A newly released study from economist Jeffrey Denning, published with the National Bureau of Economic Research, argues that a too-easy A in high school penalizes the student with a real economic cost.
Grades have seen a strong and measurable upturn at both the K-12 level and the collegiate level. Since grades are the most commonly understood method of communication to parents and students of a student’s academic progress, this is a significant development. While this could signal a praiseworthy increase in real student learning, it unfortunately denotes a mere increase in grades.
One 2022 study that compared grades given by teachers to standardized tests agreed with the wide research consensus that points to a worrying rise in grade inflation across the nation in all types of schools. The authors noted there was strong “evidence of grade inflation without and with accounting for student and school characteristics.”
Denning’s study cites data from the National Center for Education Statistics, showing that the average high school GPA has increased about .48 points since the late 1980s, with college GPAs not too far off either.
It may be easier for little John to get an A now than if he were born in 1980: but is that such a bad thing?
Lighter coursework frees him up to pursue creative interests, jobs, and internships, removing undue pressures to achieve academically. Non scholae sed vitae discimus — “we learn not for school, but for life” — cry the lighter-grade advocates, flipping the phrase on its head. Looking at the problem a bit differently, his friend Peter may be an F student, on the verge of becoming a high school dropout. Life is difficult for those without a high school diploma; making sure Peter receives that essential piece of paper could be a worthwhile act of charity that keeps him off the streets.
Denning’s research implies that there are, in fact, very real consequences of grade inflation for the two students — but those consequences vary, depending on whether the student is John or Peter.
Denning and his team divide grade inflation into two categories. The first, what I’ll call average-grade inflation, raises the average grade that each student earns, impacting the Johns of the school (who are in no danger of flunking out) by making it easier for them to earn an impressive course grade. The second, passing-grade inflation, lowers the average bar each teacher sets for what constitutes a D as compared to an F, helping the Peters of the school scrape their way through to a diploma.
When the team examined their short- and long- term data, taken from the Los Angeles Unified School District and from all public high schools in Maryland, they found something surprising. Average-grade inflation and passing-grade inflation have very different effects on students’ further academic performance and their eventual life trajectories.
Passing-grade inflation, which lowers the bar for students to pass their coursework, has “no effect on future test scores in math or English.” With passing-grade inflation, students are less likely to fail a course and more likely to graduate high school. But researchers still can’t say definitively if that magnanimous high school diploma actually helped that struggling student to launch into life.
Framing their findings here tenuously, the research team notes that there is “some suggestion of a shift away from four-year and toward two-year college enrollment and increases in earnings in the first few years after expected high school graduation.” These barely-there high school graduates are opting to enter the workforce just after graduation (a worthy pursuit) but there’s no evidence that their early pay bump continues to even just six years after their graduation.
Average-grade inflation, which makes it easier for students to exhibit signals of success without content mastery, has strong negative effects that impact students almost immediately.
Students who learned under teachers with lax grading strategies experienced a “meaningful impact” of lower scores in following tests than students who studied under more robust graders. The students, likely knowing they possessed grades they didn’t earn, lowered their academic ambitions: students were less likely to take the SAT and potentially less likely to graduate high school. They were less likely to enroll in postsecondary education and less likely to be gainfully employed in the six years after high school that the study assessed.
It turns out that it is possible to put a price tag on all the lost learning. An individual student who experienced a lenient teacher has their earnings reduced “by about $56 to $145 a year from one through six years after expected high school graduation.” One typical grade-inflating high school teacher, educating about 90 students a year, reduces their collective lifetime earnings by $213,872 per every year the cohort is in that teacher’s classroom.
Even though John and Peter might rejoice at the short-term benefits of grade inflation, their teachers aren’t doing them any long-term favors by letting them take the easy way out.
Solutions
As policy writer Chad Aldeman points out, policy goals for grading shouldn’t include harshness for harshness’ sake. There’s no benefit to setting unreasonable standards for our students.
Yet schools must appropriately challenge students at each stage of their education, asking them to make more of themselves, growing their minds and their abilities. The implicit promise that a high grade genuinely reflects achievement compels students to respect their own work ethics, their fellow students, and the honesty of their academic institutions. In this way, accurate grading signifies the inculcation of a noble character.
Plus, as my colleague Catrin Wigfall says, there are real social consequences to grade inflation. Students who are not prepared for the real world because of their grades know less, study less, and make less money, leaving their communities and nation diminished as a result. Grading reform must take place, tying the final scores to objective standards of mastery over course completion.
One easy first step for Minnesota’s districts would be to require standardized end-of-course exams (final exams) that represent a significant part of a student’s final grade. This mastery check would provide an important counterweight to potential grade inflation within the semester. (Plus, in the wild world of education policy debates, final exams are a crowd-pleasing method of grade reform. The practice satisfies many content mastery concerns of the equity-based grading crowd.)
Our students deserve grades that accurately reflect their accomplishments, and we should give them freely. It’s what institutional honesty and concern for long-term student wellbeing requires.