I work for a college. This is spot on. It's not even neccessarily nefarious. Since the rise of formal college ranking systems, schools noticed that raising GPA improved their rankings. So...
I work for a college. This is spot on. It's not even neccessarily nefarious. Since the rise of formal college ranking systems, schools noticed that raising GPA improved their rankings. So initiatives get put in place to help students, which would theoretically increase A grades. The D/F students likely wouldn't use the initiatives much, but there should be a big drop in B grades (motivated but struggling students), and a medium drop in C grades.
But what I'm suspecting is that professors are being more lax in order to boost numbers to meet initiatives (and perhaps get bonuses) and thus increase college's ranking with very little change.
Oh I 100% agree. The weird place we've ended up where college degree is required for almost any job, and college will also put you in life-crippling, permanent debt means that it's almost...
Oh I 100% agree. The weird place we've ended up where college degree is required for almost any job, and college will also put you in life-crippling, permanent debt means that it's almost unethical to be rigorous graders for a lot of classes.
We need free college not just to make it more accessible, but also so that it means something beyond 'this person likely has a lot of debt and needs a job.'
Yes, I'm being hyperbolic, but not as much as I wish I was.
I'm glad you brought this up, because it's essential. Colleges wear two faces. One is the idea that they are institutions of education and that they should operate under the high ideals of...
I'm glad you brought this up, because it's essential. Colleges wear two faces. One is the idea that they are institutions of education and that they should operate under the high ideals of learning and merit. The other is that they are essentially selling a commodity to consumers at outrageously high prices. Colleges like to lean on the first face a lot, because it makes them look good, but they largely operate according to the second.
"Cooking the books" makes me suspicious of so many damn stats... As someone prone to self-deprecation, the last thing I'd need is a reason to feel like even more of a dumb-ass. "Oh, that 'A' you...
"Cooking the books" makes me suspicious of so many damn stats...
As someone prone to self-deprecation, the last thing I'd need is a reason to feel like even more of a dumb-ass. "Oh, that 'A' you struggled to receive in that one class doesn't mean much. You probably should've got a 'C-', ya dum-dum."
Well, maybe GPA isn't the best way to measure student achievement. High-caliber students are still gonna do high-caliber things and go on to work high-caliber jobs. Will educational institutions be ranked by average salary of their alumni (if they aren't, already)?
I think this fundamentally applies to almost every "grading system" for knowledge and intelligence, including IQ, SAT, and the various 'Common Core' tests. If I was going to propose an...
Well, maybe GPA isn't the best way to measure student achievement.
I think this fundamentally applies to almost every "grading system" for knowledge and intelligence, including IQ, SAT, and the various 'Common Core' tests.
If I was going to propose an alternative, it would be something like a resume... a sourced list of achievements, which I would roughly classify as 'Given if you would get a B or higher in a given skill'. Perhaps with a + modifier if showing exceptional talent. I recall that my elementary grading system in the 90's was similiar.
I guess it's easier to distill people down to a number though, so GPA will continue to get aggregated into our 'social score.'
Up here in Canada (Ontario specifically) we have some severe grade inflation. When I got accepted to university the median average for my program was ~88% (-a I think). When I graduated the median...
Up here in Canada (Ontario specifically) we have some severe grade inflation. When I got accepted to university the median average for my program was ~88% (-a I think). When I graduated the median acceptance average was 95% (a+).
I've always thought that American standard testing, while detrimental to actually learning the content was quite effective at keeping inflation at bay. I guess not.
What my university does to account for inflation is to track how students do at university during The first years of uni and create a bias for each school so schools with less grade inflation are not as adversely affected. Article
Definitely not. It's actually had the opposite effect. The widespread implementation of standardized testing in the US hasn't been focused on student achievement but has instead been focused on...
I've always thought that American standard testing, while detrimental to actually learning the content was quite effective at keeping inflation at bay. I guess not.
Definitely not. It's actually had the opposite effect. The widespread implementation of standardized testing in the US hasn't been focused on student achievement but has instead been focused on school "accountabiity". Basically, it's being used as a measure of a district/school/teacher's performance more than a student's, and the responsibility for low scores falls not on the student but on the district/school/teacher.
This has created a culture where schools are directly incentivized to cook their books because they will be the ones facing negative consequences should students perform poorly. The paradigm of education has moved from "something students do" to "something schools provide" so any failure on students' behalf is seen as a failure of the school to adequately provide education, even if the student is directly at fault.
This is most easily seen in students who don't come to school. Every year, there will be students who don't come and whose parents don't bring them regularly. This should be a clear case where the responsibility for the student lies outside the school's purview, as how are we supposed to educate someone who literally isn't there? Despite these kids often attending school irregularly or almost not at all, we still feel an institutional pressure to pass them on to the next grade because we could be held liable for our failure to educate them. Furthermore, attendance itself is one of the accountability measures applied to schools, so we get punished when students don't show up. Last year my school identified students that were at risk of going over a certain number of days absent and put them on call lists. We then took turns contacting the parents to encourage them to bring their kids in if we worried they weren't going to show -- all because those students would have dropped our attendance numbers below a certain threshhold and lowered our accountability scores.
This all sounds absurd, I know, but that's genuinely how it is. Every school I've worked in has had some sort of systematic grade inflation because holding to any level of rigor puts us in a bind and a bad light.
On a final note, I'll also encourage you to look into the idea that standardized testing is basically a wolf in sheep's clothing. It purports itself to be a fair way of measuring student success and roots itself in lofty ideas of learning, but in the hands of for-profit companies it is simply a way to make a ton of money off of school systems. My favorite talking point as of late to illustrate this is that last year 21 states were machine-grading students' essays. That is not a measure that is taken under the auspices of a quality education for our nation's kids; it's a transparent time- and cost-saving measure taken by companies trying to maximize revenue.
Another factor in school "accountability" is No Child Left Behind, which further incentivizes schools to pass failing students. Passed by W. Bush in 2002.
Definitely not. It's actually had the opposite effect. The widespread implementation of standardized testing in the US hasn't been focused on student achievement but has instead been focused on school "accountabiity".
Another factor in school "accountability" is No Child Left Behind, which further incentivizes schools to pass failing students. Passed by W. Bush in 2002.
And Common Core in 2010. We keep piling this crap on, each making the effects of the last worse, Don't even get me started on property taxes and school vouchers.
And Common Core in 2010.
We keep piling this crap on, each making the effects of the last worse,
Don't even get me started on property taxes and school vouchers.
My understanding about Common Core is that it was sound pedagogically, but implemented terribly, with few teachers being properly trained and a rush to market of questionable textbooks and...
My understanding about Common Core is that it was sound pedagogically, but implemented terribly, with few teachers being properly trained and a rush to market of questionable textbooks and materials. I could be wrong though.
However, school vouchers are such a bad idea! It pisses me off to be honest how bad it is. And how transparently it flouts the separation of church and state.
I rent so I don't pay property taxes, but I read an article once about how they're basically Ponzi schemes on a municipal level -- there's just not enough of them to pay what needs to be, and they're already so high.
From talking with my Canadian coworkers, I'm a little surprised that grade inflation is a thing there. They tell me that getting into college is a lot different there than here in he US due to the...
From talking with my Canadian coworkers, I'm a little surprised that grade inflation is a thing there. They tell me that getting into college is a lot different there than here in he US due to the public funding. (Of course, they attended in the early 90s, so maybe it's also changed since then?)
One friend in particular has talked about how applying for college for him was basically just filling out an application and sending it in. He didn't do any interviews or write cover letters puffing up his achievements like we did. If I recall correctly, he said that most colleges accept something like 80% of applicants, so there's no need to compete if you've got halfway decent grades. Is that accurate? Or has it changed since then? Or is there more to it that I'm not understanding?
What your coworkers say is mostly true except that it's become much more competitive, especially now that there we have a few world-class universities. Interviews and essays are becoming a little...
What your coworkers say is mostly true except that it's become much more competitive, especially now that there we have a few world-class universities. Interviews and essays are becoming a little more common now as a result of grade inflation, but they still aren't super common. I would also caution that for Canadians university and college are very different things (colleges are like trade schools). Colleges have rather lax acceptance criteria, I assume your coworker was taking about university specifically.
I would say that anyone that applies with half decent grades will get into a university, but likely not a university known for whatever program you are interested in.
For example my university is particularly picky about its stem programs but fairly easy to get into the arts program, the university wide acceptance rate is around 50%, the acceptance into the competitive programs (in this case engineering, compsci and math) is about 5%. There's a bit of a running joke at my university that the entire geomatics department is made up of people that didn't quite make the cut for math/cs. Maybe I'm a little biased in that I went for a more competitive program.
I would say that how I experienced admissions is quite different than how people 4 years ahead of me did, things are in a state of pretty rapid change right now so who knows how it will stabilize.
Fascinating! Thanks for the info. Despite living in the US, at least one of my Canadian coworkers is probably going to send his kid to school in Canada. I'm sure his kid's brilliant though, as...
Fascinating! Thanks for the info. Despite living in the US, at least one of my Canadian coworkers is probably going to send his kid to school in Canada. I'm sure his kid's brilliant though, as both he and his wife are quite sharp.
When I was a GTA while getting my MFA (I was "assisting" teaching English, so I basically was a teacher), I struggled a lot with my grading system. I kept tweaking it, and I heard (I don't know...
When I was a GTA while getting my MFA (I was "assisting" teaching English, so I basically was a teacher), I struggled a lot with my grading system. I kept tweaking it, and I heard (I don't know how true this is) that in England, they had basically three tiers: 1 meant no or sub-par mastery, 2 meant fine mastery, and 3 meant very good mastery of the subject. Basically, almost everyone got a 2, failers got 1, and very very few got 3. Regardless of whether that's really the system that's used anywhere, I think it's a really good idea and it's what I wanted to do, but alas, I was stuck in the A-F system, where D & F are both failing and C is basically a death-warrant for many students.
I haven't read the other two, but the resource linked in that last claim shows that literacy from 1992-2003 has mostly increased. Actually, it shows that by age, literacy is mostly down until you...
I haven't read the other two, but the resource linked in that last claim shows that literacy from 1992-2003 has mostly increased. Actually, it shows that by age, literacy is mostly down until you hit 50+. So, I guess the claim has some merit. I wonder if there's more recent data, though.
The 90's is about when schools started shifting gears from 'teaching to learn' and 'teaching to meet metrics that determine budgets.' I noticed as classes gradually became less about teaching the...
The 90's is about when schools started shifting gears from 'teaching to learn' and 'teaching to meet metrics that determine budgets.' I noticed as classes gradually became less about teaching the why and how to solve problems, and more 'memorize these equations to know to solve this part of the test.' It was even more noticeable when my siblings were going through the same grade level a few years later and getting a drastically different experience.
I think an interesting factor to this equation would be the price of tuition fees vs consumer prices. It seems to somewhat match atleast to my eye. Worth noting I'm not entirely sure of the...
I think an interesting factor to this equation would be the price of tuition fees vs consumer prices. It seems to somewhat match atleast to my eye. Worth noting I'm not entirely sure of the accuracy of the graph because the Bureau of Labor uses 1983-1984 as base while I'm not sure what the graph's creator used since it's not specified but it seems to match other graphs made on the subject.
I work for a college. This is spot on. It's not even neccessarily nefarious. Since the rise of formal college ranking systems, schools noticed that raising GPA improved their rankings. So initiatives get put in place to help students, which would theoretically increase A grades. The D/F students likely wouldn't use the initiatives much, but there should be a big drop in B grades (motivated but struggling students), and a medium drop in C grades.
But what I'm suspecting is that professors are being more lax in order to boost numbers to meet initiatives (and perhaps get bonuses) and thus increase college's ranking with very little change.
Oh I 100% agree. The weird place we've ended up where college degree is required for almost any job, and college will also put you in life-crippling, permanent debt means that it's almost unethical to be rigorous graders for a lot of classes.
We need free college not just to make it more accessible, but also so that it means something beyond 'this person likely has a lot of debt and needs a job.'
Yes, I'm being hyperbolic, but not as much as I wish I was.
I'm glad you brought this up, because it's essential. Colleges wear two faces. One is the idea that they are institutions of education and that they should operate under the high ideals of learning and merit. The other is that they are essentially selling a commodity to consumers at outrageously high prices. Colleges like to lean on the first face a lot, because it makes them look good, but they largely operate according to the second.
"Cooking the books" makes me suspicious of so many damn stats...
As someone prone to self-deprecation, the last thing I'd need is a reason to feel like even more of a dumb-ass. "Oh, that 'A' you struggled to receive in that one class doesn't mean much. You probably should've got a 'C-', ya dum-dum."
Well, maybe GPA isn't the best way to measure student achievement. High-caliber students are still gonna do high-caliber things and go on to work high-caliber jobs. Will educational institutions be ranked by average salary of their alumni (if they aren't, already)?
I think this fundamentally applies to almost every "grading system" for knowledge and intelligence, including IQ, SAT, and the various 'Common Core' tests.
If I was going to propose an alternative, it would be something like a resume... a sourced list of achievements, which I would roughly classify as 'Given if you would get a B or higher in a given skill'. Perhaps with a + modifier if showing exceptional talent. I recall that my elementary grading system in the 90's was similiar.
I guess it's easier to distill people down to a number though, so GPA will continue to get aggregated into our 'social score.'
Up here in Canada (Ontario specifically) we have some severe grade inflation. When I got accepted to university the median average for my program was ~88% (-a I think). When I graduated the median acceptance average was 95% (a+).
I've always thought that American standard testing, while detrimental to actually learning the content was quite effective at keeping inflation at bay. I guess not.
What my university does to account for inflation is to track how students do at university during The first years of uni and create a bias for each school so schools with less grade inflation are not as adversely affected. Article
Definitely not. It's actually had the opposite effect. The widespread implementation of standardized testing in the US hasn't been focused on student achievement but has instead been focused on school "accountabiity". Basically, it's being used as a measure of a district/school/teacher's performance more than a student's, and the responsibility for low scores falls not on the student but on the district/school/teacher.
This has created a culture where schools are directly incentivized to cook their books because they will be the ones facing negative consequences should students perform poorly. The paradigm of education has moved from "something students do" to "something schools provide" so any failure on students' behalf is seen as a failure of the school to adequately provide education, even if the student is directly at fault.
This is most easily seen in students who don't come to school. Every year, there will be students who don't come and whose parents don't bring them regularly. This should be a clear case where the responsibility for the student lies outside the school's purview, as how are we supposed to educate someone who literally isn't there? Despite these kids often attending school irregularly or almost not at all, we still feel an institutional pressure to pass them on to the next grade because we could be held liable for our failure to educate them. Furthermore, attendance itself is one of the accountability measures applied to schools, so we get punished when students don't show up. Last year my school identified students that were at risk of going over a certain number of days absent and put them on call lists. We then took turns contacting the parents to encourage them to bring their kids in if we worried they weren't going to show -- all because those students would have dropped our attendance numbers below a certain threshhold and lowered our accountability scores.
This all sounds absurd, I know, but that's genuinely how it is. Every school I've worked in has had some sort of systematic grade inflation because holding to any level of rigor puts us in a bind and a bad light.
On a final note, I'll also encourage you to look into the idea that standardized testing is basically a wolf in sheep's clothing. It purports itself to be a fair way of measuring student success and roots itself in lofty ideas of learning, but in the hands of for-profit companies it is simply a way to make a ton of money off of school systems. My favorite talking point as of late to illustrate this is that last year 21 states were machine-grading students' essays. That is not a measure that is taken under the auspices of a quality education for our nation's kids; it's a transparent time- and cost-saving measure taken by companies trying to maximize revenue.
Another factor in school "accountability" is No Child Left Behind, which further incentivizes schools to pass failing students. Passed by W. Bush in 2002.
And Common Core in 2010.
We keep piling this crap on, each making the effects of the last worse,
Don't even get me started on property taxes and school vouchers.
My understanding about Common Core is that it was sound pedagogically, but implemented terribly, with few teachers being properly trained and a rush to market of questionable textbooks and materials. I could be wrong though.
However, school vouchers are such a bad idea! It pisses me off to be honest how bad it is. And how transparently it flouts the separation of church and state.
I rent so I don't pay property taxes, but I read an article once about how they're basically Ponzi schemes on a municipal level -- there's just not enough of them to pay what needs to be, and they're already so high.
From talking with my Canadian coworkers, I'm a little surprised that grade inflation is a thing there. They tell me that getting into college is a lot different there than here in he US due to the public funding. (Of course, they attended in the early 90s, so maybe it's also changed since then?)
One friend in particular has talked about how applying for college for him was basically just filling out an application and sending it in. He didn't do any interviews or write cover letters puffing up his achievements like we did. If I recall correctly, he said that most colleges accept something like 80% of applicants, so there's no need to compete if you've got halfway decent grades. Is that accurate? Or has it changed since then? Or is there more to it that I'm not understanding?
What your coworkers say is mostly true except that it's become much more competitive, especially now that there we have a few world-class universities. Interviews and essays are becoming a little more common now as a result of grade inflation, but they still aren't super common. I would also caution that for Canadians university and college are very different things (colleges are like trade schools). Colleges have rather lax acceptance criteria, I assume your coworker was taking about university specifically.
I would say that anyone that applies with half decent grades will get into a university, but likely not a university known for whatever program you are interested in.
For example my university is particularly picky about its stem programs but fairly easy to get into the arts program, the university wide acceptance rate is around 50%, the acceptance into the competitive programs (in this case engineering, compsci and math) is about 5%. There's a bit of a running joke at my university that the entire geomatics department is made up of people that didn't quite make the cut for math/cs. Maybe I'm a little biased in that I went for a more competitive program.
I would say that how I experienced admissions is quite different than how people 4 years ahead of me did, things are in a state of pretty rapid change right now so who knows how it will stabilize.
Fascinating! Thanks for the info. Despite living in the US, at least one of my Canadian coworkers is probably going to send his kid to school in Canada. I'm sure his kid's brilliant though, as both he and his wife are quite sharp.
When I was a GTA while getting my MFA (I was "assisting" teaching English, so I basically was a teacher), I struggled a lot with my grading system. I kept tweaking it, and I heard (I don't know how true this is) that in England, they had basically three tiers: 1 meant no or sub-par mastery, 2 meant fine mastery, and 3 meant very good mastery of the subject. Basically, almost everyone got a 2, failers got 1, and very very few got 3. Regardless of whether that's really the system that's used anywhere, I think it's a really good idea and it's what I wanted to do, but alas, I was stuck in the A-F system, where D & F are both failing and C is basically a death-warrant for many students.
I haven't read the other two, but the resource linked in that last claim shows that literacy from 1992-2003 has mostly increased. Actually, it shows that by age, literacy is mostly down until you hit 50+. So, I guess the claim has some merit. I wonder if there's more recent data, though.
The 90's is about when schools started shifting gears from 'teaching to learn' and 'teaching to meet metrics that determine budgets.' I noticed as classes gradually became less about teaching the why and how to solve problems, and more 'memorize these equations to know to solve this part of the test.' It was even more noticeable when my siblings were going through the same grade level a few years later and getting a drastically different experience.
I think an interesting factor to this equation would be the price of tuition fees vs consumer prices. It seems to somewhat match atleast to my eye. Worth noting I'm not entirely sure of the accuracy of the graph because the Bureau of Labor uses 1983-1984 as base while I'm not sure what the graph's creator used since it's not specified but it seems to match other graphs made on the subject.
Comparison graph :
Reddit post showing the comparison with a graph
Source graphs for ease of sharing :
All items inflation graph made by Bureau of Labor Statistics
Tuition fees inflation graph made by Bureau of Labor Statistics
If you want the data :
All items inflation data by Bureau of Labor Statistics
Tuition fees inflation data by Bureau of Labor Statistics
(Note you'll need to change the time periods to match the graphs)