[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday June 12, 2007 at 10:50am]
Grade Inflation
Katherine Kersten wrote a column on grade inflation a week ago Sunday. She details what many of us old timers know, that A and B grades are a lot easier to come by these days.
I feel almost privileged to have used a school district that has but one valedictorian each year. Eden Prairie, which had 23 of them this year, is ending the practice outright rather than try to explain why it's an honor, however ubiquitous. Unofficially, I hear that 40 percent, that's right, forty percent of Champlin Park seniors graduated with honors this year.
Good grades mean happy parents, at least until they find that most college admissions professionals are well aware of what's really going on: rampant grade inflation, alleged "college prep" and/or "advanced placement" coursework that doesn't seem to register on standardized tests, and of course the dumbed-down SAT examinations resulting in unheard of numbers of perfect scores.
If State Senator Larry Pogemiller still feels strongly about indexing to inflation, how about here? Take all the grades and do what statisticians call "normalization" to adjust the scores such that no more than ten percent get A's, maybe another 20 percent get B's, etc.
I feel almost privileged to have used a school district that has but one valedictorian each year. Eden Prairie, which had 23 of them this year, is ending the practice outright rather than try to explain why it's an honor, however ubiquitous. Unofficially, I hear that 40 percent, that's right, forty percent of Champlin Park seniors graduated with honors this year.
Good grades mean happy parents, at least until they find that most college admissions professionals are well aware of what's really going on: rampant grade inflation, alleged "college prep" and/or "advanced placement" coursework that doesn't seem to register on standardized tests, and of course the dumbed-down SAT examinations resulting in unheard of numbers of perfect scores.
If State Senator Larry Pogemiller still feels strongly about indexing to inflation, how about here? Take all the grades and do what statisticians call "normalization" to adjust the scores such that no more than ten percent get A's, maybe another 20 percent get B's, etc.