Campus Scenes
Not Making the Grade
Grade inflation and a sense of entitlement will not help American graduates compete.
Our lives are filled with measures of achievement. From cleaning our rooms as children and taking a driver’s test as teenagers to annual job reviews through the course of a career, there are benchmarks of achievement that follow us through the entirety of our lives. As we grow, these benchmarks become more numerous and the stakes become higher.
Curiously, these benchmarks are being consistently eroded in primary and secondary education, a stage of life when they should be most emphasized. Standard benchmarks in educational achievement are increasingly falling by the wayside and the results are troubling.
George Leef with the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy wrote of this problem at the college level, noting that more college students today expect high grades for simply showing-up in class or completing reading assignments. The New York Times explored the issue as well, quoting college educators bemoaning the fact that too many students are equating effort with quality of work.
The origins of this sense of entitlement to good grades are not difficult to trace. Students preparing for college now often find themselves in classrooms where self esteem is valued more than results. This mindset is perpetuated at the collegiate level as institutions increasingly forsake legitimate measures of scholarly merit in favor of unclear and shifting policies designed to permit social engineering, both in terms of admission to college and assessments of performance within it.
An illustration of this is seen in the relatively small but
growing number of colleges that have dropped standardized testing
as a requirement for admission in favor of “holistic” admission
practices.
Just last month, the University of California Board of Regents voted to eliminate SAT Subject Tests as an admissions requirement, opting instead for a costly “entitled to review” system. The stated reason for dropping the tests: Some students did not know they had to take them, thus creating a “barrier” to admission.
Efforts to eliminate such standards in education come from outside academia as well. Political activist groups like Fair Test and others advocating the end of standardized testing for college admission do so not for academic reasons but because doing so meshes with the defined political agenda of liberal control over academia. This is done by preaching to students and educators about the false politics of entitlement over the practical necessity of achievement. Test-optional policies promoted by such groups serve no purpose other than to blur the lines of scholarship while destroying empirical standards of education and the definition of academic merit.
Wherever standards are destroyed and merit is redefined, a sense of entitlement necessarily follows. This is true in any aspect of society. In the field of education, it manifests itself in the demand by students for high grades when they are not earned. Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, summed up the need for empirical measures, telling the New York Times, “Unless teachers are very intentional with our goals, we play into the system in place.”
The same can be said of test optional admission policies at America’s colleges. Presenting students with uncertain and imprecise standards for admission plays into this growing sense of entitlement. It stands to reason that, if the standards for admission to college are subject to holistic whims, so too should be the grades given to students. The end result is a workforce that is less able to contribute to and compete in an increasingly competitive global economy.
The American economy today is under stress because of a recession. Recessions ebb and flow over time, but a failure to provide the highest caliber education and demand excellence from those who seek it poses a far larger threat. Students may receive higher grades by simply demanding them, but America will not succeed economically just because we want rewards without results. It’s time to align our education priorities with economic realities.
About the Author
Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio is Vice Chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Platform Committee. He also serves on the boards of the Club For Growth and the National Taxpayers Union.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
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hsmteach| 3.2.09 @ 8:25AM
Liberals are doing the same thing to our education system that they did to the housing market. If it is not stopped we will have an achievment bubble that will burst as well. A high school diploma does not mean anything and soon, if not already, a college diploma will mean nothing as well.
John| 3.2.09 @ 8:44AM
Mr. Blackwell,
You raise very valid points, but you have missed a very critical factor in the issue regarding the insane grade inflation that has taken over in schools both public and private.
Parents
I am the parent of an 18 year old freshman at a major east cost university, a 16 year old sophomore in public High School, and a 13 year old in 7th grade in a Catholic School...
My observation is pretty plain. Parents drive grade inflation and the schools, eager to keep the lawsuits and trouble down, comply.
Fairfax and Loudoun County Schools recently switched to a much more lenient 10 point grading scale from the ancient and reliable 6 point scale. Of course all neighboring counties will be forced to change because their children will be graduating with lower Grade Point Averages than their competition for slots in various state schools. That 4 point range between 90 and 93 translates into one full grade point on the transcript (which shows nothing at all about the percentage of knowledge demonstrated).
My son reports that many teachers in college don't really even give grades... you just get a B for showing up. I could have used that little trick while pounding and struggling my way through Freshman English Essays. Not to mention sweating my way through SI Hayakawa's "Language in Thought and Action". That B would have made me feel so much better about myself. I might actually have refrained from using passive voice in this little blurb.
The fact remains the blame sits squarely at the feet of lazy, selfish, indulgent parents. They who over organize, over medicate, and molly coddle their children's lives into indolence.
There are smart kids. Those who achieve and care. However, their numbers dwindle.
It is truly sad. College used to be tough. High School used to be tough enough that it prepared you for life as an adult. Now it's all about ribbons, awards for everybody... and feeling so good about yourself that failure just doesn't matter anymore.
That is the worst failure of all.
Regards,
John
frost| 3.2.09 @ 9:15AM
My wife is a college professor (Business) with lotsa initials after her name -- maintains that she has never witnessed such poorly equipped freshmen. Middle and high schools are doing a most inferior job of educating; kids with "good" grades need "remedial" courses because they know so little - - many can't write a 3-4 paragraph paper, they've never been required to write anything of substance while being "edicated"....
Excellence in education is no longer applicable; inflation in grades the norm. Can you say "sickening?"
Appleby| 3.2.09 @ 11:12AM
The top line secretaries in this firm are all in their late fifties or early sixties, and we frequently snicker quietly to one another about the illiteracy of the young attorneys for whom we work. ("He thinks LOL is a word," is shorthand for this condition.) We are also looking forward with secret glee to the day when these illiterati have equally ignorant secretaries who cannot save them from themselves, and the date certain when the whole system collapses because nobody can understand anything anybody has written, spoken or otherwise placed in the record.
As the Innkeeper said in Man of La Mancha, "But oh when you do, what will happen to you? Thank God I won't be there to see!"
Stan redmond| 3.2.09 @ 12:00PM
I look forward to the day when I hire someone with a masters degree in philosophy to clean the toilets in my factory. I find now even engineering students are steeped in P.C. feel-goodery but they can sometimes be trained to leave it behind. The masters that went to liberal schools like UCSC are ABSOLUTELY useless. Stubborn, arrogant, and innexperienced.
David Govett| 3.2.09 @ 12:09PM
Warning to other states: Prepare to receive millions of Californians, like me, who have tired of paying for the nitwittery that passes for government here.
Pat| 3.2.09 @ 12:24PM
Second article I've seen in two days on this theme, the San Diego Union penned a similar one. With a severe recession and their 401-k's falling like leaves, the old geezer set is very concerned with how todays' kids are doing in schools. Faced with 73 million oldsters entering retirement over the next 25 years, there will be a steadily increasing concern the younger generation does well in school - someone has to fund their retirement and at generous levels. "Work hard and succeed youngsters" is their self-serving advice.
The Woodstock generation is in full panic mode: "Omigosh, what have we done!". The SSA is looking at a warehouse full of IOU's from the United States Treasury, but no money to pay the monthly retirement stipends. Even grimmer is the realization that Medicare costs to keep the Old alive and kicking could run as high as 5 times the dollar expense of room and board payments for the graybeards.
Selfish to the end and having blown their payroll contributions on foreign wars and useless (plus endless) social welfare programs, the Boomers are perfectly willing, and quite anxious, to have the younger generation take up the burden for their care. The question is whether these young folks are also willing and to what extent.
The Culture of Death provided a solution when we chose to kill off the millions of unwanted babies and is now offering the same solution for the unwanted geriatrics. As a trend setting California type society, the Netherlands has already authorized its physicians to end the lives of terminally ill oldsters - and with or without their consent. Same goes for babies with born with severe disabilities. With the same disgusting rationalizations so common in America, a Dutch doctor describes the "pulling the plug" process as "beautiful" for the old folks and mouthed the hypocritical injunction "they've finally found peace" for the disabled infants being murdered.
America's seniors have a grim foreboding of what may be in store for them - we have the same culture, just not as consciously developed. Grandpop will quickly come to the realization today's college students get to pick his govt. funded nursing home and possibly his govt. mandated "beautiful" but unwilling death.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.2.09 @ 12:34PM
When you have or produce any product, that product has to have viability, which in essence is believability.
It's rather obvious that between the NEA and public service unions, they are more interested in gaming the system for better benefits, rather then changing the system to produce the better product, i.e., better and more learned students.
The reduction of production quality or standards in the private sector which leads to lower perceived standards of the product and resultant lower quality, normally makes those products less desirable.
The impact of the dumbing down falls mainly on females and minorities, whose quality is beyond dispute. Thanks to Affirmative Action, the recently enacted Lily Ledbetter Law, and various and other sundry gender and race based policies, it's questionable whether these individuals actually need an education or simply a good lawyer and a vague vagina or racial tinged based excuse to launch an attack against their employer.
The essence of this trend is that insurance costs will skyrocket in the work place, in the same manner they did in the medical field. In the meantime, half wits will continue to seek employment opportunities for which they are not qualified, and when they fail, they will point out the obvious. They are a protected species and can not be ignored.
At some point, many corporations and companies will get tired of all this, and simply shut down or move out of the USA looking for a friendlier business environment.
At that point the American taxpayer will get stuck with a new horde of parasites who passed through the system being portrayed as geniuses.
It's amazing that more citizens don't perceive the end game coming in these situations. Public service work places have already implemented promotional exams that have had to be changed over and over as females and minority candidates, who never learned how to study or simply figure an attorney can get them over the top, fail at the exams while white males continue to excel and always clock out the top ten.
There is an excellent example of this in several lawsuits being filed by white male candidates who take the tests, excel, and then are informed, too bad, no minority candidates made it so the test is obviously invalid.
Don't worry thought, it won't be long before another federal law is passed simply stating clearly, if you're a white male, go screw yourself.
http://www.adversity.net/c11_tbd.htm
SUCCESS! The County settled with the firefighters this week! Orange County board member Mable Butler actually called the firefighters "bigots" (on TV!) for defending their Constitutional rights. Board Chairwoman Linda Chapin and her quota-supporters on the Council have spent the past 8 years trying to re-write the Constitution in favor of racial quotas, but these firefighters would have none of it. Fortunately, both Chapin and Butler are out of office next month due to term limits (8 years was long enough to do plenty of damage).
Down:
DOWN: Case Details, the Complaint.
Details
LAW FIRM: The 32 firefighters were successfully represented by lawyers Bernie Dempsey, Brian Solomon and Jeffrey Grant, all with the following law firm:
Dempsey and Sasso
Nations Bank Center
390 N. Orange Ave, Suite 2700
Orlando, Florida 32801
Phone 407-422-5166
(October 14, 1998) -- CASE DETAILS: From 1991 to the present, the Orange County Fire Rescue Division (OCFRD) and Orange County government (near Orlando Florida) have systematically discriminated against and trampled the rights of white male Firefighters and applicant Firefighters through the imposition of a misguided and illegal preferential hiring and promotion plan.
According to the Orlando Sentinel (10/12/98), the 32 firefighters who are suing are seeking $5 million for emotional harm and $1 million for lost wages. The firefighters' attorneys' fees for bringing the County to justice could cost the County as much as an additional $2 million (in addition to the County's own legal expenses).
Because the 32 firefighters think white guys should be treated fairly, they have had to endure charges of racism from their management and from minority firefighters.
Following the court date Wed., 10/14/98, an inside source told Adversity.Net the parties may be preparing to reach a settlement rather than drag the legal battle out any longer.
Wednesday's court appearance was the culmination of two prior reverse discrimination lawsuits against Orange County. Suits filed in 1994 and 1996 had been combined by U.S. District Judge Kendall Sharp.
http://www.adversity.net/BostonFD/default.htm
In April 2001 five white men sued the Boston Fire Department for racial discrimination when they were passed over for firefighting jobs in favor of minority candidates with lower entrance exam scores.
The five white firefighter applicants who sued are Joseph Quinn, Sean O'Brien, Robert Dillon, Joseph Sullivan and C. Roger Kendrick, Jr.
These five brave men had to overcome a 1974 federal court order known as the Beecher decision which required the Boston FD to discriminate against white and other non-minority firefigher applicants in order to achieve the constitutionally dubious goal of racial parity (otherwise known as proportional representation of minorities) within the fire department.
2. Brief Legal Chronology
The Boston Fire Department had been saddled with a racial quota for hiring blacks and Hispanics for most of the past 30 years.
The infamous Beecher decision in 1974 resulted in the Boston FD practicing what is known as 1 for 1 paired hiring of minorities and whites (known as the 1 for 1 rule) until racial parity was reached, i.e., until the proportion of minority Boston firefighters roughly equaled the proportion of minorities in the general Boston population.
To put it in Clintonesque terms, Beecher dictated that the Boston FD had to "look like Boston".
April 2001: The plaintiffs, Quinn, et al, sued Boston FD for racial discrimination.
Quinn argued that the racial parity in the Boston FD which was ordered by the 1974 Beecher decree had been achieved by the date on which they applied to the Boston FD (October 2000).
Boston FD Index
1. Introduction and Overview
2. Legal Chronology
3. Letter from Plaintiff
4. Racial Quota Redux
5. 1 for 1 Hiring Rule
6. Legal Oddities
7. Lawyer for Plaintiffs
B. Boston FD NEWS Stories (New Page)
C. Boston FD Court Rulings (New Page)
They cited Census 2000 data showing that the proportion of minority firefighters in Boston FD was actually higher than the proportion of minorities in the City of Boston.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns rejected their discrimination claim, reasoning that, in fact, racial parity had not been achieved if one counted the number of minorities in all ranks of the department, including officers and administrative personnel.
March 27, 2003: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the lower court on appeal by the plaintiffs (Quinn, et al).
Boston Racial Quotas Discriminate! Among other things, appeals Judge Bruce M. Selya, in writing for the majority of the three judge appeals panel, said that the 1974 Beecher ruling clearly and unambiguously intended that the racial parity test be applied only to the hiring of new firefighters and not to the administrative staff and officers of the department. The appeals court ruled that racial parity had, therefore, already been achieved in October 2000 when the plaintiffs applied to the fire department.
Marc Jeric| 3.2.09 @ 1:45PM
Very few people associate the ongoing distaster in our public education with the establishment of teacher unions in 1965. Now on the average 45% of "teachers" teach while 55% "coordinate, facilitate, administrate, and study". Government employee unions have work rules where an office supervisors cannot demand his/her secretary to type a memo for a meeting two days hence - all deadlines are strictly illegal! That supervisor will receive a written warning with threats of firing if that breach of union contract is committed again.
Hank Archer| 3.2.09 @ 2:39PM
Don't underestimate the role affirmative action played in this. Imagine you're a professor with thirty students, three are minorities. Two of the three minorities (who were admitted with lower qualifications due to AA) deserve Fs. You can't give them Fs because of disparate impact and fear of the “racist” charge. So you give them Cs. But there are also two non-minority students who deserve Fs. Do you give them Fs and worry that they might find out that others in the class who had similar performance got Cs? Or do you just bite the bullet and give them Cs too?
And what about the three non-minorities who deserve Ds? Give them Bs? Then what about the students who actually deserve Bs? Rinse, lather, repeat.
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American Spectator « Blog Entry « Dr. Melissa Clouthier links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Peter Lyden| 3.2.09 @ 4:25PM
Tangential to the topic, but still apropos:
I'm a Georgetown grad and fan of the basketball team. At the start of the season, the media and coaches' polls had them near the top of the rankings. Watching the early games, I thought the polls were overstated. the club was good, but not great - very young and prone to making careless mistakes, and lacking on-court leadership. In a year or two, maybe, but this year looked like a rebuilding one to me.
Sure enough, as the season wore on, the flaws of the team became apparent, and the Hoyas reeled off loss after loss - many of them not even competitive. Going into the final week o the regula season, the best they cn hope for in conference play is an 8-10 record.
Yet the TV analysts keep talking about how Georgetown could still make the NCAA tournament, based on the difficulty of its schedule - in other words, you get points for showing up on the court with UConn or Pitt, even if you can't keep up with them.
Hey, I'm sure they're good kids and work hard, but deserving of rewards for a sub-500 season?
Alan Brooks| 3.2.09 @ 8:01PM
a professor told me he routinely passes black athletes who are failing.
Stan Redmond| 3.2.09 @ 10:44PM
Dear Dave Govett,
I welcome you with open arms. As a fellow ex-Californian I know that the talent and hardworking people are leaving California for a reason. Your hard work and dedication is not welcome in California and because you are hard working and dedicated you are leaving California. So you, sir, are most welcome to help build the economies of states other then California.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.09 @ 10:47PM
so how CAN education be reformed?
by bringing back segregation-- segregating the smart from the dumb.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.09 @ 10:48PM
it certainly is a start--but don't hold your breath.
Ed| 3.3.09 @ 11:38AM
American Spectator readers should know that a major part of this grade inflation is due to that fact that most college teachers these days do not have tenure, but are part-time, full-time but temporary, or assistant professors who do not yet have tenure. College faculty in these catagories are vulnerable to student complaints to the Dean or Department Head, or poor SRI's (the fill-in-the-blank Student Ratings of Instruction). I am a part-time college science teacher who has been dinged more than a few times for being "demanding, but fair" in my courses. The nasty little secret in college teaching is that there are very few natural born American citizens getting science and math graduate degrees anymore. When the current crop of part-time Boomers and X-ers retire, the college math and science teachers will just not be there to fill the slots.
mothergoose| 3.3.09 @ 10:28PM
The colleges can blame themselves for the poor quality of students. Who started open admissions which admitted students without regard to their high school records? Who instituted remedial courses on the campus? And now how many faculty jobs are tied up in those remedial courses? And how many more faculty jobs are tied up in allowing students to "explore" their way through 5 or 6 years to a BA? If colleges were selective in their admission standards, students would study and take more challenging courses in high school so they could show up, do the work and graduate on time. However...then a lot of professors would be out of work.
Curmudgeon | 3.3.09 @ 11:32PM
To add a tuppence ...
As a highschool teacher, I will point out that colleges deserve all of these problems in spades. We have most of the problems you ascribe to us - overbearing parents, lazy kids, incompetent teachers - but you have removed some of the best "motivations" I had.
Anyone can get to college now. They'll get Bs and As with crappy or nonexistent work and they all know it.
I used to be able to say, "You're gonna need this to get into college" but parents get my grades overruled and then Johnny does great in college. Why should I carry on a fight if the colleges won't?
I could say "This is fascinating to me" but the priorities of the school are clear to them and math isn't one of them. Sports are. Texting is.
"You're never gonna graduate with this attitude" is replaced with "What can we do to help him pass?" Pre-requisites are replaced with "individualized instruction" and "differentiated learning" and "no grade below a 50 because they would be in too deep a hole."
I don't really care what problems the colleges have. Put up or shut up. Fail some of my students so I can point to them and use them as object lessons. Deny them admission. Tell them that their essays were crap and obviously faked so that I can turn that around down here. Don't give them As for garbage and then complain to me that I didn't prepare them well enough.
From where I sit, I prepared them just fine.
Go ahead. Have some standards. I dare you.
Craig| 3.4.09 @ 11:28AM
The quickest way I've heard of to combat grade inflation is to also compile the average grade in the course, and print that next to the student's grade on their transcript. It's not a perfect solution, but at least it shows the baseline.
Howard| 3.4.09 @ 7:15PM
I don't know where else to post this. I have already written letters to the dean of my alma mater. Please, you professors, I implore you not to continue what you are doing. Universities are the lifeblood of a civilization. Do not continue to destroy them. This is a plea for mercy. I am begging you to return to the academic and intellectual standards that you must know are needed, not only for success, but for the survival of our culture and our country. Thank you for your indulgence.
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