More than 40 percent of middle and high school grades are too high, compared to standardized test scores, and 16 percent are too low, concludes a new study conducted in 2022 and 2023 by the The Equitable Grading Project
"Two out of five transcript grades indicated that students were more competent in the course than they actually were, while nearly one out of six grades was lower than the student’s true understanding of the course content, reports Hechinger's Jill Barshay.
Asian American students' grades matched their test scores 51 percent of the time, according to the analysis. That fell to 43 percent for whites and one-third for Hispanics and blacks. In addition, grade inflation was more common for lower-income students.
Twenty-one percent of Hispanics and blacks receives grades two levels about the mastery indicated by their test scores, such as a B instead of a D, the report concluded. Only 10 percent of Asians and 12 percent of whites received a two-grade boost.
The percentage of grades lower than test scores was about the same for every group.
"This analysis is evidence that widespread grade inflation, which has also been documented by the ACT, the National Center for Education Statistics and independent scholars, has persisted through 2023, writes Barshay.
Test anxiety is not the cause of discrepancies, researchers concluded. They listed "other reasons for why grades don’t reflect a student’s skills and content mastery," she writes. These include pressure from parents and school administrators, and the habit of factoring in "participation, behavior and handing in homework assignments – things that have little to do with what a student has learned or knows."
Deductions for late or missing work can cause grade depression, the report noted. Group projects can help or hurt the final grade: A good student paired with weak partners may lose points -- or do all the work and inflate the other group members' grades.
The Equitable Grading Project argues that grades should reflect academic achievement with other rewards or consequences for students' behavior.
But it's not easy, writes Barshay. The project trained and coached teachers in 2022-23 to "implement a version of 'mastery-based grading,' which excludes homework, class assignments and student behavior from the final grade, but uses a range of assessments – not only tests and papers – to ascertain a student’s proficiency." Students were allowed multiple retakes of tests. It didn't make much of a difference: "Teachers’ grading accuracy improved by only 3 percentage points, from 37.6 percent of their grades accurately reflecting student proficiency to 40.6 percent."
Some argue that grades are more accurate than test scores because they reflect a wider view of the student. Academics isn't everything, they believe. But inflated grades leave students unprepared for the next level of learning. Grade depression denies them opportunities they could handle.
This is a crucial issue. American teachers should understand that they don't grade, they mark, in British usage: only a third party, other than the student and the teacher, can grade in this sense -- the College Board can grade, and so can the American College Testing organization, and their conversion of raw marks into scaled grades helps the quality assurance of high school graduates, which is already very shaky in the United States, and getting worse.