Don’t blame California teachers for inflated grades. See school officials

After a recent report by the University of California, San Diego documented a a decline in the math skills of incoming freshmen — despite school grades K-12 edges all the way up — conservative critics blame teachers and their unions for grade inflation.

Grade inflation is the awarding of artificially higher grades for a level of school work that has historically merited lower grades. In other words, it is increasing grade point averages awarded to students over time lacking higher academic achievement.

Columnist Carol Markowitz condemns teachers for allowing “student grade bubble,” saying educators are falling on the job.The Editorial Board of the Southern California Newspaper Group blames the crisis on teachers’ unions who, they argued, were “off the hook” but whose “power will have to be limited.”

But teachers are usually the ones who resist raising grades. They usually require rigor and accountability. Also, our unions don’t tell us how we should evaluate; instead, they protect our discretion in evaluation.

So where does this grade inflation come from? School districts and school administrators.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, like many others, teachers have come under pressure to eliminate most failing grades and reduce the number of grades they give.

At one low-performing high school, for example, after each five-week grading period, each teacher receives a summary grade with a chart showing how many of their students receive Ds or Fs compared to the school as a whole. Any low score is highlighted in bright red.

Included is a lecture from the district that “a disproportionate number of failures or Ds for any reporting period or for a single assignment immediately signals the need to revise the instructional program.”

In some schools, giving low grades has become a laborious process. It is not enough for success rates to convey the message that a student is “at risk of failure.” To give a low rating, teachers must also repeatedly contact parents and then log each contact.

Teachers are already overloaded with paperwork. And in the face of having to deal with 30 to 40 sets of parents, teachers have a lot of incentive to say, “This is too much work; I’ll just give them all Cs”—which, of course, is part of the purpose of these requirements.

Yet people with an interest in education have very legitimate incentives to inflate grades.

Many areas, including Los Angeles, experienced a significant drop in enrollment during and after COVID. School officials perceive, not unreasonably, that making it easier for students to pass and graduate leads to better attendance and higher enrollment.

in California, schools are funded by attendance. Administrators are right to protect their budgets and avoid the pain and malice of layoffs. For them, grade inflation is a useful tool.

Another problem with rigorous grading: students who have no hope of passing a class are much more likely to have discipline problems.

At the end of the semester, there tends to be “travelers”—students who don’t attend classes because they know they can’t pass. They roam the campus avoiding the school authorities. In these cases, administrators, deans and teachers have an incentive to give everyone a chance to pass.

In large public school systems, many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Some critics blame measures designed to help these students for the problems reported by UCSD.

Education author Lance Izumi argues that “many schools emphasize fairness above merit,” while education reformer Robert Pondicheau denounced “K–12 education love affair with “equity,” calling him “intellectually bankrupt.”

Teachers are constantly torn between demanding good attendance, hard work and accountability, and making accommodations for students whose home lives are difficult.

A few weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehended and deported the fathers of two of my seniors. Both students now work full-time to support their families while trying to stay on track to graduate.

Other students were homeless, forced by circumstances to move far away, afraid to come to school because of ICE, or simply hungry. Rigor and accountability are great in the abstract, but in practice teachers cannot ignore the struggles of their students.