Grade Inflation

The article “Thousands of students victims of ‘grade inflation’” by Nancy Mitchell explores the idea of many schools being under the influence of grade inflation. The main argument in this article is that many students are not truly earning their good grades; they are victims of grade inflation. A good way to describe this grade inflation is that students are not challenged and are just given good grades for getting work done. In some cases, students who put a lot of effort in their work but don’t meet the teacher’s standards are still given good grades for their effort. So when we step back and look at it, one group of students get an A for meeting all the standards and putting up no effort and another group get an A for trying really hard but not meeting the standards.

In some ways I agree that grade inflation is bad. In my own life I have experienced this in a negative way. A couple other students and I were chosen to go to a math contest at a local school. We were chosen because we were in the hardest class in our school (calculus) and we all had an A in the class. Honestly it wasn’t too hard for me to get that A. Since this was calculus I did have to give more effort than I did in other classes to obtain good grades. There were, however, students who were trying way harder than I in this class and were struggling to keep a C. When we went to the math contest and faced other schools in a contest, I honestly felt like the dumbest person in the room. There were students there who knew so much more than I did and I didn’t understand why since I came from the top class at my own school. I believe it was because of grade inflation. In the article, a student’s school tried to fix its grade inflation and when it did, her GPA went from a 4.0 to 3.4. It was simply because now she had to work harder to get better grades. She admitted that although her GPA was lower she felt smarter. I wonder if the same thing would happen to me if our school tried to fix the inflation. My GPA probably would drop but I think it would be worth it. I would be able to truly learn and be more knowledgeable about things instead of being seemingly smart on paper.