Grade inflation has long been a problem at high schools. But as Daniel Buck argues in today’s Martin Center article, it has gotten a lot worse in recent years — something that is having real consequences for students entering college.
Grade inflation can’t hide the fact that, due to Covid, students are further behind than ever. Buck writes:
Students lost out on months’ worth of education, obliterating two decades’ worth of academic improvements. What’s more, we’re experiencing something of a ‘long Covid’ in education. According to the testing company NWEA, students aren’t just not catching up. Rather, due to chronic absenteeism, behavior challenges, staffing shortages, and a general ennui in K-12 schooling, they are actually backsliding.
But colleges want bodies, so they turn blind eyes to the academic deficits of their applicants. One tactic is to not require students to submit SAT or ACT scores that would flag their poor skills in English and math.
Buck paints a sympathetic picture of a hypothetical student who has been reared in this subpar educational environment:
He’s despairingly behind, though that’s not quite the right word. His learning resembles a half-built bridge. Some portions are complete, but many are unconstructed. He may have learned about the Civil War before the pandemic, but he put his teacher on mute when she discussed the Holocaust. Perhaps he knows algebra from the years after Covid, but he struggles with negative integers because he played Fortnite during that online lesson.
To make matters worse, this student has no conception of his insufficiency. No teacher ever had the tough love that it would have taken to fail him or demand that he repeat a course. No administrator ever leveled with his parents about their child’s subpar performance. And no university can tell whether he will flourish or fail.
Buck notes that remedial programs to help such students have a poor track record, leaving schools with two unenviable options: finding ways to keep them enrolled — dumbed-down courses and grade inflation — or actually failing some students. Neither is ideal, leading Buck to propose that universities reverse their Covid-era decision to rely less on standardized tests. They are, after all, a tried-and-true method to sort students who should go to college from those who, instead of wasting lots of time and money on a college degree of dubious value, ought to go out and learn something valuable.