Grade Inflation and Equity Grading Mean an A No Longer Tells You Much

An A used to be a rumour. It circulated in the hallway, whispered about as the sort of thing that happened to other people, usually the kid who carried a calculator on a lanyard. Today, in a growing number of classrooms, an A is more like a participation ribbon with a decimal point. Everybody gets some. The scoreboard has been quietly turned off, and the game goes on.

Folks, I want to take this seriously, because the issue is not trivial and the people on the other side are not villains. A teacher who gives a student a grade is making a promise to every future reader of that transcript: a college, an employer, a parent. When the promise gets cheaper, everybody downstream pays, and the student who pays most is the one who needed to hear the truth.

Here is the plan. I define the terms, state the thesis, lay out a numbered argument, give the opposing view its strongest form, answer it, and tell you what a parent can ask on Monday morning.

Define the terms

Grade inflation is a rise in the grades students receive that is not matched by a rise in what they know. The test is simple: grades go up while an independent measure of learning stays flat or falls.

Equitable grading, also called equity grading, is a family of practices promoted in recent years, associated with educators such as Joe Feldman, whose 2018 book Grading for Equity is a standard reference. The ideas vary from district to district, but the practices usually include some combination of these:

1. No zeros. Replace a zero with a floor, often 50 percent, so that a missing assignment cannot sink a grade.
2. Unlimited retakes and revisions. A student may redo a test or paper as many times as needed, and the last score replaces the first.
3. No grade for homework. Homework is treated as practice, not evidence of mastery, and it either does not count or counts very little.
4. No penalty for late work. Deadlines are guidelines.
5. No grades for behaviour or participation. The grade reflects only mastery of the standards, not effort, attendance or conduct.

The movement's intentions are good. It starts from a real observation, that a grade should say what a student knows and not whether his home had a quiet table and a printer. I will give it its due in a moment.

The thesis

When a school removes the consequences from grading, the grade stops carrying information, and the students hurt most are the ones who most needed honest feedback. That is the claim. It is an empirical claim and a moral one: empirical, because we can compare grades with independent measures; moral, because honesty about a child's progress is something we owe the child.

The argument in five numbered points

One: a grade is a signal, and a signal that everyone sends is no signal at all. The purpose of a grade is to tell people who were not in the room how a student did. An A is supposed to be unusual. If a school hands out A's to most of its students, the A no longer distinguishes anyone. The college admissions office does not stop caring about grades; it simply stops believing them and looks at something else, usually a test score or the reputation of the school.

Two: the independent measures have not kept pace. The best-known data point comes from ACT, the testing organisation. In reports on the grade point averages of its test takers, ACT found that average high school GPAs rose over roughly a decade from about 3.2 to about 3.4, while average ACT composite scores fell over the same period. The SAT's sponsor, the College Board, has reported similar patterns. Grades up, scores flat or down. (I am citing the direction and approximate size from the testing companies' own reports; check the latest ACT and College Board research for the exact figures.) The National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Nation's Report Card, shows national reading and math results that have been flat or declining for twelfth graders in recent assessments. When one number climbs and every independent number stays put, the first number is measuring something other than learning.

Three: college grade trends point the same way. College grades have risen for decades, and researchers who have tracked them nationally found the share of A's at four-year colleges rising from a small minority of all grades in the 1960s to something like two in five or more in recent years. The exact figures depend on the data set. The direction is not in dispute. And the grade inflation in college is, in part, a result of what happened before college: when students arrive with inflated transcripts, the college faces students whose grades say they are ready and whose work says otherwise, and it adjusts the curve in turn.

Four: removing consequences removes the lesson. A student who learns that a missing assignment costs nothing, that a bad test can be retaken until it is good, and that a deadline can be ignored, has learned something. He has learned that the world is forgiving, which is false. A job, a mortgage, a licensing exam and a contract do not allow unlimited retakes. A school that is the last place a young person encounters a deadline is not preparing him for what comes after.

Five: the students who lose are the ones the policy claims to help. A strong student does fine in any system. She will study with or without the incentive. The student who is behind, who has missed foundations in reading or math, needs to know precisely where he stands, early and plainly, so that he and his parents can act. A transcript of B's that conceals a fourth-grade reading level is a disservice. It trades a tough conversation in ninth grade for a catastrophe in twelfth, and it lands on the family that had the fewest resources to fix it.

A worked example

Let me show you what a zero does and what a floor does, because the arithmetic is the heart of the equity argument.

Suppose a student turns in four assignments, each worth the same, and earns 95, 95, 95 and does not turn in the fourth.

• With a zero: (95 + 95 + 95 + 0) ÷ 4 = 285 ÷ 4 = 71.25, a C.
• With a 50 percent floor: (95 + 95 + 95 + 50) ÷ 4 = 335 ÷ 4 = 83.75, a B.

The student did not do one quarter of the work and earned a B. That is the policy in a sentence. Now the equity advocate will point out, correctly, that a 71 average overstates the failure, because a student who scored 95 on everything he did has mastered the material. That is the steelman. Let me turn to it.

The steelman: the best case for equity grading

Here is how its defenders would put it, in words they would accept.

A grade should communicate what a student has learned and nothing else. On a traditional 100-point scale, the failing range runs from 0 to 59, so a zero is not merely one grade below a D; it is sixty points below. A single zero can mathematically bury a student who has otherwise shown mastery, and that tells the reader almost nothing about what the student knows. Meanwhile, punishing late work, scoring homework and grading behaviour tends to reward students with stable homes and punish those without. If the goal is to measure mastery, we should measure mastery. And allowing retakes mirrors how real learning works: you try, you fail, you learn, you try again.

There is real force in this. The zero problem is a genuine mathematical quirk, and I would not defend a system in which one missed assignment erases a semester of strong work. A teacher who says "the grade should measure learning" has a point that every conservative who believes in merit should accept: merit means what you can do, not what you pretend.

The answer, in numbered points

1. The fix for the zero problem is a better scale, not a free pass. If a zero distorts the average, use a four-point scale, where an F is a zero, a D is a one and the math is symmetrical. That solves the arithmetic without teaching that work is optional. A floor of 50 percent solves a problem by creating a bigger one: a student can pass a course while doing half the work, or less.
2. "Mastery only" is a fine rule for a test, and a poor description of a school. A school is not a testing center. It also teaches the habits of showing up, finishing and meeting a standard on time. Those habits are what employers consistently say they want, and they are the habits that predict success. Removing them from the grade removes the reason to develop them.
3. Unlimited retakes measure persistence at the expense of knowledge. A student who can retake a test indefinitely may learn the material. But he may also learn the test. The score the school records stops being a measure of what he knew on test day and becomes a measure of how many tries he took. That is not information a college can use.
4. The homework point has merit and the conclusion does not follow. Practice is practice, and it is reasonable to weigh it lightly. But if homework counts for nothing, many students will not do it, and homework is how a child practices what she just learned. The way to protect a student with a loud household is a library, a study hall or a flexible deadline, not removing the work from the grade.
5. The equity claim cuts the other way in the evidence of results. If the goal is to help students who are behind, the way to do it is to tell them plainly where they stand and then help them catch up. An inflated grade is a comfortable lie. The people harmed by it are the ones who trusted it.

What a conservative should say about the motive

I want to be careful and generous here. Most teachers who adopt these practices are not trying to deceive anyone. They see children who struggle, and they want to keep them from giving up. That is a decent instinct. The mistake is to treat the report card as the place to be kind. The report card is the place to be accurate. Kindness belongs in the teaching, in the extra help, in the tutoring and in the time a teacher spends after school. You can be gentle with a child and honest about the grade in the same breath, and a good teacher does both.

The Founders and the standard

There is a deeper principle in this. A republic depends on citizens who can govern themselves, which requires that they know what they know and what they do not. James Madison wrote in 1822 that a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. The letter is the subject of Madison's 1822 Letter on Why a Republic Needs Informed Citizens. An education that conceals what a student has and has not learned fails that test as surely as one that teaches nothing.

The case against low standards also appears in the story of what testing actually shows. The Nation's Report Card uses a set of achievement levels, and what its word "proficient" means is not what most parents assume, which I explain in What the Nation's Report Card Measures and What Proficient Really Means. If your child brings home a transcript of A's and the national assessment says the average student in your state is below proficient, the two stories do not fit together, and it is worth asking why.

The deeper cause of weak standards is also worth naming. When schools are funded and rated on graduation rates and the like, there is an incentive to pass students along, and the cheapest way to raise a graduation rate is to lower the bar. The pattern of spending that has risen with little to show is covered in Real Spending Per Pupil More Than Doubled Since 1970, So Where Are the Gains. And in the other direction, a related argument, that the aim of schooling includes demanding something of a child, is made in Ending Gifted Programs in the Name of Equity Hurts the Kids It Claims to Help.

A word to the coverage

When the news reports that high school graduation rates have reached a record, it usually leaves out the question that matters: graduating with what? A graduation rate is a count of diplomas, not a measure of knowledge. If grades rise and the tests do not, then the record graduation rate is a record of generosity. A fair article would put the two numbers side by side. It rarely does, because "diplomas up" is a better headline than "diplomas up, results flat."

I also notice the vocabulary. "Equity grading" is a name that makes opposition sound like opposition to equity. But the question is not whether we want fair treatment. Of course we do. The question is whether this particular set of practices produces it, and the evidence says an honest grade is fairer than a generous one. A parent who says so is not against equity; he is for the child.

What parents can ask

You do not need to start a fight. You need a few polite questions, asked in writing or at a school meeting, and answers you can compare across schools.

• What is the grading policy? Does the district or school have a written policy? Does it allow zeros, set a minimum score, limit retakes or exclude homework? Ask for it in writing.
• How are late and missing assignments handled?
• Do retakes replace the first score, or average with it? Is there a limit, a waiting period or a required plan of extra work?
• What do the grades look like next to independent tests? Ask the school how its grade distribution compares with state test results and with the SAT or ACT results of its graduates.
• How can I see my child's real progress? Ask for the underlying scores on standards, not only the letter, and ask the teacher what the student can and cannot yet do.
• How do local colleges and employers view our transcripts? Some districts publish this.

Whatever the answers, keep the focus where it belongs: on your own child. Ask the teacher what she needs to be able to do next, and give her a week to practice it.

The case in brief

1. A grade is a signal, and when a school hands out high grades to nearly everyone the signal stops telling anyone anything.
2. Equity-grading practices, such as banning zeros, allowing unlimited retakes and not counting homework, are meant to measure mastery, but they also remove deadlines and consequences.
3. Testing companies report rising high school GPAs against flat or falling ACT scores, and national assessments show flat or declining results, so grades and learning have come apart.
4. The best case for the reform is the zero problem, a 0-to-59 failing range that distorts averages, and the answer is a better scale, not a 50 percent floor that lets a student pass on half the work.
5. Honest feedback is the fairest thing a school can give a child who is behind, and kindness belongs in the teaching, not in the transcript.

What you can do: ask your school or district for its written grading policy, and compare how its grade distribution lines up with state test results.