents to even come in for meetings of which equate to blaming their child’s poor grades on the teacher and harassing said teacher to allow their child, soon to be a hardworking, productive citizen of society, to get the “grade they
In his essay, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s,” Brent Staples argues that grade inflation in colleges results in college degrees becoming less valuable. Staples points out that grade inflation is happening among all colleges and there are many factors contributing to this problem. Colleges are willingly giving students good grades that they do not deserve so that the course will not be omitted from the lack of attendance. Part-time teachers’ jobs are at risk because their position is not guaranteed. These teachers were sometimes threatened by the students saying they will complain if their grades are not adjusted for a higher score. With this being said, students are putting pressure on teachers, causing their jobs to be in danger.
This idea is absurd! Our educational grading system is a scale of A, B, C, D, F with mastery being an A, average being an C, and complete failing being an F. What we would be saying to our students under his point is no matter how hard you work and how much effort you give something, if you can’t be perfect you are no better than a failure. How many students would there then be that feel like why even try? This would lead to more drop outs which is another alarming issue.
The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.
Former professor of geophysics, Stuart Rojstaczer, in his informative op-ed piece, “Grade Inflation Gone Wild,” featured in “Christian Science Monitior(2009),” investigates grade inflation among universities today. Rojstaczer’s purpose is to inform and educate universities on the inflation of grades, and how an A has become the average grade among those schools. He adopts a dismissive tone when generalizing and addressing the students on their behaviors and actions. Rojstaczer found over 80 universities with data on they’re grades, using this he was able to better understand the inflation and also analyze possible solutions. His logos based writing portrays a negative connotation on todays students and their ability to achieve within the classroom. There is no hiding that the standard for grades has been on the rise sense the 1960’s, and is now at an average GPA of a 3.0, but rojstaczer may have lost his audience with his arrogant approach.
We see a constant struggle between students and professors when it comes to the grading scale. These differences make learning a hassle. “I am placed in the position of having to figure out new ways to trick them into learning by designing ingenious new ways to grade,” says Vogel (339). The present grading system pushes students to take easy classes. Students on scholarships are afraid of taking hard classes because they run the risk of loosing financial aid if their grades don’t meet the average (Vogel 339). Farber agrees, “Getting graded turns people away from hard subjects,” (334). He offers his readers a utopia free of grades. This new...
Once a person graduates from law school, before they can begin working as a lawyer they have to take a test called the Bar. The test is not graded with A’s; B’s, C’s, D’s, or F’s and instead is graded by the pass-fail system. Once the test is graded it shows that the person either passed the Bar or failed the Bar. What is important with the Bar is that persons passes which indicates the competency of their understanding of the material to use it in the real world. Whereas the current letter grading system shows who understood the material. The pass-fail system should also be implemented in all U.S. high schools, this revolutionary idea that is practical in nature would benefit students because letter grades can cause unneeded stress and do not accurately measure the practical knowledge and intelligence level of students.
In the articles “The Sanctuary of School” and “Why College Shower Their Students with A’s”, Barry and Staples talk about their experience with economics affecting the education system. Staples, argues that in the past couple years, the university’s grading policy has been extremely lenient to the point that the schools are giving students free A’s even though they do not deserve it. Also, Barry talking about the impotence of funding classes that can help students find peace in a chaotic world. Therefore, Barry and Staples, show readers the importance of student’s education are starting to fade away.
Due to the effects of higher enrolment, teaching methods are now directed towards suiting the masses, thus everything has become less personal, as well as, less educationally in depth. Teaching techniques consist of multiple choice tests, rather than written answer questions which require critical analysis, as Jacobs states “So many papers to mark, relative to numbers and qualities of mentors to mark them, changed the nature of test papers. Some came to consist of “True or False?” and “Which of the following is correct?” types of questions” (Jacobs 49). While teachers also no longer engage in one on one conversations with students, but merely in a lecture hall among masses and everyone is seen as just a student number. Jacobs states a complaint from a student “who claimed they were shortchanged in education. They had expected more personal rapport with teachers” (Jacobs 47). Universities are too much focused on the cost benefit analysis, of the problem of increased enrolment, with the mind set of “quantity trumps quality” (Jacobs 49). The benefit of student education and learning is not being put first, but rather the expansion of the university to benefit financial issues. Taylor states “individualism and the expansion of instrumental reason, have often been accounted for as by-products
One of the issues, which Boyer points out , is that teachers and students have different expectations from college education. She says that the teachers are mainly concerned about students’ comprehension of the material, their attendance and attention while students’ hopes are to get good grades and to be well prepared for exams. It seems that the system of grading pushes students to not care too much about what is being taught from an understanding perspective, but only promotes more concern about grades instead. Some students don't really pay attention unless the instructor mentions an exam or something that will be graded. Furthermore, be...
The complex and pervasive in EDU that it defies resolution the issue of grade inflation is the concern to college student faculty, administrations and future employers the much gnashing of teeth, some veiled threats and wringing of hands and bad written and oral discussion of the precise topic but a lot of grades inflation persists a few of the colleges have a lot attempted to curver grade inflations through the various grading policies that are of in rejected the grades inflations issue arose from observations based on statistics one of the reasons are that grades cannot be normally distributed is that a variety of selective pressures operate to take less qualified student out of the pool of grades.grades may be close but they are normally distributed in all universities.grades are about imperfect in schools and in colleges because of grade inflation and all of it even grades in school are because of grade inflation to solving grade inflation causes however they cannot just wait for each university in the U.S to make every little change on their own as all of you seen that dose not work to solve our problem about grade inflation once in for all the U.S government collegiate up with the scale that all of us can do some thing success without grade inflation some over us need to do what we need to do without grade inflation and it is hard to do stuff with grade inflation and we can not go our full potent own our own so we do need help some time but it is because of the grade inflation that everyone in colleges even school are getting more and more A’s than we can count and grade inflations need to stop because of the help of the garde inflations what i say is that we need to do what we need to go all the way in our own way in schools and colleges and to do our own dreams are to get rid of grade inflation because it is cause us to not go to our own future and not to go to our own future and it is sad to not go to are own future because of grade inflation and it is
By nature, most students are brought up in an academic environment motivated to get A’s and B’s on their report cards. Those grades sometimes don’t thoroughly report how much a student has learned or gained knowledge in each topic. Some instructors throw in factors totally unrelated to learning, when the main objective of academic institutions is to learn. In order to clearly demonstrate how much a student has learned in the classroom, schools should change their current grading system and teach students how to learn.
This is a great point because in today’s society too many people just give bare minimum effort because that’s all they have been taught. Students need to learn as much as possible and be challenged so they can succeed in the future. Like Rojstaczer said all Grade Inflation is doing is making lazy students, teaching one to give no effort because everything is given. This is setting students up for failure in the future, as work does not come easy for the everyday
The pressure on students in high school and college students can be quite overwhelming. A student may have several different classes, each with a heavy workload and none of which they are interested in taking. With their parents breathing down their necks and their financial aid dependent on passing grades, some are tempted and even go through with acts of academic dishonesty in the forms of cheating and/or plagiarizing. There are many reasons why students cheat and plagiarize, they may not even understand the difference between the two, but there are also possible solutions to prevent cheating and plagiarizing in education.