Remember when a grade of "C" meant you were perfectly average?

Yeah, neither do we.

But allegedly, there was a point in time when that was exactly what it meant, which in turn means it was the most common grade received by students everywhere.

Nowadays…not so much. The most common grade received by college students is an "A" (source), and it follows that if that's what's going on at the college level, it's likely happening at elementary and secondary levels as well. And this study from ACT.org suggests that, in fact, it is.

But aren't "A" and "B" grades are supposed to be awarded for above average work, and "D" and "F" grades for work that is below average? And things that are above and below average should, ultimately, be rarer than things that are average…shouldn't they?

We've all seen the bell curve. The one that shows that the majority of students should be getting C's, with a fair number landing one deviation away in either the B or D range, and the fewest number of students winding up in either A or F territory.

Instead, by 2010, A's and B's represented 73% of the grades awarded at public colleges and 86% of the grades students received at private colleges.

So what happened?

Pick a Theory

There are a number of theories as to why grade inflation began and why it continues to occur. According to Catherine Rampell, who wrote the article, "A History of College Grade Inflation" in The New York Times, "researchers argue that grade inflation began picking in the 1960s and 1970s probably because professors were reluctant to give students D's and F's. After all, poor grades could land young men in Vietnam" (source).

Yikes. Now that's a reason if we've ever heard one.

In the post-Vietnam era, Rampell's researchers suggest that grade inflation continued due to an educational approach in which the idea was that better grades for students could "produce better instructor reviews…and [could] help students be more competitive candidates for graduate schools and the job market" (source)

Another theory, this one from ACT.org and on the secondary-school level, posits that "as job requirements increase—especially to the point where a college degree has become a minimum 2 qualification—teachers may feel the need to grade their students more leniently to enhance the students' chances of gaining admission to college" (source).

Yet another explanation suggests that grades became inflated when teachers began factoring in student "effort, ability, behavior, and attitude" (source) in addition to their performance on assignments and tests. So that's what's behind that "A for effort" thing.

Of course, there are others—Alfie Kohn for one—who think the whole grade inflation scandal is a myth. As evidence, Kohn juxtaposes two quotes from Harvard sources at the top of his article, "The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation":

1. "Grade inflation got started…in the late '60s and early '70s….The grades that faculty members now give…deserve to be a scandal." —Professor Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University, 2001

and

2. "Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily—Grade A for work of no very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity.…One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work." —Report of the Committee on Raising the Standard, Harvard University, 1894

Kohn goes further suggest that there is no way to prove grade inflation because there is no way to demonstrate "that students today get A's for the same work that used to receive B's or C's. We simply do not have the data to support such a claim" (source).

Then again (there's always a "then again"), ACT.org acknowledges this complaint and purports to have used its test to do exactly that—show that students who took the ACT in 2003 had higher GPAs than students who had taken it twelve years earlier, despite receiving identical scores.

As with many issues in our "hot button" section, this one is hot specifically because it's so hard to lay down an answer one way or another.

What you can do as a teacher is ask the right questions. Are grades inflated at your school? If so, why? And if not, does that place your students at a disadvantage? As for the answers…well, we already gave you an article.

Doesn't that earn us an A for effort?