Essay On Grade Inflation

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Carly Binfet
Lynn Hublou
English 101 S10
5 May 2014
Title
Many people have heard black is the new orange, or pink is the new green, but in the grading system, F is the new C. Many people from older generations tell me how easy I have it in school now days. They also tell me that they worked twice as hard as I do now to get an A. However, the younger generations have had to do less work to earn an A than the older generations. A great deal of the younger generation uses the Internet to find almost all their solutions to their homework problems without having to actually do much work. Some people do not believe that grade inflation is a problem, but the following research suggests that it points our younger generations towards anti-intellectualism. Grade inflation might occur or become problematic when teachers face pressure from “helicopter parents,” pressure from school athletic programs, or pressure from maintaining common core standards.
First, grade inflation reduces students’ efforts that they put into school and “helicopter” parents exasperate this problem. According to the authors James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar in their book Lowering Higher Education, students try to schedule everything around their full time jobs rather than actually scheduling activities and jobs around their university schedules (118). The expense of school becomes a burden especially when parents’ make their children pay for it. Teachers understand students have to take on jobs to pay for schooling or to care for others, but they also expect the work done on time and students attend class mentally and physically, which offers a reason as to why students should consider part time schooling. Although this might prove difficult, students can fin...

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...then send us home with homework, or we would get a whole workday to do the homework. Another reason why it didn’t benefit us was because the teachers would warn us that our principals were coming in, so they expected us on our best behavior. If the teachers received the results they hoped for they would reward us with a treat of some sort. If the teachers did not see the results they wanted, we expected a lecture on how badly we performed, and that it cannot happen again and it will not be tolerated. I believe surprise visits would fix these issues, because a teacher would not be able to prepare to change how they teach. It would also give principals a taste as to whether it is a teacher’s lack of teaching skills, or is the student not putting any effort into the work, or that the students have behavioral problems, and that is why the students earned a poor grade.

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