Article Review Assignment | Get Paper Help

These questions have to be answered using the article below:

1. What is the thesis?
2. What are 3 viewpoints presented on this topic?
3. What is the author’s viewpoint?

“ As my peers and I have recently embarked on the wild ride that is college, I’ve begun to realize that it definitely isn’t for everyone. In high school, most people I knew had reasonably impressive GPA’s. I took a good mixture of College Preparatory, honors, and Advanced Placement courses and interacted with students at all different academic levels. It was very rare that any of my classmates would have a GPA lower than a 3.0. What’s so crazy about this, is that a 3.0 GPA indicates a B average. However, with our current grading scale, a C is supposed to indicate the average score. So how could it be that a majority of students have an above average GPA? At first it might sound pretty good, right? There must be a lot of academically gifted students. Well unfortunately, this isn’t really the case.
For years now there has been an issue with inflated grades, specifically at the secondary and higher education levels. Sure, better looking report cards don’t seem harmful, but grade inflation creates the impression that a student is more prepared for the next step in their lives than they truly are. For instance, a high school graduate could finish with a 3.6 GPA and appear very prepared for college. This student has a very good chance of getting accepted into college under the pretense that they will be successful in their studies. However, if that student went to a high school where grade inflation took place, that student may be unprepared for the workload of college courses. Had this student been given a GPA more accurately representative of their abilities, they could’ve either worked on some of their weaknesses before college or chosen a different route and saved themselves thousands of dollars. Some proposed causes of grade inflation include a lack of rigorous curriculum enforcement, budgetary pressures, and that students have just improved in quality over the last few decades (Edwards). Regardless of the cause, this epidemic has been gradually getting worse every year and something needs to be done about it, sooner rather than later. Grade inflation misleads everyone involved. Schools cannot accurately gauge the success of their students, students cannot accurately plan for their future, and employers cannot accurately fill positions when grade inflation takes place.
​Grade inflation is when the grades distributed to students are some amount higher than what is actually deserved. This isn’t an issue of teachers changing test grades or anything as deliberate as that. Grade inflation typically occurs when the difficulty of a course isn’t up to par. When courses aren’t as difficult as they should be, the standard grading scale is no longer an accurate way to gauge students’ performances. For example, the standard grading scale says that a C (70-79) is average. In an especially easy course where 80% of the students score an A, A is the new average for that course. However, the students’ report cards will show that they all scored above average in the course, which is not accurate. This results in an illusion that students are more fluent in their schoolwork than they really are. According to a study done by Teacher College Record, grade inflation began in the 1960’s and 1970’s. They also found that in the last decade, 43% of grades distributed by colleges and universities were A’s, whereas only about 10% of grades were D’s or F’s (Rampell). These results show a major proportion issue in the grades distributed by secondary schools in the U.S. over the last decade.
​Robert D. King, the founding dean of liberal arts and Rapoport chair of Jewish studies emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, has a proposed solution to fix grade inflation. King and his coworker devised a system called the Grade Inflation Index. The Grade Inflation Index is supposed to account for the difficulty level of the course and reflect that in a student’s transcript. King explains the index: “First you calculate a Class Grade Point Average (GPA). An A is worth 4.0 points, a B 3.0, etc. Multiply the number of students who received A’s by 4.0, the number of B students by 3.0, and so on down to F (which by then was virtually extinct). Then add up those numbers, divide by the number of students in the class, and you get the Class GPA” (“Grade Inflation Revisited”).
This method of showing the class GPA beside a student’s grade in the course will put the student’s GPA into perspective. So for instance, suppose two different professors are teaching the same course on Women’s Studies. The first professor may give out a lot of participation grades, as well as multiple open-note exams. This professor’s students may score on average an A- in this course. On the other hand, professor number two may not believe in participation grades or open-note exams, and this professor’s students score a C+ on average in her course. It just wouldn’t be fair for a student who had the first professor and a student that had the second professor to get the same credit for both scoring an A in the course. Using the Grade Inflation Index, transcripts would reflect the discrepancy in these two grades by including the fact that the average student scored an A- in the first professor’s class and a C+ in the second professor’s class. By including this information, it would no longer appear that students who score well within the average grade for a course were scoring above the average grade. Not only will this counteract the effects of grade inflation, it will also give students who took more difficult courses an opportunity to show off their possibly lower but more impressive GPA’s (“Grade Inflation Revisited”).
​Another perspective on how to counteract the effects of grade inflation was proposed by Sita Slavov, a writer for the U.S. News and World Report. Slavov believes a way to do this is to set a flexible quota on the number of students in a course that can receive an A. The idea behind this plan is that if a teacher knows only so many students can make an A, that they will make the course more difficult to achieve this effect. Slavov clarifies that this quota (about 35% of students in the course) would be flexible and would allow a larger percentage of students to make A’s in special cases where it is truly deserved (Slavov). This idea has been circulating for some time now. In fact, Yale’s administration tried to implement this change in their curriculum in 2013, but was met with so much student opposition that they finally voted against it (“Grading at Yale”).
A major benefit of this method of grading is that it normalizes grades such as C’s and D’s. When the majority of students in a class are scoring A’s, it can be disheartening for the few that aren’t. By setting a quota on how many students can score an A, the idea of getting C’s and D’s becomes normal again. This is important as to not discourage students who aren’t scoring A’s on a regular basis. Discouraged students will begin to expect and culminate failure from themselves if they identify themselves as being duller than the other students in their class. If we normalize grades that aren’t A’s, we can prevent a number of students from becoming discouraged, and therefore greatly improve their performance and aspirations for the future (Slavov).
​Finally, a solution to ending grade inflation proposed by Allison Friederichs, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Denver, is to “just stop.” Friederichs begins by saying that she’s had many, many discussions with teachers over her years as an administrator regarding grade inflation. She says that of all the teachers she’s spoken to about grade inflation, recognized it as an issue, but none of them admitted to contributing to grade inflation themselves. The issue with this is that for grade inflation to have gotten so out of hand in the last several decades, most of these teachers must be contributing. Friederichs accounted this discrepancy to one of two reasons. Either these teachers are oblivious to the fact that they are contributing to this issue, or they just don’t want to admit it (Friederichs).
Reasons teachers may be inclined to inflate grades include understandable things such as not wanting to be reviewed poorly by students bitter about their grades, and not wanting to appear as being a bad teacher by having a low class average (Slavov). So perhaps these teachers are upset about the state of grade inflation in our education system and do recognize that they are contributing to it but don’t want to make a difference because of the reasons stated above… at least not alone. Friederichs states that teachers would be more willing to deflate grades if all teachers agreed to and were sure they’d all go into it together. So, the solution Friederichs is proposing is that all teachers and professors come together to recognize where the problem is coming from and deflate grades together. That way, if students do leave negative reviews due to grades or class averages go down, it will be across the board and will not reflect badly on any specific teacher (Friederichs).
​My personal opinion is that deflating grades at this point is just unrealistic. As a college student myself, I find that there are professors that will always give out A’s liberally. Whether the reason for this is because a professor wants their students to like them, or doesn’t believe in giving out bad grades, or for whatever the reason may be, I don’t believe that any kind of policy will completely get rid of inflated grades. Therefore, I think all we can do is counteract the effects of grade inflation. I believe that Robert D. King’s idea of the Grade Inflation Index would be most effective in counteracting inflated grades. The index will strip away the undeserved value of an easy A while rewarding students who opted for more difficult courses.
​In conclusion, grade inflation has had a detrimental effect on students, schools, and employers. If something isn’t done to counteract the effects of grade inflation soon, grades may lose their value and meaning entirely. Grades are imperative to gauge the effectiveness of the education system and we cannot afford for them to be rid of their usefulness. In order to maintain the effectiveness of schools in the United States, we must find the best method to counteract grade inflation.”