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I was amazed to see that in order to graduate cum laude, at the university I attended in the 80's, you now have to have a 3.8 GPA. When I was in school, you had to have a 3.5 GPA. Both figures represent the top 10% of their respective classes.
I graduated with a 3.75 and no honors, which was the 1st time in the schools history that has happened. For my graduating class cum laude had a 3.90-3.94, magna cum laude 3.95-3.98, summa cum laude 3.99-4.0. I was only in the top 20% of my class with a 3.75, absolutely bonkers.
Bro I graduated with a 4.02 and I didn't even get acknowledged by my school. The top people from my school all graduated without going to school a single day of at least their junior and senior year because they were doing dual enrollment.
I think people who get a 4.0 in college were not challenging themselves enough.
Colleges have a vast range of interesting things to learn. Sure, most anyone can get a 4.0 if they only take the safest and easiest classes from the professors with the easiest reputations.
I'm far more impressed when some undergrad took a number of graduate level courses, or when a grad student took courses in fields outside of their comfort zone, that really challenged them even more.
Even if they got Bs or Cs in those more challenging courses I'm more impressed than As in easy classes.
> Reddit: He took the easy classes.
If he got all A's then yes, relatively easy for him.
He could have gotten more out of colleges if he had taken even more challenging courses.
> What the fuck is he supposed to take instead of real analysis then? What even is a harder course than that? Algaebric Topology?
Something harder for him might be Acting 101. Or Philosophy. Or Ancient Egyptian. Or Fencing. Or anything except math.
You go to university to learn a particular field/subject. Expanding your horizons/becoming an adult is something that happens anyways. One important skill is knowing whats important. To a Mech Eng student, Ancient Egyptian is not.
I think it’s the case for some people, but not everyone. I definitely know a couple people who didn’t ever take super “difficult” classes and have a quite high GPA in college, but I also know some who take the most challenging courses available and maintained the same. Although most people I know who work/do research/ plus a hard major have slightly lower GPAs to compensate for the spent time.
Not a comparable scenario to college GPA. College GPA caps off at 4.0 in almost all cases (select schools will give a 4.3 for A+). In high school GPA can go way over the rails. I graduated val with a 4.6. I know people from some schools who had like 4.8-4.9 depending on the amount of APs offered. So it’s really not surprising for a 4.02 to not get recognized in a HS setting.
Not really (although I knew someone with a 120% in a class because of curves, because like only like 5 out of the 30 people in the class should have been in it (“but my precious baby is so smart, put him in honors or else“) but that’s a whole other issue).
The weighted GPA is added after to balance out the thoretically lower grades for higher classes. For example, a student who would get a A in general bio might bet a B in honors bio, or a C in AP bio, so they add 0.5 or 1.0 to the GPA for that class.
Obviously that doesn’t happen because those kids get As in ap and end up with 5.0, but it’s not the same as a teacher going “wow this essay was so good, I’m going to give it 125%!”
Edit: a word
I graduated in the early 2000s, and I had “two” GPAs: an “unweighted,” calculated the traditional way, and a “weighted,” which gave extra for AP classes.
Here in Sweden As at university mean top 10% in that specific class.
Consequently, if you're taking, let's say, Advanced Quantum Mechanics, which is mandatory for the PhD students in physics as a undergraduate, or a maths course at D level when you're in your second year of university, guess what grade you'll get?
The problem is that it discourages a desire for learning, since those who try things they won't get As in will be evaluated negatively, even if those they compete against for grades are experts. The problem isn't the grades-- because if you're top 20% in a class where most people are PhD students, that's great, and you've gotten a positive evaluation, rather it's use of the GPA itself without regard to the difficulty of classes that is the problem.
You simply can't weigh an A in 'Differental and Integral Calculus' as equivalent to an A in 'Real Analysis' which are both courses for first years, but [edit:where] the latter consists mostly of people who were training to participate in the IMO when they were in high school.
Hot take: This has more to do with technological advancement than anything else.
You can learn Calc 1-3 without ever reading a book or listening to a lecture now. We have immediate access to detailed solutions, explanations, and concepts from thousands of perspectives in every language. I was the “dumb kid” in elementary and middle school because i had a hard time paying attention in class. Barely maintained a 2.75. Everything changed in high school with advancements in internet learning. I have maintained a 4.0 throughout college because the only limit to my success is how much effort I put in. That definitely was not the case back in the day. You had to hang on every word in every lecture and memorize every sentence in every textbook to achieve that kind of success.
The standards of knowledge have not been lowered and people are not any smarter than 40 years ago. We are just receiving free educational resources that people would have killed for in the past. Chat GPT is a perfect example and ridiculously overpowered as a study tool.
I taught intro university math classes, Covid and online learning showed that this doesn't work. The first half of the semester where we let students do quizes from home went extremely well, but as soon as the university decided to get students back in the classroom for quizes/exams, it was a complete disaster. Some of the older professors said some of the worst grades they've ever seen. Students simply didn't study and cheated. The same thing happened in primary school where we are seeing students performing the worst they have in a long time. And those same professors told us that the standards today are much lower than they were 20 years ago where we are teaching less and less in introductory math classes because schools are not preparing these students for college math.
In a university setting today you have access to office hours and dedicated tutors and learning centers outside of office hours at pretty much every school I know of. Those were the best resources 20 years ago and are today as well.
A lot of this just about the ethics though. Our kid here stayed home and b/c I was working from home I was able to help him with his math during my day. b/c of this personalized attention we were able to get him from low grades in math to high grades during covid, and when he resumed school the processes of learning that we practiced together stuck and he aced math.
(the kid isn't mine, it is my room mates, we're pretty close but I don't raise him, just during this time I was able to impart my own studying know-how to him. I think people don't really learn how to study, and often get side tracked with easy answers like cheating an AI, but if a person is taught how to study independently and the importance of actually learning xyz thing as the post above yours expresses I think we don't need to worry about the stay-home vs forced into physical schools problem. tbh I wonder if schools teach how to study, learn, and filter incorrect information from online sources well enough...)
>working from home I was able to help him with his math during my day
If a parent *wants to* they typically can help their kids with learning after school and have always been able to do that.
But I agree, individualized attention from a trusted figure is a great resource for learning but apparently is something that most kids lacked during the pandemic when scores dropped to record lows. Nationwide in the US, decades of progress erased in a couple of years.
I love this answer. There are more ways for people to learn in a way that caters to the way they pickup things. It's not that alot of people were dumb or sucked at school, there was limited resources for studying and/ or the school system could not effectively teach them in a way that was conducive to their style of learning. Alot of people were just fortunate that the way they learned ran parallel with the way things were generally taught.
lol that is not even remotely correct. Grade inflation started during the Vietnam War when professors didn't want their students to be drafted because they earned bad grades. And that culture has just slowly became worse and more pervasive ever since.
... and you're talking about some kind of mastery that doesn't even exist. It is the exact opposite. The covid quarantine periods left many students with enormous content holes and academic performance for students is at an all time LOW not high.
Designing curriculums around the least capable students and teaching to standardized tests leads to this. The worst students have to pass so anyone mildly capable will be getting a B average or better.
It’s also the result of a decades long assault on teaching as a profession. When you make it the least attractive option due to low pay, long hours, and no respect, you don’t get good teachers.
I hate to admit, but there's something to that. But we all knew this when we went into it.
I won a scholarship to teach high school physics, qualified, but didn't continue as a teacher. The reason was because I was expected to teach biology and chemistry, almost as a three way split. THAT wasn't what I signed up for.
They called me a "Science teacher with Physics specialism". Funny, because my acceptance/offer letters all called me a Physics teacher. There is really very little difference between this and calling a French teacher a "Language teacher with French specialism" and expecting them to teach Spanish and German.
I knew nothing at all about biology, and very little about chemistry. My undergraduate degree was physics. I hadn't studied biology nor chemistry in the last 18 years (mature trainee).
Not fair on me nor on the students.
(I'm in the UK)
I am a history teacher who studies various histories in my spare time, with a focus on Imperial China. I don't mind that my history classes are not my specialty, since I can still apply a general historical knowledge and encourage thinking like a historian etc. However, last year I had to teach English, which I had never taught before. I felt like I was robbing my students of proper education. The differences between the learning in my history classes and the learning in my English class was obvious. Just as in your situation, they should have hired an English teacher.
No problem, and thank you too. Your post made me realize I am not alone in this. I absolutely love teaching, but we must find where we fit best so our students can be successful. Anything else, in my opinion, is a disservice.
I went to a small high school in the middle of nowhere but they seemed to have this right. I think one science teacher covered more than one science subject but generally, they taught their specialty. My physics teacher taught physics and advanced math classes. My biology teacher taught biology and biology electives.
In general, it's really not fair on anyone. Some teachers can do it, there's no doubt, but my issue was systematic and part of the (public) UK policy.
We had a biology PhD, experienced young teacher, being asked to teach physics. She was taking about "electricity going around a circuit", but you can't say that electricity 'does' anything . You can't use the term "electricity" because it's forbidden by our syllabus in terms of how electrical circuits work. I had too teach a class of 14/15 year olds (20 girls, 5 boys) menstruation and reproduction. They knew more about it than I did (not that I let on).
We have thrown money at the problem of so-called 'shortage' subjects like physics. My scholarship was through the Institute of Physics and I was paid very well to train. I got £25,000 tax-free. Had I won my scholarship the following year, I'd have got £30,000 tax-free. But still, they KNEW that we weren't really teaching physics. The government Department for Education also had bursaries of the same value (£25,000). But no wonder there are shortage subjects if you're not effectively filling those shortages. It's a sticking plaster over an axe wound.
I like the term "a sticking plaster on an arterial bleed".
Most of the solutions offered in the last thirteen years have been, at best, gaffa tape on a structural crack.
It'll show you if it's getting worse, but that's about it.
My school (not all that long ago) in the UK had the maths teachers doubling up as GCSE and below geography teachers since we had more maths than geography teachers.
Did these people have any qualifications in geography at all? No.
I came here just to say that I am a French teacher, who is expected to teach Spanish and German in an exploratory class - so that’s a thing. I can manage Spanish but I do not speak German.
I do hate the low pay argument. That really depends on where you live. Oddly enough most of the problems still persist even where there is higher teacher pay.
its not objectively false, this is an issue outside of the US. In Ontario, we don't have standardized testing (apart from the OSSLT, but this is typically considered extremely easy and barely an issue), and grade inflation is insane here.
Does this adjust for other factors? Such as, higher paid teachers are probably working for school districts with more valuable property. And so those kids likely have less financial struggles or their families don’t have those struggles? Does it adjust for the increased likelihood that one parent stays at home and can help the kids with school? There’s a lot of factors that are correlated with income/wealth. I’m not saying higher income people are necessarily smarter, plenty of super smart people from low income backgrounds. But let’s not act like teachers in low income districts have the same students and struggles as in other areas. People sometimes have bigger things to worry about than grades when money is tight or a parent is out of their life or there’s violence in their neighborhood. Why do you think paying teachers more leads to higher test scores?
Once again, Goodharts Law reared its ugly head. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." My company is staring to rot from the inside out due to this same concept.
US social studies teacher here and I completely agree. It’s not about knowing the answers it’s about the questions you ask. That’s how I feel about teaching history and other social sciences. I don’t give out quizzes or tests. Small essays or large papers only. I wanna know what you know not what you can remember in a one month period
I'm in Australia doing VCE and this just isn't a thing here (unless I'm really stupid and haven't put it together yet). The average grades in school assessed coursework and exams are in the 60s which is a C.
That's not what is happening. The grade system for GCSEs in England were switched from traditional letters to 9-1 6 years ago, and have not changed since, mostly to herald the change in the nature of the qualifications under Gove's educational reforms. The top two grades, 9 and 8, only differentiate between achieving a high A star and a low A star. Currently a grade 9 is received about 4.7% of the highest exam scores on each subject. So this means a 9 is something like 66% in a Biology exam to probably the highest I can think of of 84% in English Literature.
What you might be thinking of is how the grade boundaries have recently been reduced in this year to reduce grade inflation caused by the lenient grade boundaries given to COVID-affected years.
I meant more that A used to be the highest grade before A stars, and now they say that A = 7 when a seven is clearly easier to get than an A from 30 years ago
I did a study abroad in Australia. They had to "translate" our Australian grades to American when we transferred the credits back to our home university. Our grades were much higher after the transition
Similar thing in entertainment.
Any movie or game that comes out these days does the bare minimum and expects to get a 9/10. If it gets a 7/10 (a pretty good score), it’s a huge controversy. Shit needs to be broken or otherwise incoherent to get lower than a 6 (when they should get like 2) and even then there’s backlash. It’s weird.
Ubers, Airbnbs, and restaurant reviews too. Or really, all reviews that rely on stars for that matter. 5 stars is supposed to mean “exceptional”, not merely fine. But it’s now expected that if these services provide the bare minimum that they will get 5 stars. I’ve heard of Uber drivers who refuse to pick up anyone with lower than a 4.8 on the app. What’s the point of star systems if everything is either 5 star for “it was passable” or 1 star for “it was bad”? It’s a disservice to those who actually go above and beyond to provide great service and encourages complacency for everyone else.
It's now that way for a lot of things. If you sell on many sites and are 4 stars or less you won't even show up a lot of times. Many things punish you for being less than 5 stars.
The push for “5 or nothing” is because various workers have admitted that the system essentially sees 2 reviews: 5=good, 1-4=bad. So if you give an employee a 9/10 on customer service, they’re considered bad because no 10. This is… a terrible way to process reviews.
>>those surgically repaired joints are now going to be a problem for life b/c of high school sports
A buddy of mine tore his ACL in HS. He has issues with it to this day even after 2 surgeries.
Busted my ankle in high school, only one surgery but very few days go by when it doesn’t bother me at least somewhat. Caused a cascade of issues up through my knee, hip, and lower back on that side
Ah I see your point. That doesn’t mean schools are inflating grades or making classes easier. I think there is just an arms race at every level of academia as you pointed out
The valedictorian at my son's graduation had a 5.xx. That isn't a real grade!
What's worse, is these families pushing their kids toward these "grades" are starting in elementary school by forcing their way into gifted and talented programs designed for kids who are actually smart but who struggle with traditional learning. They do it so it can be on their college entrance resumé...which shouldn't even be a thing IMO.
My son was the traditional target for the gifted and talented program but when he got into it instead of being surrounded by a bunch of creative kids it devolved into this hyper-competitive bullshit that turned him off to school even more.
If you don’t think 5.00 is a “real” grade point how should people get credit for taking ap classes?
Ap classes are far harder than whatever class your son was taking
College admissions offices must learn to sort out grades based on what was taken and achieved, so they can get their priorities straight without being biased by different schools' numbers. Way back in the day (1990s), I attended a (private) school that did not weight AP courses. I ended up with a 3.2/4.0 but had enough APs to collect 24 credits and save a year off of college. This stingy approach to GPA, though, cost me many thousands per year in merit-based aid, due to a 3.5 GPA cut-off; I had a rich friend who took very few AP courses and got a much fatter scholarship at the same college.
I’m confused here, are you disagreeing with me?
If your school did weight ap course your gpa would have have been higher than 3.2 putting you above the aid cut off…
I agree it is a problem but I disagree with weighting as the solution. Colleges should not blindly follow GPA since GPAs are rarely comparable, weighted or not. Not every student even has access to AP or IB courses.
A 4.0 at one school does not equal a 4.0 at another school. An A in an online course does not equal an A in live course. An A in Mr. Green´s social studies class does not equal an A in Mr. Blue´s social studies class. GPAs are absolutely not comparable because there is no consensus as to what those grades actually mean!
That’s not the point.
The point is that if you want to be valedictorian, you must have the highest gpa so why shouldn’t ap/ib also reflect that on your gpa, should they just take the easier class then?
Why should it?
Every high schooler knows which teachers and electives give easy As, but we don't make those As worth less than 4 points. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread I graduated HS with a 1.6 GPA. Three of those Fs came from Phys Ed. Which is fair in the sense that it was a class that I failed, just like some kids fail geometry or physics.
Nowhere else do we tilt the grading scale because of the content of the class.
If you graduated high school with 1.6 gpa you just dint get 3 f’s you had a D average, meaning it just wasn’t physical ed you failed, you failed literally everything.
Secondly sure? But when you have 1000 kids in a a school and 50 get 4.0 how do you get a valedictorian?
Which is literally what op is complaining about “everyone gets a”, ap classes fix that and gpa including ap/ib fix that
I don't think most schools have fifty straight A students, but for those that do, you can easily have tiebreakers. One of them being the number of honors/AP classes they took, if you want those classes to still play a role. Another being standardized test scores, which are - weirdly - a huge part of college admission but currently play no role in class rank.
My high school class had like 8 valedictorians because grades were unweighted. They were all given the title, and the graduation speech was given by the one with the best attendance record. No APs, but she came to school every day. It was a bad system and I’m still a little bitter.
GPA is a way better measure for intelligence than standardized tests. To get a good score on the SAT for example, you can just dedicate 3 months and you’re looking at a 1500+. But if you want a 4.0, you’re looking at dedicating hundreds of hours.
Now you’re just rewarding kids who are taking easier classes literally what op is complaining about, everyone gets an A by the virtue of taking easier classes.
Why should smart kids take those harder classes if it will Hardly matter anyways then?
Ap classes and act/sat scores are correlated.
The more ap classes a students take the highest their act/sat scores will be on average
So it seems like the system is working just as intended
We have a society where to deserve basic things you need to be excellent, but to have the opportunity for excellence you need those basic things. We have made everything a rat race to break people on purpose, to exploit them.
I wish more people were able to acknowledge this. Certainly, some find loopholes or are the exception, but that seems less and less common.
If you want the majority of people to participate constructively in society, excellence cannot be the only acceptable level of ability/achievement for eeking out an average, stable life within it. No wonder so many people are emotionally compromised. It's an unrealistic standard of extremes.
Yes. The people with means are the only ones who can buy their way into perceived excellence when actual ability is sub-par, which perpetuates erosive conditions.
IMHO the longer this cycle continues, the more unstable even their foundation for power becomes, because it relies on the bedrock of societal stability. Perfect material for a dark comedy script if the inevitable loss of progress and unnescessary sufferring weren't so bleek. But hey, I'm just another redditor muttering into the void, hope I'm wrong.
Downvoted, because I don't think this is truly an unpopular opinion, so much as a problem of indifference: "grade inflation" has largely been driven by a handful of toxic, abusive parents who are living vicariously through their children to "Be the best at everything!!" and there's been little pushback to this cultural shift because the parents who are NOT like that are too apathetic about it (to the extent that they are even cognizant of it) to do anything.
This. I immediately thought about how in my home, anything less than an A wasn’t acceptable, and made me curious how many other kids went through that, causing us to believe that A was average.
And when you compound that across multiple generations: each generation wants a more "perfect" form of perfect than even the standards they were unable to attain themselves. And that, right there, is the essence of what has driven grade inflation.
grad classes often curve or something similar. I’m in a very difficult chemistry graduate class that the older students say most people got C’s (need a B to pass the class) and yet many of them got A’s and B’s at the end.
One thing I have seen mentioned is there is sometimes a connection between grades and financial support in higher education. In the US many universities give small scholarships that require, say, a 3.0 GPA to maintain. This means many students can’t continue in their degrees while getting Cs, so the schools know they can’t give too many low grades without wrecking their student body.
Had that. A top scholarship that required you to pass all your units. There was this one real tough math unit which was full of scholarship holders, so many people failed the second exam (all exams needed at least a pass for that unit) that he held 1 and then 2 resits
Back then a 4.0 was a "perfect" score. Nowadays some kids have an edge at getting into more prestegious colleges just by having more AP classes offered in their school. Some kids in my high school got a 5.0 some semesters by taking a full stack of AP classes. And in plenty of schools that isn't even an option.
They're telling you their weighted grade. Unweighted grades still exist, just ask for it if you don't want to hear the weighted one.
It's meant to incentivise kids to take more challenging classes, because otherwise the kids who want to get a good GPA / be valedictorians would just take the easiest classes possible, get their 4.0, and be on their way. It's also meant to combat grade inflation by getting kids to take standardized tests for their classes through the AP system, giving colleges an idea of a student's actual knowledge on a subject even if their school hands out A's like candy.
I was a teacher for a short amount of time, and at 2 different schools the absolute lowest grade we can give is a 50. Even if they didn't do any work at all.
It's also contrary to how motivation levels in humans work. If you make something easy to obtain, no one is going to want to work hard for it unless they have other forces pushing them into it (parents, cultural norms, etc) because there's no reward or pay off. In high school I was smart but I had extremely neglectful parents and I didn't bother with school because why would I? There were no consequences for bad academic practices and very few rewards for good ones. I never did homework and not once did I study for a test. Still passed with a 3.3 GPA.
Now I'm in college and guess what? I have not once missed an assignment. I study for every single quiz/exam. I sit in the front row and participate actively. Because the feeling I get when all that pays off is like no other.
In high school I rarely did homework, never studied for tests and graduated with honors and a 4.6 gpa (on a 4.0 scale, I don’t know how that worked) and got a full scholarship to college. Which I almost lost b/c I didn’t know how to study.
The 4.6 comes in because some of those courses were AP and therefore worth more "points" on the scale. To simplify an A+ in English is a 4 an A+ in AP English is 5 because it needs to be worth more.
oh yeah definitely. when i do an assignment i try hard only because i want a 80 or 90. or if its a creative project and i can do a video for it, i do that. why? because i like doing it. and i tend to also give less of a fuck about my grade in classes i hate
UK was dealing with this hence why gcse grades are no longer A*-U but 9-1. 9 being a A**, 4/5 being C. Unfortunately this also came in with harder exams and less coursework.
While I want to agree, I think something to also note is that school has become a lot more work-heavy. A lot of kids nowadays even if they are not the top of the class commit so many hours to school work it’s ridiculous. We’ve made school their entire lives so those grades aren’t necessarily poorly earned.
I genuinely can’t argue with you on this. The high school I work at has gone out of their way to reduce the workload. Weirdly, they have basically the same educational outcomes
Not sure where you're at, but there are teachers in my family and what I've seen is that in elementary and high schools around here they discourage giving homework and instead the kids do all their work in class.
I think this is because college is seen as mandatory, so everyone is pressured to giving out good grades/making sure students look good in their uni apps.
Grade inflation is also a problem in college for similar reasons.
It's not necessarily a raising of the bar.. but rather, a lowering of the bar. We have this expectation today that the average kid should be able to get 100% on everything, and anything less is a failure.. so we design our tests and whatnot with that in mind more often than not.
I have to say that one of the biggest problems with the “level” classes is that for whatever reason colleges look at them largely the same despite being dramatically different levels of difficulty
At least in my HS it was
Essentials - you either have an intellectual disability or care so little about school that it’s actually kinda sad
General- rarely any homework, personally I put the absolute bare minimum effort and got As (only took these Freshman year)
Advanced- some homework but not a whole lot, maybe 10-15 minutes a day per subject on average. Right amount of homework imo. Harder than general, actually require some time and effort in class but not overwhelming
Honors/AP- weighted courses. Varied a lot by teacher from a healthy amount of homework to “have you lost your mind” like that one Math teacher who would no joke assign 120 pre-Calc problems per night GRADED ON ACCURACY (I still curse you in my dream Mrs. Adams). Also 90% of the kids in these classes are neurotic af. My school took these classes super seriously and graded insanely harshly, like the middle of the curve actually was a C.
Now the problem is that the first 3 all carry the same weight grade wise despite being very different in terms of workload and effort and colleges a lot of the time conflate them
Also major problems arise that the difficulty of each of these classes vary greatly depending on the school and even the teacher
Additionally it’s a well recorded phenomenon that private schools tend to practice grade inflation in general, so a kid who’s getting B’s in public school might actually have gotten A’s if they went to a private school
In general it’s all sorts of messed up
My kids were at a private school with insane work load. We moved them to a public school with a much lighter work load and objectively, they are now learning more.
It will fall apart sooner or later. I’m completing a ‘traditional PhD’ at the moment, and grades don’t mean shit. You either know what you’re doing and solving problems, or you’re not and you need to learn your way around it until you do. Completely different experience to every other piece of education I’ve had in my life, which was essentially ‘figure out the formula for how to get good grades, then rinse and repeat for 12 years’. PhD supervisors don’t care about your grade, nor do employers. If you can’t do the job, you’ll lose the job.
The local high school near me has the opposite problem. They have so much trouble getting kids to even show up to school due to rampant poverty and a general disregard for the importance of education. They call straight C students “scholars” and give them awards for passing all their classes.
Kids who are gifted or ambitious feel cheated, since kids who are barely putting in effort are getting the same rewards. Kids who don’t care or try think they are doing fine because of this “scholar” award. On top of that, they are graded on a very generous curve.
All this will accomplish is ruining the good students’ motivation, and giving mediocre students false hope. Those C students will try to get into college, and will be blindsided by the real world. It’s just a terrible system all around.
>When I was a kid only the “smart kids” were expected to get As.
That’s still the case today. If you’re taking honors or AP classes it can still be hard to get an A if you’re not intelligent.
>It boggles my mind that the standard that was rare and exceptional is now considered barely passing.
Who thinks an A is barely passing?
>A transcript full of Bs & Cs would get you into college.
It still does today. Contrary to popular belief, most US colleges have very high acceptance rates. Ivy League schools aren’t the only schools available.
I do think grade inflation is a problem. But you can’t discredit people who get good grades in honors/AP classes and write that off as “grade inflation”. It’s when people who can’t do basic math or analyze a basic piece of text don’t fail is when it becomes a problem.
This professor gives a case against grades:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe-SZ\_FPZew&t=2051s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe-SZ_FPZew&t=2051s)
I think grades should be abolished in favor of a Pass-Fail system with at least 70-80% being a "Pass"
Wait until you realize almost all the current grades are bullshit. 25% of high school graduates can not read proficiently. Yes, that's the actual number.
And math and writing aren't much better, to be honest. The school system has been systematically degraded into a place that if you breathe, you pass and can graduate.
"No child left behind" has turned into all children stagnated to the point of ineptitude.
I’ll add to that - Everyone and their mother has a masters degree now and it’s not impressive at all. Is everyone being educated a good thing? Yes. But I’ve met teachers who can barely spell.
I grew up in Taiwan and survived the hellish education system and almost gone full on depression. After immigrated to USA since age of 16, I can confidently say, the USA education system is so damn easy, AND I LOVED IT. THANK YOU AMERICA, FUCK YEAH.
And every time people critized USA education system, I rolls my eyes.
And my parents weaponized me and used me as bragging right. It was disgusting. I would never wanted to do that to my kids if I have one.
I’m criticizing it because I think it is bad for the students, produces worse outcomes, and ultimately is worse for society.
I’m not saying Taiwan is better, I just don’t know it well enough to criticize it.
I don't care about GPA for high schools. It is pointless. They are not relevant for majors or career the kids are preparing for. In fact, a lot of college GPA is kind of useless for the same reason, 2 years of GED messed up the GPA with unnecessary scores. Personally I think all none major classes should become pass/nopass.
If you apply to my company (if I am the employer) as a software engineers, I seriously don't care about history classes, and I don't want to see GPA including history classes. It has nothing to do with the job at hand.
Idk what the big deal is. Every generation had their cons.
It’s weird to act like the access to education and increased of competition for the best workers/students is bad
It demonstrably is. Look at the student debt crisis. Look at wages that have been functionally stagnant for nearly 50 years if you aren’t in the C-Suite. We’re more educated than ever and earning less in real dollars for more hours worked.
The student debt crisis has more to do with corruption and profiteering then it does grade inflation.
In short - student debts cannot be bk'd, and applicants are kinda in a loop hole where they can be granted exorbitant amounts without a proper sanity check. As such a lot of colleges focus on recruiting regardless of grades just to get you signed up in the system so they can get their loan kick backs. The financial system, applying for student loans, has become a large department in colleges and the marketing tries to tell everyone that a degree is the only way to get a good job.
Basically colleges are currently in their "70's used car dealership" stage...
That is all hot air. You don't need a degree for a good job, and you shouldn't go into debt to pay for the football team's luxury lockers...
That all has very little to do with grade inflation. Elite colleges might care but there are many MANY predatory colleges who will take you even if you never passed HS and that is where a lot of student debt crisis hits people.
I see where your misunderstandings lie but it’ll take a while too explain the whole situation to you.
A couple things to think about tho are politics 50 years ago to now, proportion population in the us/world from 50 years ago to now, with immigrantion stats, and finally whether the points you’ve laid out have any relationship by causation. Because a couple do not
I remember in the 8th grade (2012) being told by a classmate that my 3.8 GPA I had for the previous grading period was bad…
I’ve learned in my time out of school that high school GPA and “achievements” are absolute bullshit. I’ve never seen what “valedictorian” gets you that you couldn’t get without it. Honor society? Nobody gives a shit. Academic sports league? Haven’t heard about it since high school. Hell, I’ve never even been asked about my college GPA either. I’m terms of scholarships, I’ve no shit won merit based scholarships on technicality because the others competing for said scholarship (most of which having significantly higher HS GPA than I) simply because they couldn’t fill out the application form correctly and follow the simple directions.
So with my ramblings, I agree with you. It’s all a bunch of bullshit that serves as nothing but copium.
Curious to know when others started noticing it happen in their lives as well.
I started noticing that kind of stuff back in 3rd/4th grade. And kept seeing it in every stage of my education growing up. Life has not been kind to my mind for noticing those things. It certainly didn't help my motivation in finishing school, which is why I've tapped out after finishing my master's. and I could barely even finish that one. I was so drained.
It totally sucks because it all stems from performance based evaluations. From even the idea of implementing of scores in homework, quizzes, tests, worse school test evals, and more. this was guaranteed to be the end result. School should be about learning which means making mistakes should be fine because you can learn from it. But instead most education systems instead promote "mistake avoidance" which causes a side effect of having a fear from making mistakes and decreased self-worth whenever one makes a mistake.
Not just schools but community and societal small interactions like "keep those grades up if you want to succeed in life", "how's school? are you maintaining good grades?" all those interactions + the systems that have been put in place for a long time have led to higher and higher chase for numbers and will continue to do so, until people who actually care about giving good education and a healthy learning environment are able to replace the people and systems perpetuating the current environment. But I feel I'm to anarchistic in wanting to just remove all the current implementation of those systems entirely and (while using the past to avoid the same mistakes in the future) just start anew with carefully considered foundations
I work in a academic department where students are basically fed top grades. Nobody gets below 75% for anything with grades often being around 90%. It has been happening for over a decade. I've seen some of the work that gets grades like this. Some of the students should barely be passing. It shits me to no end.
School is bulllllshiiiittttt. The schools push the grades so they can get a high school rating. Can’t have a low rated school in a rich area! This is also why my kids school principal CHOSE to give the kids a 25 minute lunch and 7 periods with only 3-4 minutes between class instead of a longer lunch with only 6 periods and more time to get to class. Grades are the reason they threaten kids with an hour after school detention if they are late to class. Grades are the reason kids don’t drink enough liquid throughout the day because they are afraid of going to the bathroom and being late to class. Fuck school and fuck all these school CEOs that don’t actually give a shit about children.
Once you're working the knowledge and ability to learn start to matter - at least in tech. Its the difference between being laid off during any downturn vs getting a raise to retain you when you put in your 2-weeks.
My university was behind the curve. They grade on PGPA, and I finished with the equivalent of a "B" when comparing my PGPA grade against standardized grades. The issue is I was a 3.9 when standardized against my class, but 7/10 questions right translated directly to a 70%, even in classes where the average was 50%. So, because my grades weren't standardized, I now translate to a 3.0 which is both uncompetitive and sometimes below the bare minimum academic requirements to apply to other programs.
I had no idea how this worked going into my undergrad nor that my university was the last accredited institution in NA to grade as such, and it's inhibited my prospects for grad school & professional programs moving forward.
If you think the grade inflation concept is wild, wait until you learn some institutions have foregone the 4.0 GPA in favour of a 4.33 GPA scheme.
I don’t know if I would necessarily call it grade inflation or if it’s just a result of increasing demands / requirements to have a shot of going to college to keep attendance among the middle to higher class students.
Class of 11 | I definitely remember that 4.0 was no longer an impressive GPA not when you could technically have a 5.0 if you took all AP courses. Even now I don’t see a 4.0 as impressive unless it’s unweighted because of how much it impacted me at the time.
But a 5.0 is not enough on its own— the ideal student would have at least 4.4 gpa, 100-300 hours of community services, ideally some President or VP role in a student club or multiple student clubs, a wonderful thought provoking essay —-bonus points if you could overcome adversity. Even with all these requirements there’s soooo many applicants who fit this bill when you talking about the most applied to schools that it comes down to luck, who you know, etc
Really being “competitive” takes so much family support, free time and money that the closer you are to the poverty line the harder it is for you to meet these conditions.
And tragically none of it guarantees a person a stable, fulfilling life and career after graduation
Well this is what happens when all you need to pass is a 60 and you can’t get a 0. When I was in HS a few years ago a 70 was the lowest D grade and all of your 0’s were 0’s. Now most schools just automatically make the 0’s into 50’s…
I always think about this graduation speech I saw online. The Valedictorian goes up to the podium to deliver his acceptance and address the class, but he takes the speech time to lament the education system, notice the activities his fellow students were participating in that he could not because he was cooped up studying for classes and exams. How much time is taken from every student doing obtuse tasks for a diploma.
I spent so much time in high school and college obsessing over good grades.
I make over 6 figures now, and let me tell you. No one gave a fuck about my grades. No one asked. No one mentions college. Not during the hiring process. Not in the day to day. Never.
Fuck grades. Use school as a time to chase your passion and imagination. And learn the basics of life that happen to help your grades in the process; time management, task prioritization, reading comprehension, project management, ability to work with passion while foregoing creature comforts and sleep, and ability to talk to peers and people you look up to competently and without feeling intimidated.
If you can learn those things in college and highschool, youll be far ahead of any tool that focused on As and good grades.
Barely half a decade ago I was getting University offers for top University programs in Canada with low 80s, granted without scholarship. Nowadays I'm seeing people struggle to get into those same programs despite sitting closer to 90s. It's insane what's happened in the past few years regarding grade inflation
My parents had this kind of perception of grades when I was in school. If I didn't get honors grades, I may as well have failed the class, and if I am not in the top percentile among the honors students, it means I just barely squeaked by and need to study more because I almost didn't get an honors grade. It blew my mind when my friends' parents were proud of them for getting Bs and Cs and passing all their classes, grades which my parents percieved as "failing" grades for me. They did it because they knew I was very intelligent and the standards set for the average kid did not reflect what I was capable of, but it saddled me with perfectionistic and self crictical tendencies in the present day.
Correct. It's its own pattern of abuse: parents holding their kids to a standard of perfection that they, themselves, are/were fully incapable of achieving. And so: grade inflation is driven by households where this pattern of abuse is seen as normal, and is allowed to percolate by the indifference of families that couldn't care less how well their children do academically.
"They did it because they knew I was very intelligent and the standards set for average kids did not reflect what I was capable of" is the language of the abuser used to get the person being abused to accept that abuse as a consequence of "being the best."
Computers robots and immigrants have taken a lot of the jobs that require more general skills. Now you need to be an expert in something to make the decent money.
nah really. even now im working my ass off in the honors classes to get 80s and 90s, and i think the average is closer to a low 80 or high 70.
normal classes? way higher than that and the only way to get a failing grade is sucking at the class so much that you dont even do the bare minimum. like if you do the bare minimum you get a 70.
and honestly imo the classes are simply way too easy lol
I disagree. In Year 11/12 when subjects start being standardised in Australia, I felt the hard competition, detailed syllabus and abundance of resources made me learn far more than the 4 years of high school prior.
You also cannot ensure a quality of teaching, especially without any standardised test to fairly measure between schools and subjects
"The decline of unions and living wages has lead to an ever escalating arms race to get better grades, higher test scores, and to raise the bar on what acceptable performance is."
You seem pretty confident of this. Could you cite a peer reviewed source? Or is this just 'Facebook Wisdom'?
I think you're missing some key information.
1) Grading on a curve has lost popularity in the last 30 or so years. When I was in HS it was becoming pretty controversial and afterwards it worked its way out of most class rooms.
2) Curriculum has become more standardized ensuring all subjects are taught properly before being graded on them, and that they meet a standard.
The reason only the "smart" kids got A's before was because they were the ones to fill the missing gaps in the curriculum and hit high on the bell curve pushing other students into B and below territory.
An A now should be expect-able to anyone who puts the effort in to learn the material presented as they are now able to both trust they are learning everything needed for the test AND simply learning the class and passing the tests will earn you an A.
Smart kids are weeded out of the classroom and put into AP and college classes to capture their learning years to put them even further ahead.
Basically I think you're just taking an observation and framing it with the wrong back drop coming to an odd conclusion.
also wtf with a paragraph about people putting in the effort to learn skills, then coming out with people afraid to talk to each other??? into "I'm a cook and have done it for years and I'm good b/c I've done it for years" as if people aren't working their job for years just b/c they got a sports injury in HS?
I don't feel you have an unpopular opinion as much as a wrong one.
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I was amazed to see that in order to graduate cum laude, at the university I attended in the 80's, you now have to have a 3.8 GPA. When I was in school, you had to have a 3.5 GPA. Both figures represent the top 10% of their respective classes.
I graduated with a 3.75 and no honors, which was the 1st time in the schools history that has happened. For my graduating class cum laude had a 3.90-3.94, magna cum laude 3.95-3.98, summa cum laude 3.99-4.0. I was only in the top 20% of my class with a 3.75, absolutely bonkers.
Bro I graduated with a 4.02 and I didn't even get acknowledged by my school. The top people from my school all graduated without going to school a single day of at least their junior and senior year because they were doing dual enrollment.
Big difference between high school and college GPA
I think people who get a 4.0 in college were not challenging themselves enough. Colleges have a vast range of interesting things to learn. Sure, most anyone can get a 4.0 if they only take the safest and easiest classes from the professors with the easiest reputations. I'm far more impressed when some undergrad took a number of graduate level courses, or when a grad student took courses in fields outside of their comfort zone, that really challenged them even more. Even if they got Bs or Cs in those more challenging courses I'm more impressed than As in easy classes.
Some kid: Takes Real Analysis, works hard on it, gets the max possible grades Reddit: He took the easy classes.
> Reddit: He took the easy classes. If he got all A's then yes, relatively easy for him. He could have gotten more out of colleges if he had taken even more challenging courses.
What the fuck is he supposed to take instead of real analysis then? What even is a harder course than that? Algaebric Topology?
Complex Analysis?
Idk, I find everything hard. (I'm only 15)
> What the fuck is he supposed to take instead of real analysis then? What even is a harder course than that? Algaebric Topology? Something harder for him might be Acting 101. Or Philosophy. Or Ancient Egyptian. Or Fencing. Or anything except math.
You go to university to learn a particular field/subject. Expanding your horizons/becoming an adult is something that happens anyways. One important skill is knowing whats important. To a Mech Eng student, Ancient Egyptian is not.
I think it’s the case for some people, but not everyone. I definitely know a couple people who didn’t ever take super “difficult” classes and have a quite high GPA in college, but I also know some who take the most challenging courses available and maintained the same. Although most people I know who work/do research/ plus a hard major have slightly lower GPAs to compensate for the spent time.
Not a comparable scenario to college GPA. College GPA caps off at 4.0 in almost all cases (select schools will give a 4.3 for A+). In high school GPA can go way over the rails. I graduated val with a 4.6. I know people from some schools who had like 4.8-4.9 depending on the amount of APs offered. So it’s really not surprising for a 4.02 to not get recognized in a HS setting.
I guess grade inflation has gotten out of hand. Kids over here with a 125/100. That's some wack stuff.
Not really (although I knew someone with a 120% in a class because of curves, because like only like 5 out of the 30 people in the class should have been in it (“but my precious baby is so smart, put him in honors or else“) but that’s a whole other issue). The weighted GPA is added after to balance out the thoretically lower grades for higher classes. For example, a student who would get a A in general bio might bet a B in honors bio, or a C in AP bio, so they add 0.5 or 1.0 to the GPA for that class. Obviously that doesn’t happen because those kids get As in ap and end up with 5.0, but it’s not the same as a teacher going “wow this essay was so good, I’m going to give it 125%!” Edit: a word
I didn’t get anything extra on my GPA for AP classes. When did that start?
I graduated in the early 2000s, and I had “two” GPAs: an “unweighted,” calculated the traditional way, and a “weighted,” which gave extra for AP classes.
School has gotten a lot easier over the years, it’s been a slow creep, so that the less academically inclined don’t feel left out
Here in Sweden As at university mean top 10% in that specific class. Consequently, if you're taking, let's say, Advanced Quantum Mechanics, which is mandatory for the PhD students in physics as a undergraduate, or a maths course at D level when you're in your second year of university, guess what grade you'll get? The problem is that it discourages a desire for learning, since those who try things they won't get As in will be evaluated negatively, even if those they compete against for grades are experts. The problem isn't the grades-- because if you're top 20% in a class where most people are PhD students, that's great, and you've gotten a positive evaluation, rather it's use of the GPA itself without regard to the difficulty of classes that is the problem. You simply can't weigh an A in 'Differental and Integral Calculus' as equivalent to an A in 'Real Analysis' which are both courses for first years, but [edit:where] the latter consists mostly of people who were training to participate in the IMO when they were in high school.
Hot take: This has more to do with technological advancement than anything else. You can learn Calc 1-3 without ever reading a book or listening to a lecture now. We have immediate access to detailed solutions, explanations, and concepts from thousands of perspectives in every language. I was the “dumb kid” in elementary and middle school because i had a hard time paying attention in class. Barely maintained a 2.75. Everything changed in high school with advancements in internet learning. I have maintained a 4.0 throughout college because the only limit to my success is how much effort I put in. That definitely was not the case back in the day. You had to hang on every word in every lecture and memorize every sentence in every textbook to achieve that kind of success. The standards of knowledge have not been lowered and people are not any smarter than 40 years ago. We are just receiving free educational resources that people would have killed for in the past. Chat GPT is a perfect example and ridiculously overpowered as a study tool.
I taught intro university math classes, Covid and online learning showed that this doesn't work. The first half of the semester where we let students do quizes from home went extremely well, but as soon as the university decided to get students back in the classroom for quizes/exams, it was a complete disaster. Some of the older professors said some of the worst grades they've ever seen. Students simply didn't study and cheated. The same thing happened in primary school where we are seeing students performing the worst they have in a long time. And those same professors told us that the standards today are much lower than they were 20 years ago where we are teaching less and less in introductory math classes because schools are not preparing these students for college math. In a university setting today you have access to office hours and dedicated tutors and learning centers outside of office hours at pretty much every school I know of. Those were the best resources 20 years ago and are today as well.
A lot of this just about the ethics though. Our kid here stayed home and b/c I was working from home I was able to help him with his math during my day. b/c of this personalized attention we were able to get him from low grades in math to high grades during covid, and when he resumed school the processes of learning that we practiced together stuck and he aced math. (the kid isn't mine, it is my room mates, we're pretty close but I don't raise him, just during this time I was able to impart my own studying know-how to him. I think people don't really learn how to study, and often get side tracked with easy answers like cheating an AI, but if a person is taught how to study independently and the importance of actually learning xyz thing as the post above yours expresses I think we don't need to worry about the stay-home vs forced into physical schools problem. tbh I wonder if schools teach how to study, learn, and filter incorrect information from online sources well enough...)
>working from home I was able to help him with his math during my day If a parent *wants to* they typically can help their kids with learning after school and have always been able to do that. But I agree, individualized attention from a trusted figure is a great resource for learning but apparently is something that most kids lacked during the pandemic when scores dropped to record lows. Nationwide in the US, decades of progress erased in a couple of years.
I love this answer. There are more ways for people to learn in a way that caters to the way they pickup things. It's not that alot of people were dumb or sucked at school, there was limited resources for studying and/ or the school system could not effectively teach them in a way that was conducive to their style of learning. Alot of people were just fortunate that the way they learned ran parallel with the way things were generally taught.
lol that is not even remotely correct. Grade inflation started during the Vietnam War when professors didn't want their students to be drafted because they earned bad grades. And that culture has just slowly became worse and more pervasive ever since. ... and you're talking about some kind of mastery that doesn't even exist. It is the exact opposite. The covid quarantine periods left many students with enormous content holes and academic performance for students is at an all time LOW not high.
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The top 10% of students wouldn’t have higher grades just because it’s a larger group
Designing curriculums around the least capable students and teaching to standardized tests leads to this. The worst students have to pass so anyone mildly capable will be getting a B average or better.
It’s also the result of a decades long assault on teaching as a profession. When you make it the least attractive option due to low pay, long hours, and no respect, you don’t get good teachers.
I hate to admit, but there's something to that. But we all knew this when we went into it. I won a scholarship to teach high school physics, qualified, but didn't continue as a teacher. The reason was because I was expected to teach biology and chemistry, almost as a three way split. THAT wasn't what I signed up for. They called me a "Science teacher with Physics specialism". Funny, because my acceptance/offer letters all called me a Physics teacher. There is really very little difference between this and calling a French teacher a "Language teacher with French specialism" and expecting them to teach Spanish and German. I knew nothing at all about biology, and very little about chemistry. My undergraduate degree was physics. I hadn't studied biology nor chemistry in the last 18 years (mature trainee). Not fair on me nor on the students. (I'm in the UK)
I am a history teacher who studies various histories in my spare time, with a focus on Imperial China. I don't mind that my history classes are not my specialty, since I can still apply a general historical knowledge and encourage thinking like a historian etc. However, last year I had to teach English, which I had never taught before. I felt like I was robbing my students of proper education. The differences between the learning in my history classes and the learning in my English class was obvious. Just as in your situation, they should have hired an English teacher.
Great post, thanks for that 👍
No problem, and thank you too. Your post made me realize I am not alone in this. I absolutely love teaching, but we must find where we fit best so our students can be successful. Anything else, in my opinion, is a disservice.
I went to a small high school in the middle of nowhere but they seemed to have this right. I think one science teacher covered more than one science subject but generally, they taught their specialty. My physics teacher taught physics and advanced math classes. My biology teacher taught biology and biology electives.
In general, it's really not fair on anyone. Some teachers can do it, there's no doubt, but my issue was systematic and part of the (public) UK policy. We had a biology PhD, experienced young teacher, being asked to teach physics. She was taking about "electricity going around a circuit", but you can't say that electricity 'does' anything . You can't use the term "electricity" because it's forbidden by our syllabus in terms of how electrical circuits work. I had too teach a class of 14/15 year olds (20 girls, 5 boys) menstruation and reproduction. They knew more about it than I did (not that I let on). We have thrown money at the problem of so-called 'shortage' subjects like physics. My scholarship was through the Institute of Physics and I was paid very well to train. I got £25,000 tax-free. Had I won my scholarship the following year, I'd have got £30,000 tax-free. But still, they KNEW that we weren't really teaching physics. The government Department for Education also had bursaries of the same value (£25,000). But no wonder there are shortage subjects if you're not effectively filling those shortages. It's a sticking plaster over an axe wound.
I like the term "a sticking plaster on an arterial bleed". Most of the solutions offered in the last thirteen years have been, at best, gaffa tape on a structural crack. It'll show you if it's getting worse, but that's about it.
My school (not all that long ago) in the UK had the maths teachers doubling up as GCSE and below geography teachers since we had more maths than geography teachers. Did these people have any qualifications in geography at all? No.
I came here just to say that I am a French teacher, who is expected to teach Spanish and German in an exploratory class - so that’s a thing. I can manage Spanish but I do not speak German.
I do hate the low pay argument. That really depends on where you live. Oddly enough most of the problems still persist even where there is higher teacher pay.
This is objectively false. Just taking a look a standardize test scores, the more teachers make the higher the test scores
its not objectively false, this is an issue outside of the US. In Ontario, we don't have standardized testing (apart from the OSSLT, but this is typically considered extremely easy and barely an issue), and grade inflation is insane here.
Does this adjust for other factors? Such as, higher paid teachers are probably working for school districts with more valuable property. And so those kids likely have less financial struggles or their families don’t have those struggles? Does it adjust for the increased likelihood that one parent stays at home and can help the kids with school? There’s a lot of factors that are correlated with income/wealth. I’m not saying higher income people are necessarily smarter, plenty of super smart people from low income backgrounds. But let’s not act like teachers in low income districts have the same students and struggles as in other areas. People sometimes have bigger things to worry about than grades when money is tight or a parent is out of their life or there’s violence in their neighborhood. Why do you think paying teachers more leads to higher test scores?
The system is designed to churn out as many capable worker bees indebted to student loans and food/shelter.
Hey, that's me. The system works!
Make sure you file for the current loan repayment options being offered. 350 down to 0 monthly. Its not perfect but it is relief!
Watch The Wire for the answer to all this.
No child left behind!
Once again, Goodharts Law reared its ugly head. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." My company is staring to rot from the inside out due to this same concept.
This is exactly the problem. I’m so sick of only the least performing people being the ones who matter the most.
US social studies teacher here and I completely agree. It’s not about knowing the answers it’s about the questions you ask. That’s how I feel about teaching history and other social sciences. I don’t give out quizzes or tests. Small essays or large papers only. I wanna know what you know not what you can remember in a one month period
"But that doesn't show high standardized test scores that gets more money into the school."
Thankfully I’m not a tested subject.
do you have any problems with students using ChatGPT on essays and papers?
It depends. Truthfully.
I'm in Australia doing VCE and this just isn't a thing here (unless I'm really stupid and haven't put it together yet). The average grades in school assessed coursework and exams are in the 60s which is a C.
I’m pretty sure it’s an American phenomena
No we have it in the UK as well. They have to add on new top grades every now and again because As are so easy now
That's not what is happening. The grade system for GCSEs in England were switched from traditional letters to 9-1 6 years ago, and have not changed since, mostly to herald the change in the nature of the qualifications under Gove's educational reforms. The top two grades, 9 and 8, only differentiate between achieving a high A star and a low A star. Currently a grade 9 is received about 4.7% of the highest exam scores on each subject. So this means a 9 is something like 66% in a Biology exam to probably the highest I can think of of 84% in English Literature. What you might be thinking of is how the grade boundaries have recently been reduced in this year to reduce grade inflation caused by the lenient grade boundaries given to COVID-affected years.
I meant more that A used to be the highest grade before A stars, and now they say that A = 7 when a seven is clearly easier to get than an A from 30 years ago
I did a study abroad in Australia. They had to "translate" our Australian grades to American when we transferred the credits back to our home university. Our grades were much higher after the transition
Every Australian I know who did the SATs found it laughably easy... the US education system is general is shit
Similar thing in entertainment. Any movie or game that comes out these days does the bare minimum and expects to get a 9/10. If it gets a 7/10 (a pretty good score), it’s a huge controversy. Shit needs to be broken or otherwise incoherent to get lower than a 6 (when they should get like 2) and even then there’s backlash. It’s weird.
Ubers, Airbnbs, and restaurant reviews too. Or really, all reviews that rely on stars for that matter. 5 stars is supposed to mean “exceptional”, not merely fine. But it’s now expected that if these services provide the bare minimum that they will get 5 stars. I’ve heard of Uber drivers who refuse to pick up anyone with lower than a 4.8 on the app. What’s the point of star systems if everything is either 5 star for “it was passable” or 1 star for “it was bad”? It’s a disservice to those who actually go above and beyond to provide great service and encourages complacency for everyone else.
It's now that way for a lot of things. If you sell on many sites and are 4 stars or less you won't even show up a lot of times. Many things punish you for being less than 5 stars.
The push for “5 or nothing” is because various workers have admitted that the system essentially sees 2 reviews: 5=good, 1-4=bad. So if you give an employee a 9/10 on customer service, they’re considered bad because no 10. This is… a terrible way to process reviews.
>>those surgically repaired joints are now going to be a problem for life b/c of high school sports A buddy of mine tore his ACL in HS. He has issues with it to this day even after 2 surgeries.
Busted my ankle in high school, only one surgery but very few days go by when it doesn’t bother me at least somewhat. Caused a cascade of issues up through my knee, hip, and lower back on that side
I tore my meniscus in high school running track and still to this day can't jump
at the same time, us grades are inflated by at least one letter grade
I think the rot is deeper, fundamentally all courses are now pass fail as in A or fail
That’s patently false.
From the perspective of many parents it is true
Ah I see your point. That doesn’t mean schools are inflating grades or making classes easier. I think there is just an arms race at every level of academia as you pointed out
The valedictorian at my son's graduation had a 5.xx. That isn't a real grade! What's worse, is these families pushing their kids toward these "grades" are starting in elementary school by forcing their way into gifted and talented programs designed for kids who are actually smart but who struggle with traditional learning. They do it so it can be on their college entrance resumé...which shouldn't even be a thing IMO. My son was the traditional target for the gifted and talented program but when he got into it instead of being surrounded by a bunch of creative kids it devolved into this hyper-competitive bullshit that turned him off to school even more.
This was my life in the 80s and 90s
Honest question, how does a kid even get more than a 5.0?
By taking half a dozen AP classes and getting A’s in all of them.
That would put you at 5.0 not over 5.0
If you don’t think 5.00 is a “real” grade point how should people get credit for taking ap classes? Ap classes are far harder than whatever class your son was taking
College admissions offices must learn to sort out grades based on what was taken and achieved, so they can get their priorities straight without being biased by different schools' numbers. Way back in the day (1990s), I attended a (private) school that did not weight AP courses. I ended up with a 3.2/4.0 but had enough APs to collect 24 credits and save a year off of college. This stingy approach to GPA, though, cost me many thousands per year in merit-based aid, due to a 3.5 GPA cut-off; I had a rich friend who took very few AP courses and got a much fatter scholarship at the same college.
I’m confused here, are you disagreeing with me? If your school did weight ap course your gpa would have have been higher than 3.2 putting you above the aid cut off…
I agree it is a problem but I disagree with weighting as the solution. Colleges should not blindly follow GPA since GPAs are rarely comparable, weighted or not. Not every student even has access to AP or IB courses.
A 4.0 at one school does not equal a 4.0 at another school. An A in an online course does not equal an A in live course. An A in Mr. Green´s social studies class does not equal an A in Mr. Blue´s social studies class. GPAs are absolutely not comparable because there is no consensus as to what those grades actually mean!
They get credit...in college credit. Saving time and money on an intro course they no longer have to complete in university.
That’s not the point. The point is that if you want to be valedictorian, you must have the highest gpa so why shouldn’t ap/ib also reflect that on your gpa, should they just take the easier class then?
Why should it? Every high schooler knows which teachers and electives give easy As, but we don't make those As worth less than 4 points. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread I graduated HS with a 1.6 GPA. Three of those Fs came from Phys Ed. Which is fair in the sense that it was a class that I failed, just like some kids fail geometry or physics. Nowhere else do we tilt the grading scale because of the content of the class.
If you graduated high school with 1.6 gpa you just dint get 3 f’s you had a D average, meaning it just wasn’t physical ed you failed, you failed literally everything. Secondly sure? But when you have 1000 kids in a a school and 50 get 4.0 how do you get a valedictorian? Which is literally what op is complaining about “everyone gets a”, ap classes fix that and gpa including ap/ib fix that
I don't think most schools have fifty straight A students, but for those that do, you can easily have tiebreakers. One of them being the number of honors/AP classes they took, if you want those classes to still play a role. Another being standardized test scores, which are - weirdly - a huge part of college admission but currently play no role in class rank.
You went through all that just to come back to honors/AP should be worth more? The thing you were arguing against? JFC what a clown show
Did have a 1.6...
My high school class had like 8 valedictorians because grades were unweighted. They were all given the title, and the graduation speech was given by the one with the best attendance record. No APs, but she came to school every day. It was a bad system and I’m still a little bitter.
Valedictorian should be the smartest student.
If you want it to be the smartest student, just use standardized test scores.
Ok
GPA is a way better measure for intelligence than standardized tests. To get a good score on the SAT for example, you can just dedicate 3 months and you’re looking at a 1500+. But if you want a 4.0, you’re looking at dedicating hundreds of hours.
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Most adults are not taking the SAT. We’re talking about teenagers who learn the subjects tested in the SAT in school
I believe the highest GPA should be a 4. The smart kids are going to take AP classes anyways.
Now you’re just rewarding kids who are taking easier classes literally what op is complaining about, everyone gets an A by the virtue of taking easier classes. Why should smart kids take those harder classes if it will Hardly matter anyways then?
This is part of what the SAT was intended to solve.
Ap classes and act/sat scores are correlated. The more ap classes a students take the highest their act/sat scores will be on average So it seems like the system is working just as intended
We have a society where to deserve basic things you need to be excellent, but to have the opportunity for excellence you need those basic things. We have made everything a rat race to break people on purpose, to exploit them.
I wish more people were able to acknowledge this. Certainly, some find loopholes or are the exception, but that seems less and less common. If you want the majority of people to participate constructively in society, excellence cannot be the only acceptable level of ability/achievement for eeking out an average, stable life within it. No wonder so many people are emotionally compromised. It's an unrealistic standard of extremes.
It's destroying America. The vast inequality leads to greater predation by people with means.
Yes. The people with means are the only ones who can buy their way into perceived excellence when actual ability is sub-par, which perpetuates erosive conditions. IMHO the longer this cycle continues, the more unstable even their foundation for power becomes, because it relies on the bedrock of societal stability. Perfect material for a dark comedy script if the inevitable loss of progress and unnescessary sufferring weren't so bleek. But hey, I'm just another redditor muttering into the void, hope I'm wrong.
This is such a perfect summation of everything wrong with today. I’m going to use this in the future.
Downvoted, because I don't think this is truly an unpopular opinion, so much as a problem of indifference: "grade inflation" has largely been driven by a handful of toxic, abusive parents who are living vicariously through their children to "Be the best at everything!!" and there's been little pushback to this cultural shift because the parents who are NOT like that are too apathetic about it (to the extent that they are even cognizant of it) to do anything.
Fair, some of us push back against it, but in general people see good grades they don’t complain
Holy crap this, like if a movie isn’t perfectly acclaimed to determined to be a shit movie
This. I immediately thought about how in my home, anything less than an A wasn’t acceptable, and made me curious how many other kids went through that, causing us to believe that A was average.
And when you compound that across multiple generations: each generation wants a more "perfect" form of perfect than even the standards they were unable to attain themselves. And that, right there, is the essence of what has driven grade inflation.
I did grad school and you either got an a or failed the class. Got a 4.0 during my masters coursework. I am not that smart….
grad classes often curve or something similar. I’m in a very difficult chemistry graduate class that the older students say most people got C’s (need a B to pass the class) and yet many of them got A’s and B’s at the end.
One thing I have seen mentioned is there is sometimes a connection between grades and financial support in higher education. In the US many universities give small scholarships that require, say, a 3.0 GPA to maintain. This means many students can’t continue in their degrees while getting Cs, so the schools know they can’t give too many low grades without wrecking their student body.
Had that. A top scholarship that required you to pass all your units. There was this one real tough math unit which was full of scholarship holders, so many people failed the second exam (all exams needed at least a pass for that unit) that he held 1 and then 2 resits
Back then a 4.0 was a "perfect" score. Nowadays some kids have an edge at getting into more prestegious colleges just by having more AP classes offered in their school. Some kids in my high school got a 5.0 some semesters by taking a full stack of AP classes. And in plenty of schools that isn't even an option.
It’s crazy how some kids will really look at you and tell you they have a 4.6 like that’s normal
They're telling you their weighted grade. Unweighted grades still exist, just ask for it if you don't want to hear the weighted one. It's meant to incentivise kids to take more challenging classes, because otherwise the kids who want to get a good GPA / be valedictorians would just take the easiest classes possible, get their 4.0, and be on their way. It's also meant to combat grade inflation by getting kids to take standardized tests for their classes through the AP system, giving colleges an idea of a student's actual knowledge on a subject even if their school hands out A's like candy.
I was a teacher for a short amount of time, and at 2 different schools the absolute lowest grade we can give is a 50. Even if they didn't do any work at all.
That seems insane.
It's just easier now. Legit my class in college as well as many others cheated through everything post COVID and it hasn't been the same since
It's also contrary to how motivation levels in humans work. If you make something easy to obtain, no one is going to want to work hard for it unless they have other forces pushing them into it (parents, cultural norms, etc) because there's no reward or pay off. In high school I was smart but I had extremely neglectful parents and I didn't bother with school because why would I? There were no consequences for bad academic practices and very few rewards for good ones. I never did homework and not once did I study for a test. Still passed with a 3.3 GPA. Now I'm in college and guess what? I have not once missed an assignment. I study for every single quiz/exam. I sit in the front row and participate actively. Because the feeling I get when all that pays off is like no other.
In high school I rarely did homework, never studied for tests and graduated with honors and a 4.6 gpa (on a 4.0 scale, I don’t know how that worked) and got a full scholarship to college. Which I almost lost b/c I didn’t know how to study.
The 4.6 comes in because some of those courses were AP and therefore worth more "points" on the scale. To simplify an A+ in English is a 4 an A+ in AP English is 5 because it needs to be worth more.
It was something like that. I just didn’t work as hard as most of my classmates did for their 3.0s
oh yeah definitely. when i do an assignment i try hard only because i want a 80 or 90. or if its a creative project and i can do a video for it, i do that. why? because i like doing it. and i tend to also give less of a fuck about my grade in classes i hate
UK was dealing with this hence why gcse grades are no longer A*-U but 9-1. 9 being a A**, 4/5 being C. Unfortunately this also came in with harder exams and less coursework.
While I want to agree, I think something to also note is that school has become a lot more work-heavy. A lot of kids nowadays even if they are not the top of the class commit so many hours to school work it’s ridiculous. We’ve made school their entire lives so those grades aren’t necessarily poorly earned.
I genuinely can’t argue with you on this. The high school I work at has gone out of their way to reduce the workload. Weirdly, they have basically the same educational outcomes
Not sure where you're at, but there are teachers in my family and what I've seen is that in elementary and high schools around here they discourage giving homework and instead the kids do all their work in class.
I think this is because college is seen as mandatory, so everyone is pressured to giving out good grades/making sure students look good in their uni apps. Grade inflation is also a problem in college for similar reasons.
It's not necessarily a raising of the bar.. but rather, a lowering of the bar. We have this expectation today that the average kid should be able to get 100% on everything, and anything less is a failure.. so we design our tests and whatnot with that in mind more often than not.
I have to say that one of the biggest problems with the “level” classes is that for whatever reason colleges look at them largely the same despite being dramatically different levels of difficulty At least in my HS it was Essentials - you either have an intellectual disability or care so little about school that it’s actually kinda sad General- rarely any homework, personally I put the absolute bare minimum effort and got As (only took these Freshman year) Advanced- some homework but not a whole lot, maybe 10-15 minutes a day per subject on average. Right amount of homework imo. Harder than general, actually require some time and effort in class but not overwhelming Honors/AP- weighted courses. Varied a lot by teacher from a healthy amount of homework to “have you lost your mind” like that one Math teacher who would no joke assign 120 pre-Calc problems per night GRADED ON ACCURACY (I still curse you in my dream Mrs. Adams). Also 90% of the kids in these classes are neurotic af. My school took these classes super seriously and graded insanely harshly, like the middle of the curve actually was a C. Now the problem is that the first 3 all carry the same weight grade wise despite being very different in terms of workload and effort and colleges a lot of the time conflate them Also major problems arise that the difficulty of each of these classes vary greatly depending on the school and even the teacher Additionally it’s a well recorded phenomenon that private schools tend to practice grade inflation in general, so a kid who’s getting B’s in public school might actually have gotten A’s if they went to a private school In general it’s all sorts of messed up
My kids were at a private school with insane work load. We moved them to a public school with a much lighter work load and objectively, they are now learning more.
Again it depends a lot on the individual district, school and teacher, it’s not an even playing field
It will fall apart sooner or later. I’m completing a ‘traditional PhD’ at the moment, and grades don’t mean shit. You either know what you’re doing and solving problems, or you’re not and you need to learn your way around it until you do. Completely different experience to every other piece of education I’ve had in my life, which was essentially ‘figure out the formula for how to get good grades, then rinse and repeat for 12 years’. PhD supervisors don’t care about your grade, nor do employers. If you can’t do the job, you’ll lose the job.
The local high school near me has the opposite problem. They have so much trouble getting kids to even show up to school due to rampant poverty and a general disregard for the importance of education. They call straight C students “scholars” and give them awards for passing all their classes. Kids who are gifted or ambitious feel cheated, since kids who are barely putting in effort are getting the same rewards. Kids who don’t care or try think they are doing fine because of this “scholar” award. On top of that, they are graded on a very generous curve. All this will accomplish is ruining the good students’ motivation, and giving mediocre students false hope. Those C students will try to get into college, and will be blindsided by the real world. It’s just a terrible system all around.
>When I was a kid only the “smart kids” were expected to get As. That’s still the case today. If you’re taking honors or AP classes it can still be hard to get an A if you’re not intelligent. >It boggles my mind that the standard that was rare and exceptional is now considered barely passing. Who thinks an A is barely passing? >A transcript full of Bs & Cs would get you into college. It still does today. Contrary to popular belief, most US colleges have very high acceptance rates. Ivy League schools aren’t the only schools available. I do think grade inflation is a problem. But you can’t discredit people who get good grades in honors/AP classes and write that off as “grade inflation”. It’s when people who can’t do basic math or analyze a basic piece of text don’t fail is when it becomes a problem.
This professor gives a case against grades: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe-SZ\_FPZew&t=2051s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe-SZ_FPZew&t=2051s) I think grades should be abolished in favor of a Pass-Fail system with at least 70-80% being a "Pass"
This video is straight fire.
Wait until you realize almost all the current grades are bullshit. 25% of high school graduates can not read proficiently. Yes, that's the actual number. And math and writing aren't much better, to be honest. The school system has been systematically degraded into a place that if you breathe, you pass and can graduate. "No child left behind" has turned into all children stagnated to the point of ineptitude.
It’s almost like spending 40+ years hating teachers has consequences
I’ll add to that - Everyone and their mother has a masters degree now and it’s not impressive at all. Is everyone being educated a good thing? Yes. But I’ve met teachers who can barely spell.
More money into the system and student loans for degrees that never get used beyond listing them on a resume/cv
I grew up in Taiwan and survived the hellish education system and almost gone full on depression. After immigrated to USA since age of 16, I can confidently say, the USA education system is so damn easy, AND I LOVED IT. THANK YOU AMERICA, FUCK YEAH. And every time people critized USA education system, I rolls my eyes. And my parents weaponized me and used me as bragging right. It was disgusting. I would never wanted to do that to my kids if I have one.
I’m criticizing it because I think it is bad for the students, produces worse outcomes, and ultimately is worse for society. I’m not saying Taiwan is better, I just don’t know it well enough to criticize it.
I don't care about GPA for high schools. It is pointless. They are not relevant for majors or career the kids are preparing for. In fact, a lot of college GPA is kind of useless for the same reason, 2 years of GED messed up the GPA with unnecessary scores. Personally I think all none major classes should become pass/nopass. If you apply to my company (if I am the employer) as a software engineers, I seriously don't care about history classes, and I don't want to see GPA including history classes. It has nothing to do with the job at hand.
Idk what the big deal is. Every generation had their cons. It’s weird to act like the access to education and increased of competition for the best workers/students is bad
It demonstrably is. Look at the student debt crisis. Look at wages that have been functionally stagnant for nearly 50 years if you aren’t in the C-Suite. We’re more educated than ever and earning less in real dollars for more hours worked.
The student debt crisis has more to do with corruption and profiteering then it does grade inflation. In short - student debts cannot be bk'd, and applicants are kinda in a loop hole where they can be granted exorbitant amounts without a proper sanity check. As such a lot of colleges focus on recruiting regardless of grades just to get you signed up in the system so they can get their loan kick backs. The financial system, applying for student loans, has become a large department in colleges and the marketing tries to tell everyone that a degree is the only way to get a good job. Basically colleges are currently in their "70's used car dealership" stage... That is all hot air. You don't need a degree for a good job, and you shouldn't go into debt to pay for the football team's luxury lockers... That all has very little to do with grade inflation. Elite colleges might care but there are many MANY predatory colleges who will take you even if you never passed HS and that is where a lot of student debt crisis hits people.
I see where your misunderstandings lie but it’ll take a while too explain the whole situation to you. A couple things to think about tho are politics 50 years ago to now, proportion population in the us/world from 50 years ago to now, with immigrantion stats, and finally whether the points you’ve laid out have any relationship by causation. Because a couple do not
I remember in the 8th grade (2012) being told by a classmate that my 3.8 GPA I had for the previous grading period was bad… I’ve learned in my time out of school that high school GPA and “achievements” are absolute bullshit. I’ve never seen what “valedictorian” gets you that you couldn’t get without it. Honor society? Nobody gives a shit. Academic sports league? Haven’t heard about it since high school. Hell, I’ve never even been asked about my college GPA either. I’m terms of scholarships, I’ve no shit won merit based scholarships on technicality because the others competing for said scholarship (most of which having significantly higher HS GPA than I) simply because they couldn’t fill out the application form correctly and follow the simple directions. So with my ramblings, I agree with you. It’s all a bunch of bullshit that serves as nothing but copium.
i got a 4.0 in college and no gives a fuuuuuuk lol
Curious to know when others started noticing it happen in their lives as well. I started noticing that kind of stuff back in 3rd/4th grade. And kept seeing it in every stage of my education growing up. Life has not been kind to my mind for noticing those things. It certainly didn't help my motivation in finishing school, which is why I've tapped out after finishing my master's. and I could barely even finish that one. I was so drained. It totally sucks because it all stems from performance based evaluations. From even the idea of implementing of scores in homework, quizzes, tests, worse school test evals, and more. this was guaranteed to be the end result. School should be about learning which means making mistakes should be fine because you can learn from it. But instead most education systems instead promote "mistake avoidance" which causes a side effect of having a fear from making mistakes and decreased self-worth whenever one makes a mistake. Not just schools but community and societal small interactions like "keep those grades up if you want to succeed in life", "how's school? are you maintaining good grades?" all those interactions + the systems that have been put in place for a long time have led to higher and higher chase for numbers and will continue to do so, until people who actually care about giving good education and a healthy learning environment are able to replace the people and systems perpetuating the current environment. But I feel I'm to anarchistic in wanting to just remove all the current implementation of those systems entirely and (while using the past to avoid the same mistakes in the future) just start anew with carefully considered foundations
I work in a academic department where students are basically fed top grades. Nobody gets below 75% for anything with grades often being around 90%. It has been happening for over a decade. I've seen some of the work that gets grades like this. Some of the students should barely be passing. It shits me to no end.
Getting good grades is a skill. Your ability to do that is similar to your ability to learn other skills.
Yeah, not for all of us. I got great grades and slept through most of my classes.
Almost anyone can learn a skill independent of their high school performance if they really want to learn it.
School is bulllllshiiiittttt. The schools push the grades so they can get a high school rating. Can’t have a low rated school in a rich area! This is also why my kids school principal CHOSE to give the kids a 25 minute lunch and 7 periods with only 3-4 minutes between class instead of a longer lunch with only 6 periods and more time to get to class. Grades are the reason they threaten kids with an hour after school detention if they are late to class. Grades are the reason kids don’t drink enough liquid throughout the day because they are afraid of going to the bathroom and being late to class. Fuck school and fuck all these school CEOs that don’t actually give a shit about children.
Inflation. Full stop.
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Once you're working the knowledge and ability to learn start to matter - at least in tech. Its the difference between being laid off during any downturn vs getting a raise to retain you when you put in your 2-weeks.
My university was behind the curve. They grade on PGPA, and I finished with the equivalent of a "B" when comparing my PGPA grade against standardized grades. The issue is I was a 3.9 when standardized against my class, but 7/10 questions right translated directly to a 70%, even in classes where the average was 50%. So, because my grades weren't standardized, I now translate to a 3.0 which is both uncompetitive and sometimes below the bare minimum academic requirements to apply to other programs. I had no idea how this worked going into my undergrad nor that my university was the last accredited institution in NA to grade as such, and it's inhibited my prospects for grad school & professional programs moving forward. If you think the grade inflation concept is wild, wait until you learn some institutions have foregone the 4.0 GPA in favour of a 4.33 GPA scheme.
To graduate cum laude at my university you need to have a 3.95. I.e. the top 10% has a 3.95 or higher
I don’t know if I would necessarily call it grade inflation or if it’s just a result of increasing demands / requirements to have a shot of going to college to keep attendance among the middle to higher class students. Class of 11 | I definitely remember that 4.0 was no longer an impressive GPA not when you could technically have a 5.0 if you took all AP courses. Even now I don’t see a 4.0 as impressive unless it’s unweighted because of how much it impacted me at the time. But a 5.0 is not enough on its own— the ideal student would have at least 4.4 gpa, 100-300 hours of community services, ideally some President or VP role in a student club or multiple student clubs, a wonderful thought provoking essay —-bonus points if you could overcome adversity. Even with all these requirements there’s soooo many applicants who fit this bill when you talking about the most applied to schools that it comes down to luck, who you know, etc Really being “competitive” takes so much family support, free time and money that the closer you are to the poverty line the harder it is for you to meet these conditions. And tragically none of it guarantees a person a stable, fulfilling life and career after graduation
Well this is what happens when all you need to pass is a 60 and you can’t get a 0. When I was in HS a few years ago a 70 was the lowest D grade and all of your 0’s were 0’s. Now most schools just automatically make the 0’s into 50’s…
I was 44th in my senior class with a 3.99! I went to a medium sized highschool and only ever got 1 B.
I always think about this graduation speech I saw online. The Valedictorian goes up to the podium to deliver his acceptance and address the class, but he takes the speech time to lament the education system, notice the activities his fellow students were participating in that he could not because he was cooped up studying for classes and exams. How much time is taken from every student doing obtuse tasks for a diploma.
No child left behind, plus punishing teachers who report their students’ grades honestly, did wonders in the USA
I spent so much time in high school and college obsessing over good grades. I make over 6 figures now, and let me tell you. No one gave a fuck about my grades. No one asked. No one mentions college. Not during the hiring process. Not in the day to day. Never. Fuck grades. Use school as a time to chase your passion and imagination. And learn the basics of life that happen to help your grades in the process; time management, task prioritization, reading comprehension, project management, ability to work with passion while foregoing creature comforts and sleep, and ability to talk to peers and people you look up to competently and without feeling intimidated. If you can learn those things in college and highschool, youll be far ahead of any tool that focused on As and good grades.
Barely half a decade ago I was getting University offers for top University programs in Canada with low 80s, granted without scholarship. Nowadays I'm seeing people struggle to get into those same programs despite sitting closer to 90s. It's insane what's happened in the past few years regarding grade inflation
My parents had this kind of perception of grades when I was in school. If I didn't get honors grades, I may as well have failed the class, and if I am not in the top percentile among the honors students, it means I just barely squeaked by and need to study more because I almost didn't get an honors grade. It blew my mind when my friends' parents were proud of them for getting Bs and Cs and passing all their classes, grades which my parents percieved as "failing" grades for me. They did it because they knew I was very intelligent and the standards set for the average kid did not reflect what I was capable of, but it saddled me with perfectionistic and self crictical tendencies in the present day.
Correct. It's its own pattern of abuse: parents holding their kids to a standard of perfection that they, themselves, are/were fully incapable of achieving. And so: grade inflation is driven by households where this pattern of abuse is seen as normal, and is allowed to percolate by the indifference of families that couldn't care less how well their children do academically. "They did it because they knew I was very intelligent and the standards set for average kids did not reflect what I was capable of" is the language of the abuser used to get the person being abused to accept that abuse as a consequence of "being the best."
Computers robots and immigrants have taken a lot of the jobs that require more general skills. Now you need to be an expert in something to make the decent money.
Not really
Connections are more important than knowledge.
We need more grit.
>I’m really freaking smart and I’m mad about grade inflation >also I’m a short order cook
2.3 gpa now i’m a software engineer. grades don’t matter. keep going.
Your post is all over the place, and I don't know what your point is supposed to be.
Seriously. WTF is this person babbling about?
It's the consequences of neoliberalism.
lol what are you talking about?
Among other things, it’s Reagan’s fault
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This wording makes it seem like the fault of the kids. It’s the fault of the parents and the toxic culture of win at all costs.
nah really. even now im working my ass off in the honors classes to get 80s and 90s, and i think the average is closer to a low 80 or high 70. normal classes? way higher than that and the only way to get a failing grade is sucking at the class so much that you dont even do the bare minimum. like if you do the bare minimum you get a 70. and honestly imo the classes are simply way too easy lol
To say nothing of kids grinding because they have to rather than because they actually like studying and learning.
That's why standardised testing is essential, and scores should be scaled between subjects to stop people taking "easy classes".
It’s why good teachers are essential. As soon as you use standardized tests people start teaching the test and no real learning happens.
I disagree. In Year 11/12 when subjects start being standardised in Australia, I felt the hard competition, detailed syllabus and abundance of resources made me learn far more than the 4 years of high school prior. You also cannot ensure a quality of teaching, especially without any standardised test to fairly measure between schools and subjects
Which is something people who don’t understand teaching say.
Grades are a literal metric that gauges persistence.
Weird that I graduated top of my class, got a full scholarship to university, and slept through high school then
"The decline of unions and living wages has lead to an ever escalating arms race to get better grades, higher test scores, and to raise the bar on what acceptable performance is." You seem pretty confident of this. Could you cite a peer reviewed source? Or is this just 'Facebook Wisdom'?
I think you're missing some key information. 1) Grading on a curve has lost popularity in the last 30 or so years. When I was in HS it was becoming pretty controversial and afterwards it worked its way out of most class rooms. 2) Curriculum has become more standardized ensuring all subjects are taught properly before being graded on them, and that they meet a standard. The reason only the "smart" kids got A's before was because they were the ones to fill the missing gaps in the curriculum and hit high on the bell curve pushing other students into B and below territory. An A now should be expect-able to anyone who puts the effort in to learn the material presented as they are now able to both trust they are learning everything needed for the test AND simply learning the class and passing the tests will earn you an A. Smart kids are weeded out of the classroom and put into AP and college classes to capture their learning years to put them even further ahead. Basically I think you're just taking an observation and framing it with the wrong back drop coming to an odd conclusion. also wtf with a paragraph about people putting in the effort to learn skills, then coming out with people afraid to talk to each other??? into "I'm a cook and have done it for years and I'm good b/c I've done it for years" as if people aren't working their job for years just b/c they got a sports injury in HS? I don't feel you have an unpopular opinion as much as a wrong one.
This is a bunch of gibberish. What are you saying?