This grade inflation thread has migrated approximately to a question of how
college grades affect employment. That wasn't the original question: may I
please restate it:
The local _middle school_ has placed on the order of 40-50% of the students
(depending on class) on its honor roll with greater than a GPA of 3.6. The
principal says that the criteria derives from teacher expectations. And
typically some 20% of those students have received a GPA of 4.00.
The question is not of fairness, of predictability of employee competence,
or even of achievement, but of what effect such a system has on the future
development of the students as _students_. How will such a system
influence these students in HS and especially eventually in college? And
how will such a system affect the college instructors?
In this regard I remember one day of total frustration when I finally asked
a class how many of them really did homework in HS -- Did they understand
what homework was? One (1) damn it ONE little girl raised her hand. OK
this was a local community college where I occasionally teach in my
otherwise blessed retirement -- a college which may have pre-selected every
young person in the county whose mother wanted him/her off the street and
couldn't find anything better for the child to do and hence had no business
being anywhere near a college campus. There may be a bit of hyperbole here.
But such are the students who previously got on the honor roll!!! And now
we have to deal with them. I wish we could send them back to the middle
schools and say here _you_ deal with them. Instead we have to teach middle
school math in the community colleges.