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The future of education in America
Grade Inflation Gone Wild
Grade Inflation Gone Wild
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Recommended: The future of education in America
The Effects of Grade Inflation
In the US, Grade inflation is now a common practice in many colleges and universities. According to the US News, it states “more than forty percent of the grades awarded were in the A range.” Although it is a serious problem, there got to be a way to fix it.
200 prestigious colleges and universities in the United States, who uses the grade inflation, provides a problem. Several of the main causes are desires of positive student evaluations for better school ranking and badly needed funding from tuitions contributed by high enrollments of students. Also, instructors can receive better evaluation from students in return if they inflated the student’s grades. Taking the chance of evaluating their instructors better,
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While many agree, practice of grade inflation is unfair because students who worked and studied less can still “earn” better grades. There is no way to tell the distinction between the mediocre individuals who do poorly and the successful individuals who put more effort to earn good grades truly. Therefore, the colleges and universities must have some rules in order to end grade inflation. More importantly, school should stop seeing education as a mere business and preserve what the word represents, …show more content…
Recording system put pressure on instructors and students that any attempt of grade inflation may be exposed later; this reminds them of consequences afterward. Request from students to get their grades revised should also be recorded gives a fair chance to those who would like to get their grades revised for due reasons. Likewise, this allows their voices to be heard later when school administrators reviewed the cases. With this system, schools can focus much in the grading system, to see how it can be improved in reflecting the true potential of students. Conjointly, state education official can review these cases, to ensure how fair grading between schools is now maintained.
Changes made by instructors or students would have them to consider seriously for the true reasons of grade revises before submitting one. Finally in the end, this gives a fair grading system for every instructors and college students should get an evaluation and the grades they deserve. It will be a clear distinction between students who succeed and those who do not. Teachers will do the right thing on raising students ' grades, and to preserve the core value of America education, and America will have a bright future with everyone 's
“About 15 percent of Harvard Students got a B-plus or better in 1950. In 2007, more than half of all Harvard grades were in the A range.” One of the questions being proposed by him is could the grade inflation be due simply to the fact that students are getting better? Primack simply refutes this argument by stating, “Privately, many faculty members and administrators say colleges are unwilling to challenge and possibly offend students and their hovering tuition paying parents with some tough grade love.” The writer claims that “grade inflation hides laziness on the part of the students, and as long as it exists, even faculty who want to do a good job grading don’t feel they can.”
In the op-ed, “Grade Inflation Gone Wild,” Stuart Rojstaczer addresses the concern of grade inflation and its effects on students. Rojstaczer uses several different methods to prove his point of view to the reader. Rojstaczer links grade inflation to the sinking quality of education, as well as the rise of college alcoholics. While this op-ed does a satisfactory job appealing to the reader on a person-person basis, many of Rojstaczer’s main claims do not hold any scholarly evidence. This analysis over “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” will discuss whether Rojstaczer has written this editorial solely to convince readers of his opinion, or does Rojstaczer present a credible claim in higher education’s grade inflation.
“Making the Grade” by Kurt Wiesenfeld Newsweek magazine, June 27 1996 brings to light an issue that has been glazed over by society for some time, grade inflation. It’s highly disturbing that “we lament that schoolchildren get “kicked upstairs” until they graduate from high school despite being illiterate and mathematically inept, but we seem unconcerned with college graduates whose less blatant deficiencies are far more harmful, if their accreditation exceeds their qualifications”. The issue of grade inflation is not simply an issue of students feeling entitled to higher grades than they have earned, it is a problem that directly impacts our society in a multitude of negative ways. Perhaps the “gold star” mentality started out with the good intentions of creating children with positive self-esteem, however, a direct result is lazy adults with a sense of entitlement for no reason, who lack qualifications to adequately and safely perform their jobs.
In “What is a Grade” by Pat Belanoff, she explains the pros and cons of the grading system. In Pats ' essay she states “Perhaps the solution would to abandon grading altogether in writing class. I confess that this a solution that appeals to me greatly.” (151). Grades should not be present in the way we test students’ learning ability.
From the beginning of high school, students strap on their seatbelts and prepare for one of the most vigorous races of their lives – becoming successful. With the rare occurrence of a break, kids are expected to keep on driving as fast and as powerfully as they can in order to get into a “great” college, which would be followed by graduate school and then an actual job that would make a lot of money. In American society, common values include working hard, determination, and being so productive that free time is not even a question. However, this philosophy is taking a major toll on American college and high school students. For at least 40 years, America’s future has been steadily growing unmotivated, tired, and hopeless due to the overemphasis on performing well in school. This phenomenon is appropriately expounded in William Zinsser’s “College Pressures”, which takes a look at the top four sources of tension that cause these feelings of dejection and agitation. After reading this article, I came up with a few solutions to this national problem. It is time to switch the harsh, over-encouraging green light of education to a comfortable yellow one. In order to make this ideal transition, directors of education across the country need to primarily reduce the amount of out-of-class assignments, lighten the grading system, and incorporate days in the school year that allow students to express their thoughts about school and provide useful feedback.
On the topic of weighted GPAs, people often suggest two main outcomes: a strong academic society and a weak academic society (Abbott). Seeing that weighted GPAs are rewarding to students
In his essay, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s,” Brent Staples argues that grade inflation in colleges results in college degrees becoming less valuable. Staples points out that grade inflation is happening among all colleges and there are many factors contributing to this problem. Colleges are willingly giving students good grades that they do not deserve so that the course will not be omitted from the lack of attendance. Part-time teachers’ jobs are at risk because their position is not guaranteed. These teachers were sometimes threatened by the students saying they will complain if their grades are not adjusted for a higher score. With this being said, students are putting pressure on teachers, causing their jobs to be in danger.
This idea is absurd! Our educational grading system is a scale of A, B, C, D, F with mastery being an A, average being an C, and complete failing being an F. What we would be saying to our students under his point is no matter how hard you work and how much effort you give something, if you can’t be perfect you are no better than a failure. How many students would there then be that feel like why even try? This would lead to more drop outs which is another alarming issue.
The author was a freshman at Princeton University when this article was written. He seems to have enough drive and determination in order to embrace grade deflation compared to his peers, who complained and disagreed with the grading system, which is what started this essay.
Giving students a grade that they have not earned hinders the youth’s future educational success. A number of schools are no longer giving a grade of zero on assignments, tests, and exams completed by students. While other school districts continue to give students the grade that is adequate for the work they have done or have not completed. Giving students the grade that equals their work is designed to show students where they need to improve. Many school boards want to stop giving out zeros for work that hasn’t been turned in and give a grade that rages around the “D” area keeping children from falling behind in their classes. By allowing student to pass through the school system the educational board is raising their graduation and success
Former professor of geophysics, Stuart Rojstaczer, in his informative op-ed piece, “Grade Inflation Gone Wild,” featured in “Christian Science Monitior(2009),” investigates grade inflation among universities today. Rojstaczer’s purpose is to inform and educate universities on the inflation of grades, and how an A has become the average grade among those schools. He adopts a dismissive tone when generalizing and addressing the students on their behaviors and actions. Rojstaczer found over 80 universities with data on they’re grades, using this he was able to better understand the inflation and also analyze possible solutions. His logos based writing portrays a negative connotation on todays students and their ability to achieve within the classroom. There is no hiding that the standard for grades has been on the rise sense the 1960’s, and is now at an average GPA of a 3.0, but rojstaczer may have lost his audience with his arrogant approach.
In today’s society we feel the need to be graded in order to learn. The topic of the grading system has sparked three essays, by three different authors, about the pros and cons of the grading system. First, Jerry Farber, professor at University of California at San Diego, wrote A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System (333). Next is Steven Vogel, professor at Denison University, who wrote Grades and Money (337). The last two authors in this compilation are Stephen Goode and Timothy W. Maier. They both are journalists for Insight on the News. While each of these authors have their own point of view on the grading system, all three essays talk about how being graded affects learning.
One of the issues, which Boyer points out , is that teachers and students have different expectations from college education. She says that the teachers are mainly concerned about students’ comprehension of the material, their attendance and attention while students’ hopes are to get good grades and to be well prepared for exams. It seems that the system of grading pushes students to not care too much about what is being taught from an understanding perspective, but only promotes more concern about grades instead. Some students don't really pay attention unless the instructor mentions an exam or something that will be graded. Furthermore, be...
By nature, most students are brought up in an academic environment motivated to get A’s and B’s on their report cards. Those grades sometimes don’t thoroughly report how much a student has learned or gained knowledge in each topic. Some instructors throw in factors totally unrelated to learning, when the main objective of academic institutions is to learn. In order to clearly demonstrate how much a student has learned in the classroom, schools should change their current grading system and teach students how to learn.
The public high schools began a grading system as a way of telling an individual how they were performing. There was no interest by the public in reporting the school’s progress at teaching. Teachers, in an effort to recognize outstanding performers, looked for a way of rewarding hard-working students for their efforts The grading structure changed from superior and excellent to A’s and B’s. This placed much of the burden of recognizing academic talent on the high schools.