This Is an Electronic Packet of Information to Use to Write Your Research Paper. Think s1

This is an electronic packet of information to use to write your Research Paper. Think of this packet like it is a cafeteria – you will select those items from it that you want to use in your Research Paper and leave all of the other items alone. (Remember, on the AP Language Exam you will be given 7 different pieces of information and a topic to write on. You will need to use information from 3 of the 7 pieces in your paper AND in your paper document (say which exact source was used for each piece you paraphrase or quote) each quote or paraphrase.

From this packet you are to select the BEST pieces of particulars to provide perfect proof that your Claim (thesis) is correct. Your quotes, your block quotes and your paraphrases will all come from the material in this packet. Nothing will be documented in your paper that is not in this packet. The packet contains a variety of information. Some of which you will not be able to use because it will not support your claim. Remember to select the best proof. REMEMBER, THIS PAPER IS TO BE YOUR WRITING AND YOUR IDEAS, SUPPORTED BY TEXTUAL SPECIFICS FROM THESE SOURCES.

You may not be able to write a Works Cited page on which every entry lists every piece of information MLA standards want for every source. Are you asking yourself why won’t you know all the information to write a complete entry? Only the information given at the top of the first page of each piece of information (some information may take more than one page) can be used. Remember, using MLA rules – if a piece of information is not provided, ignore it and move to the next piece of information.

If you have a question, ask in class….e-mail me… stop in before school or after school. Remember that famous saying by Jim Rohn: Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments." Don’t put off working on this paper.

You have been working with rhetorical techniques; here is where you demonstrate that you can write using rhetorical techniques. After your paper is written, go back through it and elevate the language – include some techniques that demonstrate your writing is mature, concise and demonstrates your outstanding skills. Use…. similes….. metaphors….. rhetorical questions… logos, ethos, pathos, ……..?????????

You can do this! Mrs. C Source Information: Site: http://www.gradeinflation.com/ Seen: June 6, 2010 Source B: GPA Data http://www.gradeinflation.com/ Auburn University 1988 2.60 Georgia Institute of Source: Internal University document 1989 2.62 Technology http://www.panda.auburn.edu/cgpabcag.htm 1990 2.66 Source: Cumulative GPA, all students. Insitutional Research and Planning 1991 2.68 Undergraduate cumulative GPA, 1992 2.69 Fall term. 1993 2.69 1972 2.45 1994 2.70 1973 2.46 1995 2.72 1974 2.45 1996 2.73 1975 2.44 1997 2.76 1976 2.47 University of Florida 1977 2.48 Source: http://www.ir.ufl.edu/factbook/degree.htm 1978 2.50 Fall term, all undergraduates. 1979 2.52 1989 2.88 1980 2.56 1990 2.89 1981 2.58 1991 2.89 1982 2.58 1992 2.94 1983 2.58 1993 2.96 1984 2.57 1994 2.97 1985 2.60 1995 2.98 1986 2.60 1996 3.04 1987 2.59 1997 3.06 1988 2.58 1998 3.08 1989 2.60 1999 3.13 1990 2.64 2000 3.15 1991 2.66 2001 3.19 1992 2.74 University of Texas at Austin 1993 2.76 Source: Internal University documents 1994 2.79 http://www.utexas.edu/student/research/reports/ 1995 2.78 Inflation/Inflation.html Freshmen only 1996 2.80 1997 2.82 1986 2.46 1998 2.84 1987 2.44 1999 2.79 1988 2.41 2000 2.82 1989 2.48 2001 2.85 1990 2.53 2002 2.86 1991 2.54 1992 2.59 1993 2.68 1994 2.70 1995 2.72 University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Source: For 1967-1998, http://www.unc.edu/faculty/faccoun/reports/R2000EPCGrdInfl.PDF. Data are for Fall Semester, all undergraduates. 1967 2.39 1968 2.43 1969 2.45 1970 2.51 1971 2.56 Louisiana State University 1972 2.61 Source: Internal University document 1973 2.66 http://www.math.lsu.edu/~mcgehee/Grades.html 1974 2.69 Based on percent grade awarded calibrated 1975 2.72 using 1976 2.74 the Duke University data set. Accuracy estimated 1977 2.72 to be within 0.03. 1978 2.71 Data are for the entire academic year. 1979 2.70 1965 2.44 1980 2.69 1984 2.67 1981 2.69 1991 2.83 1982 2.68 2001 2.95 1983 2.68 1984 2.68 1985 2.67 1986 2.67 1987 2.69 1988 2.72 1989 2.76 1990 2.83 1991 2.83 1992 2.85 1993 2.91 1994 2.88 1995 2.88 1996 2.90 http://www.gradeinflation.com/ 1997 2.93 1998 2.94 1999 2.93 2000 2.95 2001 2.98 This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper

Source Information: Title: Ivy League Grade Inflation Newspaper: USA Today Date published: 02/08/2002 Who makes the grade? Evidence of grade inflation at Ivy League schools: When a report found recently that eight out of every 10 Harvard students  In 1966, 22% of graduate with honors and nearly half receive A's in their courses, the news Harvard prompted plenty of discussion and more than a few jokes. But is grade inflation undergraduate worth worrying about? students earned A's. By 1996, that figure Really smart students probably deserve really high grades. Moreover, tough rose to 46%. That graders could alienate their students. Plus, tough grading makes a student less same year, 82% of Harvard seniors likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in graduated with college rankings. honors.  In 1973, 31% of all All are among reasons cited by professors in explaining why grade inflation is grades at Princeton nothing to worry about. And all are insufficient justification for the practice. were A's. By 1997 College-grade inflation — which is probably an extension of the well- that rose to 43%. In documented grade inflation in high schools — is a problem. And it extends well 1997, only 12% of all beyond Harvard. grades given at Princeton were below Fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus, the B range. according to a study released this week by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That hardly seems justified at a time when a third of all college Source: American students arrive on campus so unprepared that they need to take at least one Academy of Arts & remedial course. Sciences

The report sifts through several possible causes for the inflated grades. Among them: A holdover practice from the 1960s, when professors knew that F's triggered a draft notice and a trip to Vietnam.

An influx of more students, including some minorities, who are less prepared for college work. Grading leniency is believed to encourage their continued academic participation and promote self-esteem.

Evaluation systems in which students grade professors, thereby providing an incentive for teachers to go easy on their future evaluators.

An explosion in the number of overburdened adjunct professors who lack the time to evaluate each student more accurately. The authors of the report cast doubt on several of those explanations, including the influx of minorities. They barely touch on an obvious explanation offered by several professors: Families paying more than $30,000 a year for a college education expect something more for their money than a report card full of gentleman's Cs. More important than the reasons for inflated grades is the impact they have.

When all students receive high marks, graduate schools and business recruiters simply start ignoring the grades. That leads the graduate schools to rely more on entrance tests. It prompts corporate recruiters to depend on a "good old boy/girl" network in an effort to unearth the difference between who looks good on paper and who is actually good.

Put to disadvantage in that system are students who traditionally don't test as well or lack connections. In many cases, those are the poor and minority students who are the first in their families to graduate from college. No matter how hard they work, their A's look ordinary. Viewed in that light, the fact that 50% of all Harvard students now get A's is a troubling problem. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper

Source Information: Title: Harvard’s Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation Newspaper: Boston Globe Date published: October 21, 2001 on-line at : http://www.endgradeinflation.org/ Viewed: June 21, 2010

In October 2001 the Boston Globe released an article entitled Harvard’s Quiet Secret: Rampant Grade Inflation. The article reported a record 91% of Harvard University students were awarded honors during the spring graduation. Said one student, Trevor Cox, “I’ve coasted on far higher grades than I deserve. It’s scandalous. You can get very good grades and earn honors, without ever producing quality work.”

Previously, Harvard’s Dr. Harvey Mansfield spoke out publicly against grade inflation in the April 2001 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts reveals a willingness on his part to take a public stand on the issue. In Professor Mansfield’s words “There is something inappropriate--almost sick--in the spectacle of mature adults showering young people with unbelievable praise. We are flattering our students in our eagerness to get their good opinion. American colleges used to set their own expectations. Now, increasingly, they react to student expectations.” Additional recent commentaries include: “Once graduates enter the job market, they discover they can’t bank on those undeserved grades.” (Christian Science Monitor, November 6, 2001).

“The effect of grade inflation is a devaluing of undergraduate degrees.” (Levine and Cureton, 1998). “…it is a societal trend to de-emphasize competition and make people feel better about themselves.” (Dr. Perry Zirkel, Lehigh University). A “bachelor of arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947” (Wall Street Journal, January 30, 1997).

In February 2002, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences published results of a two year study on grade inflation in American colleges and universities conducted by Henry Rosovsky and Mathew Hartley. The report Evaluation and the Academy: Are We Doing the Right Thing? finds grade inflation existent nationwide. Selected quotes include: “compression in grades will create a system of grades in which A’s predominate and in which letters (of recommendation) consist primarily of praise. Meaningful distinctions will have disappeared.” http://www.endgradeinflation.org/ This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper

Source Information: Author: Gilliam Gillers Magazine: Newsweek Date published: August 1, 2004 Title: Grade Deflation Daylan Tatz, a Princeton junior, imagines sitting in a seminar and thinking, "OK, there are 10 people here. Only 3.5 people are going to get A's [or A-minuses]." Those calculations weren't on his mind in 2003-04, when marks of A or A-minus made up about 47 percent of undergraduate grades at Princeton. But starting in fall 2004, Princeton will reduce that number to 35 percent, roughly the level between 1973 and 1992. "I think students will be motivated to work harder and learn more by getting accurate information about the quality of their work," says Nancy Weiss Malkiel, Princeton's undergraduate dean.

Princeton is the first college to formally curb grade inflation, which plagues many schools. When Stuart Rojstaczer, a professor of environmental science at Duke, collected data on grading practices at 83 colleges, he found that 79 of them had experienced "significant" grade inflation in the past few decades. Grades at selective private schools are especially high. A 2003 Princeton study found that marks of A and A-minus accounted for 44 to 55 percent of grades at the Ivy League colleges, MIT, Stanford and the University of Chicago.

While some faculty and administrators claim students deserve their high marks, others see grade inflation as a problem. Amherst president Anthony Marx notes that as grades rise, they become less useful to students, graduate schools and employers. Faculty committees at Amherst are discussing how to confront grade inflation, Marx says, but it's too soon to tell what steps they may take. He admires that Princeton has confronted the issue, but he worries that using such a "blunt instrument to impose a curve" could discourage students from exploring unfamiliar subjects.

Several schools--including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Miami--try to keep grades in line by informally pressing faculty. After evaluating this method for five years, Princeton faculty and administrators decided that only a university-wide standard would work. "Otherwise we have what [the department chairs] called a collective-action problem," Malkiel says. "There would be no incentive for the faculty in any single academic department to grade more responsibly if faculty in other departments were left free to grade much more liberally."

But a handful of schools have managed to keep grades constant without resorting to university-wide directives. At Reed College in Oregon, the average GPA has hovered around 2.9 for more than 20 years. "This really reflects the tradition and culture of the college," says Peter Steinberger, dean of the faculty. "The faculty feels the best way to teach students is to evaluate their work honestly." Reed's unusual grading policy may also play a role in curbing inflation. The college does not regularly report grades--students must ask to see them--and it does not award academic honors like cum laude or valedictorian.

Reed students seem unconcerned about strict grading practices, and Princeton undergraduates may not worry either. Tough grading is unlikely to hurt students applying for jobs, graduate schools or fellowships. "Schools that are not part of this inflation trend we certainly make note of," says Andy Cornblatt, dean of admissions at Georgetown University Law School. Recruiters at Accenture and Goldman Sachs say they also recognize that different schools have different grading cultures, and they consider this when hiring graduates and student interns.

Still, Tatz, the Princeton junior, worries that the new policy will make students more competitive. "Am I one of the top 3.5 people in this class?" he asks. "I'm afraid I'm going to have that running through my mind the whole term." One piece of advice: focus on learning something instead.

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Source Information: Title: Higher Education Must Reverse Trend of Grade Inflation Author: Jonathan DeFelice Newspaper: The Union Leader Sunday News Date published: August 1, 2004

One of the greatest concerns of college administrators nationwide since the 1970s has been politely called "grade inflation." It refers to the granting of excessive percentages of superior grades to students, making an A or B the average grade rather than the indication of outstanding achievement. More recently, some high profile institutions like Harvard and Princeton have been in the spotlight for their efforts to reverse this documented trend. Our reaction at Saint Anselm College: We can show you how to do it.

Fr. Peter Guerin, who was dean of the college for 25 years, said in a recent interview : "One of the greatest disservices educators can do is give grades that aren't earned. It gives students a false and distorted evaluation of their abilities and achievements, and it weakens the value of the college diploma." Critics argue that students are simply getting smarter and their grades should reflect that. Yet, according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, over the last 30 years across the country, SAT scores of entering students have declined and one-third of freshmen are enrolled in at least one remedial course. Meanwhile, a study by a Duke University professor indicates that grade point averages (on a 4.0 scale) have increased more than a half-point since 1970.

The integrity of a Saint Anselm degree is grounded in the hard work and sacrifice required to achieve it. Sustaining that integrity is at the heart of the work that all of us at the college, particularly the faculty, do on a daily basis. The current Dean of the College Fr. Augustine Kelly has continued the tradition by closely monitoring grade distribution and keeping faculty honest in their evaluation of students.

Fair grading is not simply an administrative mandate on our campus. It's an ethical issue that gets at the very core of academic integrity nationwide. Whether at Saint Anselm, an Ivy League university or a local community college, to pretend that an average student has mastered a subject in an above average way is simply dishonest. While it may be perceived as a boost to a student's self-esteem, in fact, it prevents the student from honestly assessing his or her academic success. Honest grading demands that faculty remain committed to the cause in a consumer-driven society that includes students who believe they are entitled to good grades because they and their families are paying tuition.

While there is certainly pressure on both professors and administrators to accede to these distorted expectations, colleges and universities have the responsibility to honestly assign grades that students earn. The academy must set the bar high on standards and accountability. In fact, market research conducted for Saint Anselm College in 2002- 03 indicated that among college and university characteristics that students valued was a "tough grading policy that rewards good work without inflating grades."

While it is true that this concept does not sit well with all students, those who complain are usually the ones who think their peers at other institutions are "benefiting" from more lenient grading practices. I have found that the majority of Saint Anselm alumni appreciate the rigor with which their undergraduate degree was earned. Some write years later to thank a professor or the dean for the work ethic and standards they developed as a result of their Saint Anselm experience.

Increasingly, college graduates compete in a global economy. For many of these well-educated individuals, their work will be judged against that of peers in China and India, for example, who cost employers a fraction of their American counterparts. If our students are fooled into believing, because of grade inflation, that their competencies are greater than they actually are, they may be handicapped when they are called to compete on the worldwide stage of today's corporations.

I recall reading a piece by a physics professor who was appalled at the pressure he received from students, parents and university administrators to assign more A's. His answer: these students will someday graduate and be expected to design buildings, dams and bridges. Whether they have truly learned the material could be a matter of life and death. The same could be said of Saint Anselm graduates who are researchers, nurses and surgeons affiliated with elite medical facilities like Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Harvard. I can't speak for everyone, but if I'm headed for the operating room, I'll take the surgeon who earned his or her "A" the honest way. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper

Source Information: Title: University of Phoenix – Grade Inflation Author; Karen Sutter Type: Post site: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/education/phoenix_easya.html Karen of Sutter CA (6/4/03): I attended University of Phoenix for five classes. I have found that they literally give A's away. At first I thought that I was just being too hard on myself and that I really did deserve the A. Although things seemed too easy in my first three classes I continued to enroll. In my fourth class it was obvious that I received an A on a couple of assignments that I shouldn't have - I had left out some things, misspelled some words etc. I thought it was the teacher and decided to continue.

Then in my fifth class, I knew for a fact that things were amiss. Speaking to some of my fellow classmates, they had seen the same type of things. When I received my grade report I couldn't believe it. I had gotten 100% on two assignments that I didn't turn in, my groups research paper - which was a day late - received a 98%, even though we didn't include a reference list (the class was an English Composition class), it was a day late, and the word count was about 100 words short. I quickly realized that I could continue my education with Phoenix and receive straight A's; however, I also know that I would never hire someone based on their education received at Phoenix. I have since moved on.

I don't believe there will be any consequences for me, however as I stated, I would never hire a person based on their education from the University of Phoenix. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper

Source Information: Title: Grade Inflation Author: Richard C. Schiming on-line at: Minnesota State University Page address: http://www.mnsu.edu/cetl/teachingresources/articles/gradeinflation.html seen: July 8, 2010

Introduction: Grade inflation in higher education has been a hot button issue for at least the last twenty years. Recently grade inflation has become even more significant as some prominent institutions have attempted to deal with their escalating GPAs. The degree of grade inflation at some prestigious colleges and universities can be staggering. At Harvard in 1992, 91 percent of all undergraduate grades were B- or higher. In 1993, 83.6 percent of all Harvard seniors graduated with honors. At Stanford, typically only 6 percent of all students' grades were Cs. The university, until recently, did not permit an F grade. At Mankato State, the percentage of seniors who graduate with honors is around 25 percent. The honors' rate for individual colleges ranges between 20 and 40 percent. Last fall term, the average GPA for our undergraduates was 2.93, nearly a B average. The average GPA in the colleges was fairly consistent, ranging from 2.86 to 3.08.

Causes of Grade Inflation: Before exploring some of the causes of grade inflation mentioned in the literature, it is important to define grade inflation. The most obvious definition is that grade patterns change so that the overwhelming majority of students in a class, college, or university receive higher grades for the same quantity and quality of work done by students in the past. A corollary to this definition is the same GPA obtained by students with poorer academic skill (as measured by the SAT or ACT exams). Another less well known version of grade inflation is "content deflation" where students receive the same grades as students in the past but with less work required and less learning. It is also interesting that grade inflation has not always been the norm in higher education. The period from 1955 to 1965 has been described as a period of grade deflation. The average grade and GPA remained static even though the student body possessed higher and higher SAT and ACT scores. During this period, grading did not rise to reward the better qualified students.

What follows is a list of some of the frequently mentioned causes of grade inflation: 1. Institutional pressure to retain students. The easiest way to maintain enrollment is to keep the students that are already on campus. The professors, departments, colleges, and even entire universities may implicitly believe that giving their students higher grades will improve retention and the attractiveness of their classes and courses. With students seeing themselves more as consumers of education and more eager to succeed than to learn, the pressure on institutions to provide more success can be persuasive.

2. Increased attention and sensitivity to personal crisis situations for students. The most obvious example was the Vietnam War era. Poor grades exposed male students to the military draft. Many professors and institutions adopted liberal grading policies to minimize the likelihood of low grades. Some sources cite this period as the genesis of recent grade inflation as the students of that era are now professors.

3. Higher grades used to obtain better student evaluations of teaching. In an increased effort at faculty accountability, many colleges and universities mandate frequent student evaluations of faculty that often end up being published or otherwise disseminated. These same evaluations play an increasingly important role in tenure and promotion decisions. Faculty members who find themselves in such situations may attempt to 'buy' better student evaluations of their teaching by giving higher grades. While this trade may sound intuitively appealing, most of the studies that explore that relationship have failed to find that grades (whether given or expected) play a dominant role in student evaluations of faculty.

4. The increased use of subjective or motivational factors in grading. Factors such as student effort, student persistence, student improvement, and class attendance count in favor of the students who possess these desirable characteristics. This tends to skew grading patterns upwards.

5. Changing grading policies and practices. The increased use of internships, contract grading, individual study courses, group work within courses, a liberal withdrawal policy, generous use of the incomplete grade, and the ability to repeat courses to improve a grade can all contribute to grade inflation.

6. Faculty attitudes. A faculty member who believes that grades are a vehicle to please students rather than to recognize and reward performance will tend to give higher grades. Similarly a professor less willing to distinguish superior work from good or average work will tend to impart an upward bias to grades. One source places most of the blame for grade inflation on the shoulders of faculty who have failed in their traditional role of gatekeepers. The implication here is that it is easier to give a good grade than a bad grade for the instructor. 7. Content deflation. For large public universities, the temptation might be to lower both the expectations and demands in individual courses. A fairly liberal admissions policy, a large number of non-traditional students, and a large number of working students all tempt professors to lower their expectations by reducing the number of textbooks, the amount of writing, and the amount of homework in the course. The goal may be laudable in responding to the particular needs of a specific student body but the result may be inflated grades.

8. Changing mission. It is also possible that, as some institutions de-emphasize the teaching mission in favor of the research or service component, some faculty may be unwilling or unable to spend their time on grading and evaluation. This lack of attention to grading and evaluation could result in a weakening of standards.

Implications: The persistence of grade inflation in the last twenty years or so in American higher education has had some important implications. Some of these are: 1. A cheapening of the value and importance of both a college degree and academic honors.

2. The lack of consistent and accurate information to potential employers about the skills of a university's graduates. Consequently, employers place more emphasis on the work experience of college students in the hiring process. This forces students to work more at a job and study less in college.

3. The lack of honest responses to individual students about their academic strengths and weaknesses.

4. A continuing upward spiral of grades built on weakening standards as individual faculty members have little or no incentive to fight the prevailing trend.

5. With the value of a given letter grade or even a college degree devalued by the perception of grade inflation, there will be more pressure placed on faculty and institution to assess in other ways the performance of their students. Indeed, one can see the current trend for classroom assessment by external authorities as an attempt to obtain again meaningful feedback on the quality of student performance. If outsiders do not trust the grades on the transcript, they may require other demonstrations of student learning.

6. There is at least some anecdotal evidence that there is increasing disparity between the average grades in various disciplines and that students are avoiding disciplines with the reputation for more rigorous grading standards.

Potential Solutions: Certainly one obvious solution to the current debate is for an institution to have a serious discussion about the whole nature of grades and grading. Some discussion about grade expectations for our students would help faculty determine their own grading policy. Still other institutions have experimented with alterations to their traditional forms of grading in the hope on conveying more accurately the nature of student performance. Some of these changes include: 1. The use of a more finely tuned grading scale. The use of just five categories of grades (A-F) has, in the minds of some, contributed to overall grade inflation. Faculty are more likely to move a borderline student up to the next higher grade with such a system. The use of the plus and minus grading system can address this inflationary tendency as well as more accurately measure relative student performance.

2. The use of the overall class grade in the transcript. A number of universities in recent years have attempted to provide some perspective on the grades achieved by individual students by annotating the typical transcript. One variation is to note along with the individual grade, the mean or median grade for the class and the number of students in the class. Another variation is to use a grading system whereby the grade for the class is composed of two parts. The first number would be the student's grade in the class and the second would be the overall grade for the class. Thus the grade and the transcript would look like this: 3.0/2.7. This student earned a B in a class where the overall average grade was 2.7. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper

Source Information: Title: Grade Inflation …Why It’s a Nightmare Posted on: George Mason University’s History News Network Author: Jonathan Dresner site: http://hnn.us/articles/6591.html seen: July1, 2010

Our forward-thinking approach made us one of the stars of our accreditation reports; we were held up as a model department. What's the connection between grade inflation, accreditation and review, and assessment? Grade inflation (and its primary/secondary equivalent, social promotion) has made grades and advancement difficult to rely on as a measure of academic success. Since the institutions themselves have not committed to a solution, governing bodies, including accreditation agencies and government, are seeking to impose one. For primary and secondary education, this has come in the form of high-stakes testing, including NCLB assessments and Massachusetts-style graduation tests. If we are going to avoid similar 'solutions' being imposed on post-secondary education, we need to develop alternatives which credibly address the problem.

Grade Inflation First, we have to acknowledge that grade inflation is a reality, and more pronounced in some fields than others. At my own institution, the highest grades seem to come from pre-professional programs (nursing, education, agriculture, management, communications) and artistic fields (drama, dance, music), and cultural studies (women's studies, Hawaiian studies). Other departments with lower averages might still have a grade inflation problem, depending on the average quality and work of their students.

Grade inflation has three primary causes: student culture, pedagogical culture and institutional culture. The expansion of the student body since WWII has brought students with a wider range of abilities to college, and also drew in the best students from previously under-represented groups. It has also widened the gap between the level of colleges themselves: there are now significant differences between the average quality of students at various institutions, differences enshrined in things like the Petersen Guide 'tier' rankings. Because of the view of the bachelor's degree as a baseline credential for professional employment, many of these students are unengaged with their educations, and consider college an extended form of high school, where attendance and endurance matter more than engagement. This is particularly true of pre-professional students, who may take their major courses seriously but who don't engage with general education or distribution courses, but anyone with experience teaching intro-level courses recognizes the phenomenon. Plus, students take grades very personally: the grade is about them, not about their work. So differing standards seem unfair, and students respond poorly to the implicit criticism of low grades, particularly when they get accustomed to unearned high grades at earlier levels or in other courses.

This is reflected in, and exacerbated by, the abuse of quantitative measures of teaching effectiveness. The situation is complicated by the increased demands being placed on teachers: pedagogical innovation and new technology; higher publication standards; higher teaching loads and larger classes. The need to bring in majors and raise enrollments is another factor making raising standards difficult. Unless it is done in a uniform fashion, it will result in students shifting to 'easy' classes, and those faculty and departments who raise standards will face the wrath of administrators and budget committees. Student retention and graduation rates are used as measures of institutional effectiveness, which mitigates against failing (or even discouraging) even the most unprepared students.

Finally, partially as a result of the above-mentioned forces, and partially as a result of intellectual currents usually grouped under the term 'relativism', there has been a shift away from hard-and-fast standards, absolute grades, and critical responses to student work reflected in grades. These are not fundamentally bad ideas, but their inconsistent application and misapplication, along with the student and institutional issues above, has degraded the authority of faculty to set standards to which students feel obligated to adhere and the willingness of faculty to use grades as both reward and punishment.

Why is Grade Inflation a Problem? This is something which is more often assumed than explained, but a clear understanding of the problems associated with grade inflation is essential. The problems go beyond a vague sense of moral or intellectual decline and have practical, long-term implications. Inflated grades interfere with teaching and learning, with hiring and tenure, with the quality of our work environment and with the academy's relationship with the wider community.

The first and most obvious effect of inflated grades is that it becomes harder to use grades as a shorthand form of communication with any nuance. Sure, individual teachers can explain "what grades mean" semester after semester, but when minimally acceptable work is worth a C, or a B or an A, depending on the course, it is hard for students to keep track.

The disjunction between graduate training institutions and student expectations at the institutions at which most Ph.D.s get hired makes it likely that faculty starting out will have difficulty connecting with their students and will have standards somewhat higher than the norm for their hiring institutions. Harvard's Career Counselors refer to the "H effect", the assumption by interviewers that a Harvard-educated Ph.D. will be disappointed by the quality of local students and have difficulty teaching at their level. To some extent it is justified, particularly since new faculty mentoring is rarely structured or effective, and it results in an elevated rate of dismissal from first hires. These are rarely reflected in official 'tenure rate' figures, as those refer only to faculty who apply for tenure, whereas most institutions will dismiss untenurable or borderline candidates at earlier stages of review, which does not count. The corollary to the disjunction is the breakdown of morale and collegiality which comes from struggling against what feels like constantly falling standards. New Ph.D.s trained to high levels of professionalism discover that their efforts to 'raise standards' are met with hostility by students (who don't want to work that hard) and suspicion by fellow faculty (who understand the implicit criticism). The very real differences between departments in grading become factions, and the sense of a threat to academic freedom by standards imposed from outside makes nearly all academics bristle and stiffen. So, instead of addressing the question directly, it becomes a festering issue that won't be discussed, and the only solution is for departments with high standards to grit their teeth and bring them down to the norm in order to effectively compete for students, and therefore resources. Finally, grade inflation has led to public dissatisfaction with educational results. The same forces that have driven the primary/secondary assessment movement seem to be pushing into higher education as well. Granted, much of the critical reportage about higher education is poor quality, anecdotal, and political. But there remains a steady and credible strain of business and political and social organizations concerned about the process and results of higher education. And it is these groups, through their influence on state and national legislators and, through the US Dept. of Education, their influence on the regional accrediting agencies that is pushing us towards assessment, and will continue to push until we, or they, find a solution to the problem.

Solutions Already Being Tried There are a few active attempts to solve the problems of grade inflation and educational effectiveness. Colleges and universities have tried a variety of techniques to deflate grades. Some have adjusted their grading systems: Princeton instituted a limit to A- level grades. Harvard adjusted its GPA calculation to narrow the A-/B+ gap and that has reportedly been effective in reducing the A-level overload slightly. Most institutions don't go much further than passing around department-level data on grade averages, though a few institutions have followed up with enough pressure and discussion to bring the outliers closer to norm. Academic freedom, precious though it is, is used to insulate faculty against discussions of content, workload, grading or pedagogy.

A few institutions have largely abandoned grades as a measure of the success or ability of college graduates, or found ways to supplement those grades with standardized norms. Ironically, the most widespread form of national post-graduate testing is graduate admissions tests. Lip service is paid to grades, recommendations are carefully read for faint praise, and personal statements give admissions officers some way to tell applicants apart. But the existence and ubiquity of the use of these standardized tests is perhaps the most damning form of self-criticism possible: the very academy which grants grades cannot rely on them as a measure of quality or achievement. Professional accreditation in several fields is test based (nursing, teaching and accounting come to mind immediately), recognition that completion of the relevant bachelor's degree may not, in fact, indicate technical mastery of crucial material. The tests, of course, influence the curricula: some departments have gone so far as to include a 'preparation for the test' course as a component of the major.

What's Next? My suggestions, which most readers will cheerfully ignore in favor of their own, focus largely on the nexus between grade inflation, student evaluation of teachers, and tenure review. In the short term, some form of open grade norming -- perhaps as simple as putting the class or department median on transcripts along with the student's grade -- would reduce the opacity of grades. In the long run, outlier departments must be called to account, and discussion of grades, standards and norms must be ongoing, data-driven and interdisciplinary. Reform of social promotion and grade inflation at the primary and secondary level would help immensely.

The training of Ph.D. students also needs to be shifted in more practical and professional directions, starting with an emphasis on teaching as a skill in graduate school. Not just tossing TAs in sections, but mentoring, review, professionalization; also, graduate coursework should include not just dissertation-related topics but general education in areas which students will most probably have to teach.

If these or similar methods are not adopted, if grade inflation continues and no strong articulation of standards is forthcoming, the worst-case scenario is easy to project. National standards for college curricula, enforced by NCLB-style testing in non- professional subjects, have already been discussed by national legislators. Accrediting agencies and federal funding would force schools to address their curriculum to these tests, which would entail the functional loss of academic freedom with regard to syllabi and classroom activity. Faculty who failed to follow institutional guidelines (which would be very closely modeled on national guidelines and adjusted to the tests) would be penalized, probably with dismissal, and tenure would be obsolete. Students would be forced to take more general education courses, but would have fewer choices regarding how to fulfill their requirements. At this point, college really would become an extension of high school.

We are faced with change: things will not simply continue as they are for very long. We must decide what sort of change we prefer. I would prefer that we be accountable to ourselves, individually and as an intellectual and teaching community, and that others respect that system because it produces high quality results. If we cannot demonstrate those results, and that accountability, it will be imposed on us in a form which we may not recognize or appreciate. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Information: Title: Critics Say Grade Inflation at UW-Madison Lowers Bar for Students – Professors Author: Todd Finkelmeyer Date posted: January 27, 2010 Posted at: The Capital Times Date Viewed: July 12, 2010 Site: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/university/article_5adc496e-0ac6-11df-b737-001cc4c03286.html

If grades are any indication of on-the-job proficiency, the students graduating from UW-Madison’s department of curriculum and instruction should be very, very good teachers. According to a Capital Times analysis of publicly available grade information at UW-Madison, the average grade awarded to undergraduates in this department — which develops the teachers of tomorrow — is higher than a 3.9 on a 4.0 scale. Similarly, the average grade awarded to undergraduates taking courses in UW-Madison’s School of Nursing last spring was slightly above 3.8. To put these numbers in perspective, if 18 A’s, one B and one C were dispensed to students in a class of 20, the average grade would be 3.85.

The paper’s analysis also found that a surprisingly high number of A’s and B’s are being handed out all over campus, mirroring a decades-long trend. In the fall of 1958, the average grade-point average for undergraduates at UW-Madison was 2.5 on a 4.0 scale. It was 2.9 by 1988 and by 2008, according to the most recent reports available, had reached 3.2. Add it up, and some on the UW-Madison campus are asking if the bar is being set too low. “To be honest, some of those numbers do surprise me,” says Lizzi Ulmer, a UW-Madison junior studying political science and French, and earning a certificate in business. “I’d love to think students are getting smarter over time, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.”

Some argue this trend is a clear case of grade inflation — the upward progression of students’ grade-point averages without an increase in achievement. Critics say these high grades have a negative impact on learning by rewarding mediocre work and sucking the competitive life out of classrooms; students have little motivation to work hard, the theory goes, because they learn quickly that they can usually earn at least a B by simply going through the motions. In fact, during the 2009 spring semester, 78.6 percent of all grades on campus were B’s or higher (A, AB or B). “When you look at what’s expected of students to get a B, it’s pretty minimal,” says UW-Madison engineering physics professor Greg Moses. “If your measuring stick is so skewed that everybody falls within the upper limits, then it doesn’t really measure anything.”

And students might not be the only ones skating by due to what some view as relaxed standards. Moses, who has had informal discussions with deans and others on campus about finding ways to address grade inflation, suggests professors who award higher grades make life easier for themselves, too. But if that bar is set low and enough students are above it, “you minimize the amount of effort needed to help students achieve expectations,” he says. But not everyone on campus is convinced something is terribly wrong and many suggest there are plenty of good reasons to explain why grades might be going up.

“The university has improved its admissions standards over the years,” says UW-Madison sophomore Jonah Zinn, who is chair of the Academic Affairs Committee for Madison University. “And by being around other students, I can tell you people are working hard for their grades. If anything, students are getting smarter and maybe the grade standards are staying the same.”

In fact, some point out the average ACT score of incoming freshmen went from 24.0 in 1988 to 26.8 in 1998 to 28.1 in 2008. It’s also plausible that professors have become better teachers than their predecessors due to an increased focus on pedagogy, and that as college courses and curricula have evolved, these changes have led to improved teaching and learning outcomes. Besides, argues former UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley, what’s the big deal if grades are going up? What’s worse, he says, is hearing stories from years ago when professors in some disciplines were ordered to “weed out” weak students from their classes by making sure at least 30 percent received D’s or F’s, or dropped the course. “Today, our attitude is we do our screening of students at the time of admission. Once students have been admitted, we have said to them, ‘You have what it takes to succeed.’ Then it’s our job to help them succeed.”

Gloria Ladson-Billings, the chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (in the School of Education) — says she is not aware of anyone within the UW-Madison administration ever suggesting that her department is dispensing too many A’s. “It’s interesting,” she notes. “We want our kids to do well and get good grades, but when they do we don’t trust the grade.” Ladson-Billings, who has been at UW-Madison for 18 years, argues there are plenty of good reasons why grades in her department are so high. First, she notes UW-Madison is the state’s most selective institution. And the department of curriculum and instruction, which doesn’t admit students until their junior year in a selective process, admits the “best of the best.” “You just can’t have a normal grade distribution when you get so many great students,” she says. “It’s like, how many F’s do they give in astronaut school?”

But Stuart Rojstaczer, who has researched grading trends across the country, has a different take. “Education schools across the country aren’t very good,” says Rojstaczer, a former professor of geophysics at Duke University and the creator of GradeInflation.com, a website that tracks grading trends. “They have students who are not our best and brightest, because the job doesn’t pay well, and they have an educational philosophy that simply does not believe in grading. This has been a long-standing problem for at least two or three decades. Their professors aren’t particularly good and they just sort of herd their students through and give them high grades. It seems to be the ethos of education schools.” Ladson-Billings says that when students don’t show the makings of a good teacher they are “counseled out of the program.” She also argues that the vast majority of grades awarded — 81.6 percent last spring — in her department go to those classified as seniors. “Would you not expect seniors in their chosen major to get good grades?” she asks. She also notes that class sizes in her department tend to be smaller, around 24 people, allowing professors to better get to know students.

Nadine Nehls, Associate Dean for academic programs in the School of Nursing, also defends the relatively high grades distributed to future nurses. “We think our standards are quite high, yet it’s possible that in any given class, theoretically there is no limit to how many students might earn an A — or any grade for that matter,” says Nehls.

As in the department of curriculum and instruction, the vast majority of students taking courses in the School of Nursing are seniors. “The students who choose to apply and attend the School of Nursing are very motivated to succeed,” says Nehls. “They’ve already decided upon their major and their career. So they’re very invested, and similarly we’re very invested in assuring their success.

Lester Hunt, a philosophy professor who edited and contributed to the 2008 book, “Grade Inflation: Academic Standards in Higher Education,” says there are certain disciplines — such as music performance — where he sees no real problem if the vast majority of students receive an A. On the other hand, he says, nurses can kill people through negligence or incompetence. “So if the nursing school’s grading practices make it much harder for prospective employers to tell if a nurse is competent or not, I think that’s a serious problem.”

Wiley spearheaded a 1999 campus-wide self-study that analysis found that between 1990 and 1998, there was a steady increase in undergraduate grade-point averages at UW-Madison, from 2.90 to 3.11. Even though the average SAT score of students on campus also went up during that period, the report indicated not all of the growth in grade-point average could be easily explained.

Additionally, the report indicated that there are wide discrepancies in grades across campus due, perhaps, to variations in how the departments and professors, themselves, view grades. These grading disparities, especially between departments on campus, continue today. So while the department of curriculum and School of Nursing hand out large numbers of A’s, the average grades awarded in the departments of mathematics (2.78), chemistry (2.92), economics (2.93), nutritional sciences (2.93), and geology and geophysics (2.96) were below a 3.0 in the spring of 2009. Likewise, while the average grade given out in most departments increased over the past 10 years, there are a few departments on campus — chemistry, computer science, anthropology and political science, to name a few — that recorded slight declines.

The topic of grade inflation is neither new nor unique to UW-Madison. “Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily — grade A for work of not very high merit, and grade B for work not far above mediocrity,” notes a 1894 paper out of Harvard University. And according to Rojstaczer, who has collected data on average grades from more than 200 institutions, the rate of grade inflation at UW-Madison is right in line with the averages of other selective state flagship institutions. Rojstaczer, who earned his undergraduate degree at UW-Madison in 1977, theorizes the resurgence of grade inflation in the 1980s is likely tied to the emergence of a consumer-based culture in higher education. As tuition continues to skyrocket, students are paying more for the product every year — more often than not, Rojstaczer argues, they are rewarded with a good grade for their purchase.

In Rojstaczer’s opinion, grades should serve two purposes: To motivate students and to identify outstanding performers. Not all students need external motivation, he says, but a significant portion of 18- to 22-year-olds do. “If every grade is a B-plus or better, there is no incentive and you end up having a significant percentage of the class that has no good reason to try and excel,” Rojstaczer says.

In fact, as grades have crept up, the amount of time students are studying appears to be dropping. According to a paper titled “Leisure College, USA,” published in 2008 by two University of California system researchers, the average study time for full- time students at four-year institutions across the U.S. dropped from 24.4 hours per week in 1961 to 14.5 hours per week in 2003. More recently, the 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement indicated more than two-thirds of freshman and senior undergraduates at UW-Madison reported spending 20 hours or less per week preparing for class. “When we look at the amount of effort students are putting into their academics, it’s surprisingly low,” says Aaron Brower, UW-Madison’s vice provost for teaching and learning.

That, argues Moses, is a clear indication that academic expectations are generally being set too low across the UW-Madison campus. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Information: Site: http://gradeinflation.com/ Title: Grade Inflation. Com Date Viewed: July 17, 2010 This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Information: Title: “A” The Hard Way, 2010: Sweet Sixteen of Tough Graders” Source: Grade Inflation. com site: http://gradeinflation.com/ Date Viewed: July 23, 2010

March Madness is upon us. Last year at this time, GradeInflation.com came up with a Sweet Sixteen of grade inflaters. As the graph above shows, grade inflation is pervasive in academia. It's present at almost every school that's part of a major athletic conference. Here are sixteen schools where getting an A is significantly harder than at your average college or university. Not all of them have particularly low GPAs compared to national averages, but there are schools where the talent level is so high that one should expect A's to be more prevalent. We've taken talent level into account in the creation of this Sweet Sixteen.

The East 1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Engineering and science based schools dominate the Sweet Sixteen of Tough A's. Their workloads are higher and their grades are lower than national averages. Rensselaer fits right in with a high quality student body and an average GPA about 0.25 below typical private schools of its caliber. 2. Princeton University. The Tigers are a newcomer to the tough A. Leadership here has worked hard over the last few years to make sure that excellence is accorded only to those that truly deserve it. Princeton may be new to reversing grade inflation, but in this year's tourney, they may go all the way. 3. Boston University. BU's student body complains mightily about grades and how hard it is to get an A. At a lot of schools such complaints defy reality. But at BU, getting a B average puts you right in the middle of pack. Graduating with a 3.5 makes you a star. 4. MIT. The Beavers likely deserve a higher seed, but their leadership is very, very tight lipped about their grades. When MIT last slipped and published some data several years ago, the average GPA was less than 3.2. At schools with comparable talent like Harvard and Yale, GPA's are 0.2 to 0.4 higher.

The South 1. Virginia Commonwealth University. Public schools in urban settings can be very tough places to earn an A. At VCU, even getting a B can be an achievement. Its average GPA is 2.6, far below national averages. 2. Hampden-Sydney College. H-SC is a very small school tucked away in the South. It's had modest problems with grade inflation over the last decade, but H-SC's grades are still so low relative to other liberal arts colleges that it fully merits a number 2 seed in the very tough Southern region. 3. Roanoke College. Liberal arts colleges tend to be easy A heaven. That's not so at Roanoke where B is still the most common grade and A's are earned less than 30 percent of the time. 4. Auburn University. Another Tiger in this year's Sweet Sixteen. Eat your hearts out 'Bama; Auburn is just a tougher place to earn an A. The Midwest 1. Purdue University. Getting an A is hard for the Boilermakers with an average GPA that has hovered around 2.8 for over 30 years. Purdue doesn't even seem to know that grade inflation exists in America. In that regard, ignorance is bliss. 2. University of Houston. The Midwest is our weakest division and to make up for it, we've shipped some schools from the South to here. Like VCU, Houston is a tough urban public school to earn an A with a GPA that has held at a steady 2.6 for 15 years. 3. Southern Polytechnic State. Another hard-nosed science and engineering school. Its state rival Georgia Tech is no piece of cake either, but SPSU gets the nod for a Sweet Sixteen seed this year. 4. Florida International University. A's are far harder to come by at FIU than they are at Florida's flagship school in Gainesville. Earn a 3.4 GPA at FIU and you're well ahead of the pack. Maybe next year the Midwest will toughen up and be able to compete with the Southern schools that we've shipped into the land of the wind chill factor.

The West 1. Reed College. If you go to Reed, you know in advance that A's are earned. There's a reason why this school places so many students in Ph.D. programs and medical schools. 2. CSU-Fullerton. Resources are tight in the CSU system and Fullerton has its share of real problems. But grade inflation is not an issue here. Grades are about the same as they were in 1978 and the average GPA is 2.7. 3. Harvey Mudd College. This small science and engineering school outside of LA has, to our mind, one of the funniest names for a school in America (OK, Chico State is even funnier). But the name is where all jokes end. Harvey Mudd's average GPA is in the 3.2 range, which might seem high at face value. But these students are some of the best in the country. If they took classes with their liberal arts college neighbors across the way (Harvey Mudd is part of a consortium of colleges), they'd be getting A's ten to thirty percent more frequently. 4. Simon Fraser University. Unlike the NCAA, GradeInflation.com is not restricted to seeding only American schools. Just across the Washington state border in beautiful British Columbia, SFU has avoided grade inflation as successfully as Celine Dion has avoided Tim Hortons (you might have to be Canadian to get that one). They are stingy with their A's, giving them only about 25 percent of the time. That's it for our Sweet Sixteen this year. If you feel your school has been slighted by omission, send us a verifiable record of their grading history. They just might make the Sweet Sixteen in 2011! This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Information: Title: Grade Inflation Gone Wild Source: Christian Science Monitor Date: March 24, 2009 Author: Stuart Roistaczer

I learned that grades started to shoot up nationwide in the 1960s, leveled off in the 1970s, and then started rising again in the 1980s. Private schools had much higher grades than public schools, but virtually everyone was experiencing grade inflation.

What about today? Grades continue to go up regardless of the quality of education. At a time when many are raising questions about the quality of US higher education, the average GPA at public schools is 3.0, with many flagship state schools having average GPAs higher than 3.2. At a private college, the average is now 3.3. At some schools, it tops 3.5 and even 3.6. "A" is average at those schools! At elite Brown University, two-thirds of all letter grades given are now A's. These changes in grading have had a profound influence on college life and learning. When students walk into a classroom knowing that they can go through the motions and get a B+ or better, that's what they tend to do, give minimal effort.

Our college classrooms are filled with students who do not prepare for class. Many study less than 10 hours a week – that's less than half the hours they spent studying 40 years ago. Paradoxically, students are spending more and more money for an education that seems to deliver less and less content. With so few hours filled with learning, boredom sets in and students have to find something to pass the time. Instead of learning, they drink.

A recent survey of more than 30,000 first year students across the country showed that nearly half were spending more hours drinking than they were studying. If we continue along this path, we'll end up with a generation of poorly educated college graduates who have used their four years principally to develop an addiction to alcohol. There are many who say that grade inflation is a complicated issue with no easy fix. But there are solutions. At about the same time that I started to collect data on rising grades, Princeton University began to actually do something about its grade-inflation problem. Its guidelines have the effect of now limiting A's on average to 35 percent of students in a class.

Those guidelines have worked. Grades are going back down at Princeton and academic rigor is making a comeback. A similar successful effort has taken place at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. And through a concerted effort on the part of faculty and leadership, grades at Reed College in Oregon have stayed essentially constant for 20 years.

Princeton, Wellesley, and Reed provide evidence that the effort to keep grade inflation in check is not impossible.

This effort takes two major steps.

First, school officials must admit that there is a problem.

Then they must implement policies or guidelines that truly restore excellence. I asked Dean Nancy Malkiel at Princeton why so few schools seem to be following Princeton's lead. "Because it's hard work," she answered. "Because you have to persuade the faculty that it's important to do the work." Making a switch will take hard work, but the effort is worthwhile. The alternative is a student body that barely studies and drinks out of boredom. That's not acceptable. Colleges and universities must roll up their sleeves, bring down inflated grades, and encourage real learning. It's not an impossible task. There are successful examples that can be followed. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Information: Title: Where All Grades Are Above Average by Stuart Rojstaczer Newspaper: The Washington Post Date published: January 28, 2003 page printed on: A21

I recently handed in my grades for an undergraduate course I teach at Duke University. They were a very limited assortment: A, A-minus, B-plus, B and B-minus. There were no C's of any flavor and certainly no D's or F's. It was a good class, but even when classes aren't very good, I just drop down slightly, to grades that range from A-minus to B-minus. The last time I gave a C was more than two years ago. That was about the time I came to realize that my grading had become anachronistic. The C, once commonly accepted, is now the equivalent of the mark of Cain on a college transcript. I have forsworn C's ever since. How rare is the C in college? The data indicate that not only is C an endangered species but that B, once the most popular grade at universities and colleges, has been supplanted by the former symbol of perfection, the A.

For example, at Duke, which all evidence indicates is not a "leader" in grade inflation -- by a long shot -- C's now make up less than 10 percent of all grades. In 1969 the C was a respectable thing, given more than one-quarter of the time. A's overcame B's to reach the top of the charts in grade popularity in the early 1990s.

At Pomona College, C's are now less than 4 percent of all grades. About half of all grades at Pomona, Duke, Harvard and Columbia are in the A range. State schools are not immune to this change. At the University of Illinois, A's constitute more than 40 percent of all grades and outnumber C's by almost three to one. This trend of the dominance of the A and the diminution of the C began in the 1960s, abated somewhat in the '70s and came back strong in the '80s. The previous signs of academic disaster, D and F, went by the wayside in the Vietnam era, when flunking out meant becoming eligible for the draft. At Duke, Pomona, Harvard and elsewhere, D's and F's combined now represent about 2 percent of all grades given.

A perusal of grade inflation rates at those few institutions open enough to publish such information indicates that, on average, grade-point averages are rising at a rate of about 0.15 points every decade. If things go on at that rate, practically everybody on campus will be getting all A's before mid-century, except for the occasional self- destructive student who doesn't hand in assignments or take exams -- if exams are even given.

A's are common as dirt in universities nowadays because it's almost impossible for a professor to grade honestly. If I sprinkle my classroom with the C's some students deserve, my class will suffer from declining enrollments in future years. In the marketplace mentality of higher education, low enrollments are taken as a sign of poor-quality instruction. I don't have any interest in being known as a failure.

Parents and students want high grades. Given that students are consumers of an educational product for which they pay dearly, I am expected to cater to their desires not just to be educated well but to receive a positive reward for their enrollment. So I don't give C's anymore, and neither do most of my colleagues. And I can easily imagine a time when I'll say the same thing about B's.

University leaders, like stock market analysts talking about the Internet bubble not so long ago, sometimes come up with ridiculous reasons to explain grade inflation. We are teaching more effectively, some leaders say, or students are smarter and better than in previous decades. Many students and parents believe these explanations. They accept the false flattery as the real thing. Unlike high-tech stock prices, the grade inflation bubble, I'd guess, will not burst. As grades spiral upward, my job becomes more difficult. Somehow, I have to get the most from my students without the external motivator of grades. True, for some students -- those with a strong internal desire to learn -- the absence of real grades is actually a blessing. Outstanding students don't need a teacher who carries a big stick. They need educators who are partners and facilitators in learning.

But not every student is so motivated. So when the commonest grade is A, I have to use other means to get them to learn: I have to cajole, to gently persuade. And in all honesty, I don't think I have the psychological skills necessary in this climate to approach my goal of educating all my students well. Many of my colleagues around the country would, I think, acknowledge a similar lack of such skills if pressed.

Today's classes, as a result, suffer from high absenteeism and a low level of student participation. In the absence of fair grading, our success in providing this country with a truly educated public is diminished. The implications of such failure for a free society are tremendous. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Information: On line at: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/05/grade-inflation-academic-fraud.html Author: Walter Williams Title: "Fraud in Academia" Date Viewed: June 19, 2010 This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper Source Info Title: “Atlanta Honors Student Misses Graduation as She Awaits Test Waiver.” Newspaper: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Date published: May 27, 2010 Seen on-line at: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/atlanta-honors-student-misses-536783.html Date seen: May 30, 2010

Atlanta Honors Student Misses Graduation as She Awaits Test Waiver

Atlanta high school senior Brittany Hemphill worked 13 years for what turned out to be one of the lousiest days of her life. With a waiver pending but still not approved Thursday evening that would have allowed her to participate, Hemphill could only watch as her classmates donned caps and gowns to collect their diplomas. It made her sad, she said. And angry. She had waited nervously all day Thursday, as more than a dozen family members arrived to celebrate her rite of passage. But relief never came. "It's not right," she said. "I'm not feeling good about it at all."

Hemphill is an honors student at the city's Benjamin E. Mays High School, but she was a few points short of passing the English/language arts portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Test. The state may grant waivers on a case-by-case basis but otherwise requires Georgia graduates to pass all portions of the test. Most school systems -- Atlanta included -- require students to meet all requirements before they can take part in graduation ceremonies.

School officials signed off in support of requesting a waiver for Hemphill on May 18. But the state school board is not scheduled to meet again until June 9. In the interim, without state approval, Hemphill is still considered to have not met graduation requirements. Her family asked if Atlanta would make an exception, but officials said no. "We don't make exceptions," Atlanta spokesman Keith Bromery said Thursday. "It's not an entitlement to be able to graduate. It's an earned privilege."

According to the state, 243 students so far this year have requested waivers from graduation requirements. It has approved 45. Last year, 586 students requested waivers. The state granted 73. In requesting the waivers, students may provide academic transcripts or other records to show how they feel they are successful. To receive a full diploma, public school students must pass each of the four portions of the test including English/language arts, math, science and social studies. They must also pass a writing test, which is administered separately. Students first take the test in the spring of their junior year. In Atlanta, system rules provide for at least five opportunities for students to pass the test before the end of their senior year.

In Hemphill's case, she took the test for the fifth time in early March. She got her results back May 11. "It's a major disappointment for her," Johnson said of her daughter. Hemphill, her mom said, is looking ahead to collegiate life, possibly at Benedict College in South Carolina where she has been accepted. "I'm confident the waiver will be approved," Johnson said. This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper http://freepresshigheredblog.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

Date Viewed: April 29, 2010 This page is purposefully left blank between different articles that you may use for your research paper http://freepresshigheredblog.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

Date Viewed: April 29, 2010