Report cards for California’s students reveal a major crisis in education.
Not because the grades are too low. Rather, because they are too high.
Grade inflation is rampant in the Golden State, where the number of students receiving straight A’s is going up, even as reading and math test scores are plunging.
The number of applicants to University of California schools with perfect 4.0 GPAs has doubled.
Meanwhile, on campus, professors complain that students can’t handle basic skills.
One UC Berkeley professor recently said that she had to teach fractions — a fifth-grade skill — to students at California’s top public university.
Grade inflation used to be a problem that only elite colleges faced.
It began in the Vietnam War era, when professors understood that giving poor grades to students could see them leave school and enter the military draft.
Grade inflation persisted, for economic reasons. Students — or their parents — were paying higher tuition bills, and demanded a return on their investment, meaning admission to graduate schools.
No professor wanted to be blamed by angry parents if young Johnny couldn’t get into to medical school.
A report by Harvard found that while 24% of grades were A’s in 2005, that had risen to 40% in 2015, and 60% by 2025.
At UC Berkeley, the rise was more modest: A’s were 50% of all grades in 2013, and 64% by 2022.
But grade inflation began to trickle down to high schools in California.
Unlike Harvard, the University of California schools do not use standardized tests in admissions.
That change happened during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, when a moral panic about race seized many institutions.
The UC system dropped SATs in a bid to increase “equity,” i.e., black enrollment.
With high school grades playing a more important role in admissions, there was new pressure on high school teachers to give higher grades.
Teachers also felt pressure not to give failing grades, because post-pandemic attendance was already so low.
That made GPAs almost useless — and left truly deserving black students at a disadvantage.
There are two obvious solutions.
One is to bring back standardized testing in college admissions in California.
The other is to impose a cap on the number of A’s a teacher can give. Good luck with that.
Education cannot be redistributed. It has to be earned, by rich as well as poor.
There is no substitute for hard work.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
