The Other Inflation
City Journal |Wai Wah Chin
In this City Journal piece, Wai Wah Chin, a graduate of Yale, Princeton and Columbia, argues that “inflated grades and lowered standards, often in the name of ‘equity,’ are destroying educational excellence from kindergarten through college.”
“Just like monetary inflation, which makes your bank account look great until you’re rudely awakened by the reality that you can’t buy as much as you used to, grade inflation makes your transcript look great, until you discover that you haven’t learned as much as you thought,” Chin aruges. “And though grade inflation is not new, its recent intersection with “equity” bodes ill for the integrity of our schools.”
Chin shows “how deeply entrenched grade inflation has become…[noting] that two prestigious institutions—Princeton University and Wellesley College…put the brakes on grade inflation in 2004 [but] have since been forced to rescind their efforts… No other universities had followed their lead, and they did not want to continue bearing the brunt of student complaints.” (See 2022 Harvard Survey)
What about the earlier years? Chin shows “the precollege situation is arguably worse… [A recent analysis of] 4 million high school seniors shows steadily rising grade-point averages…between 2010 and 2021, with the number of A-minus students surpassing the number of B-minus students in 2016.”
“What do the education bureaucrats who gave us this grade inflation have to say for themselves?” Chin asks. “They can no longer deny that grade inflation is real, so they turn to ‘equity’ as a defense.” Win goes on to cite the reasoning behind giving marginalized students higher grades.
What is the result? According to Chin, “Grade inflation attacks the very core of education, starts a vicious circle for the further corruption of educational integrity, and leads to our schools becoming mere diploma mills. The circle must be broken.”
And how can we fix the situation? Chin argues, “Standardized testing is our most potent antidote to grade inflation and its destructive consequences. Objectivity, anonymity, uniformity, transparency, third-party independence—all these features make standardized testing highly effective in precisely the areas where grades tend to fail. Indeed, that’s why advocates for inflated grades are so keen on discrediting standardized testing…they wish to conceal the devaluation of standards.”
Related:
Harvard Class of ‘22 by the Numbers (Crimson, 5/29/22)
