Educators, likewise, find themselves pressured to make do with an increasingly narrow band of the grading scale. If one’s peers are strategically selecting courses to maximize their GPAs and their relative class rankings, a student is forced at least to consider the wisdom of doing the same herself, lest she compare unfavorably when competing for graduate school or a sought-after job. As a result, the cycles of grade inflation become self-perpetuating: each uptick in the average grade places more pressure on both students and instructors to respond in kind. Unfortunately, teachers’ efforts to disarm grades by compressing the grading scale is only partially successful, because the shift in grades does not address the underlying competition in the system, which makes small distinctions among students highly consequential. ![]() Ironically, a policy aimed at suppressing grade inflation managed to fuel it instead. The result? Students used the newly available information to seek out more leniently graded courses, and soon the median GPA was once more on the rise. The policy, however, was only partially implemented: the course information was published on the internet for those willing to search for it, but it never appeared on transcripts. A proposal by the Cornell University Faculty Senate in the 1990s, for instance, sought to publish the median grades for all courses, as well as to include the median course grade on student transcripts - allowing any reader of the transcript to understand the overall grading difficulty of the course. Similar efforts have been undertaken to varying degrees at the college level. For instance, many high schools provide information about class rank - a way to place a student’s GPA in context. Some schools have responded to grade inflation by trying to place student grades in a larger context. Not surprisingly, colleges around the country saw a very steep rise in student GPAs during the period. Is the professor being unreasonable in thinking that grades in her first-year course ought not jeopardize students’ ability to continue their college educations? A similar conundrum, if not outright moral dilemma, hung over nearly all grading decisions during the Vietnam War, when instructors knew that a student who flunked out would lose his draft deferment. She also knows that in order to maintain eligibility for their Pell Grants, the students need to maintain a grade-point average of 2.0 - the equivalent of a C. The professor knows that such students often struggle academically in the first year as they make the transition from high school to college-level work. Consider the college professor who teaches an introductory course at an institution with a large percentage of first-generation students eligible for federal grant aid. The more that hangs in the balance for students, the harder it can be for instructors to “hold the line” and ignore the larger ramifications of their grading decisions. Even those students who do succeed are burdened with the responsibility of navigating multiple cultural codes among peer, community, and school environments. And schools are often designed around competitive or individual processes that reinforce such perceptions and stereotypes about who succeeds in school. Young people who start behind are likely to view themselves as less capable. But key among them is what researchers refer to as “academic self-concept.” As one set of scholars notes: “academic self-concept refers to individuals’ knowledge and perceptions about themselves in achievement situations.” In other words, it describes the extent to which students view themselves as academically capable. This is a complicated matter, associated with a number of variables. And, as research demonstrates, they are likely to stay behind. Young people from low-income families and historically marginalized racial groups are more likely to start school behind their more privileged peers. But once more, it tends to play out in ways that exacerbate inequities. Students from all backgrounds can be demotivated by grades.
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