Parent Power!
Helping You Make Sense of Schooling Today

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"My daughter took the SATs twice but wasn’t happy with her scores. I don’t know what’s wrong. She’s a straight A student.”
          Sound unusual to you? It is likely that this girl was a victim of grade inflation, the widespread practice of narrowing the range of acceptable grades from A through F to something on the order of A through B. She didn’t find out until she took a national standardized test that she wasn’t really doing A work.
          Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is a fairly objective measure of a student’s proficiency, and one would expect a student’s scores to correspond to their grades in school. However, the statistics tell us something different. Although the percentage of students who received A averages rose from 28 percent to 37 percent since 1987, the combined SAT verbal and math scores of A students dropped over 14 points during that same period.
          Grades don’t always tell parents the full story, and how children are graded can vary greatly. A parent whose move from Idaho landed her son in a popular Virginia school was stunned to find out that her C student had magically become an A student.
          Even students in advanced programs can be victims of grade inflation. One college professor shared the story of his daughter who was in upper-level programs throughout high school only to find she needed remedial math during her freshman year of college. For English, social studies, or political science majors, this is an annoyance. For the pre-med or engineering student, it can be a devastating obstacle.
          “Grade inflation values effort over achievement, eschews competition as abhorrent in the development of the ‘whole’ child, and banishes failure from the range of student possibilities.” says Bernier Mayo, headmaster of St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont.
          Even worse, grade inflation can also create a hostile relationship between parents and teachers. Parents who insist on accurate, well-written papers, for example, are forced to play the bad guy to their children while the teacher is spreading praise for reports riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. And while there are many parents who want to see their children earn the grades they deserve – high or low – there are many parents who want high grades for little Susie and Sam no matter what. Many teachers complain of parents who won’t settle for anything less than an A or B.
          “Once upon a time,” says Kay Hymowitz, author of Ready or Not: How Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers their Future and Ours, “the authority of the school was absolute. A child came home and said ‘I got in trouble today,’ and a parent would say ‘how dare you.’ Now, educators tell us that parents say ‘it wasn’t my kid’s fault.’ There’s a much more adversarial relationship between parents and schools.”
          How can parents and teachers end the no-win game of grade inflation?
          Do a reality check. Look for signs that your child is receiving a good grade for his effort and not for what he or she is accomplishing. First and foremost, let your child read to you and listen critically. You also should be looking over the work that your child brings home. Make a considered judgment: Does this work seem to justify the grades your child receives? Parents need to continually insist on grades that reflect quality of work, even if the quality is poor. Ask about the school’s standards and how children are graded in relationship to meeting those benchmarks.
          Finally, do some independent research (start by using Parent Power!) about what children should know and be able to do at each grade.
          Grade inflation has reached epidemic proportions. Eventually, it catches up with students. There’s no way out of high-stakes tests or high-pressure jobs where achievement counts more than acclaim. As parents, we need to let our kids know that just making the effort is not enough, that it’s achievement which really matters. Inflated grades undermine this important value.
          Stop, look and listen: is it happening to your child?