When is a C actually an A+?
Or, how grade inflation is ruining American schools.
“We need to meet because you have too many D’s and E’s.”1 This is something any educator who isn’t artificially inflating all of their grades has probably heard at some point in their career. The standard is no longer “what has the child done to earn the grade,” but rather, “what has the teacher done to ensure that the grade isn’t too low?” A part of me understands this. Teachers should be working with their students, especially low-performing students, to try to get the students to understand and master the content and skills.
The problem is that grades are not a display of mastery of knowledge anymore.2 Sure MCPS has tried to remove some of the artificial variability in grading, but at the end of the marking period, too many low grades are seen as a failure of the teacher and not a lack of content or skills understanding. Here are just some ways MCPS tries to remove artificial variability in grading:
Mandating weighted percentages by course (i.e. 90% “All-task” and 10% “Practice/Prep” or 80% “All-task,” 10% “Practice/Prep,” and 10% county assessments), so the percentages are weighted the same for the course no matter who your teacher is or what school you attend in the district.
Enforcing the 50% rule: if a student makes an attempt at an assignment, they can score no lower than a 50%3
Forbidding any student behavior from impacting a grade (including failing to come prepared to class with something as simple as their school-issued Chromebook)4
Forbidding extra credit
Allowing (an infinite number of) retakes on any assignment that isn’t considered a summative assessment5
But none of this removes the transactional nature of grading because MCPS refuses to move away from the old factory-style model of education. We had the opportunity to completely trash our old system and rebuild it from scratch during the COVID pandemic, but instead, we decided to just keep doing what we’ve been doing… and nationally, ability scores have dropped.
A personal story
“Your plan would take two years to implement, but we need to raise our STAR rating6 now.”
My principal said these words to me after soliciting ideas for new ways to help our low-achieving students. I had submitted an idea based in research, which would have required subject departments to work more closely together. By un-siloing math and science and by likewise unifying social studies and English, students would be presented with a single common set of tools across multiple classes. Students would also be given more real-world application problems to wrestle with, complete with projects that spanned multiple courses. The real world is not divided nicely into subjects the way our 20th century factory model of schooling is divided, and this would have started to force students into higher-level critical thinking about real world problems across disciplines.
There were lots of logistical problems with this proposal. The school’s master schedule would need a massive overhaul, buy-in would be needed from teachers who had never thought about unifying multiple subject matters, and parents and the school system would need to be shown the benefits. It was even possible that we would need exemption from certain county policies in order to make some of this happen.
The problem is that a lot of research over the last 25 years has shown that when you focus on project- and problem-based learning, there is more buy-in from students and more authentic learning happens.
Instead, MCPS—like nearly every public school system in the country—has rejected this research because it’s more expensive, requires a massive shift in teacher thinking and preparation, and makes it harder to give grades that are based in nice, neat percentages.
Except that isn't how learning happens.
In accreditation frameworks, learning must be specified in advance, decomposed into discrete outcomes, aligned with assignments, and demonstrated through measurable artifacts. Faculty are asked to predict what students will know, how they will know it, and how that knowledge will be documented before the learning has even occurred.
Any philosopher will tell you that this is not how knowledge actually develops. Yet it is increasingly the only form of learning that institutions are structured to recognize.7
So instead of authentic learning based on inquiry, the Maryland State Department of Education (and thus, MCPS, because they will not stick their necks out to try something, regardless of what the science says) continues to insist on keeping standards that don't reflect the needs of the world our students live in.
And so, we are left with a system that insists on instructing students in a way that bears little resemblance to the lives of our students, stuck in the transactional system that rewards grades rather than knowledge.
Wasn't this post supposed to be about grade inflation?
Trust me, it’s related.
One of the most common reasons why students report a lack of interest in school is that they feel no connection to the work or don’t see its relevance in the real world: it’s one of the things that drives down attendance and promotes disengagement.
We’re also living in a world where students just don’t see the point of education in general. Gen X and Millennials (and us in-between Xennials) were sold the idea that if you go to college, you’ll get a good job. However, Gen Z—and especially Gen Alpha—have seen that this was a lie. Millions of Gen X and Millennials went into debt to get that college education and never found the promised jobs, and so millions of children over the last 20 years have looked at the world around us and came to the not-unreasonable conclusion that education ≠ jobs.
Now pile on top of this the idea that we need to constantly making progress towards the artificial goals put into place by ESEA, which incentivizes districts to pressure schools to pass and graduate more students. We already have this no-fail policy in MCPS where a child simply cannot be held back until high school, long after they have formed their work habits, but the focus on grades removes the focus on the learning. This isn't even the worst thing, though.
A recent white paper (though not yet peer-reviewed) presents compelling evidence that grade inflation actually leads to lower overall educational engagement and eventually, lower pay.
Being assigned a higher average grade inflating teacher reduces a student's future test scores, the likelihood of graduating from high school, college enrollment, and ultimately earnings. In contrast, passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back and increases high school graduation, with limited long-run effects. The cumulative impact is economically significant: a teacher with
one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of lifetime earnings of their students by $213,872 per year.
In other words, we really aren't doing kids any favors by inflating grades, passing them on to the next grade level without demonstrating mastery, and lowering standards.
Now what?
We have hit the limit for the efficacy of traditional grading schema. It is simply time to ditch traditional grades and force students to prove mastery before they can be passed on to the next level.
Of course, even with this, there are problems. The so-called Mississippi Miracle, where 4th grade NAEP test scores are inflated due to holding kids back in 3rd grade who don't meet standard, is a perfect example of why any standards-based measure needs to be implemented strategically and not simply thrown onto the fire. By using a single measure to determine whether a kid progresses to the next grade, their NAEP numbers look good in 4th grade, but they still attach the stigma of being held back. Because kids are largely still sorted by date of manufacture, those kids who are held back are seen as “underachieving" compared to their peers.
Considering educational development varies as a child's brain matures, wouldn't it make more sense to place students in groups based on their abilities at any given time, rather than relying on their date of manufacture? If we actually want to make passing through the educational system to mean something, we have to give up the idea that kids all hit the same targets at the same time, give grace and understanding to kids that don't meet standard, and yet still instruct those students where they are.
Montgomery County Public Schools, for some reason, uses E as the marker of failure instead of F. This decision was made before I was hired, and I have never understood its purpose. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter; kids react to seeing an E the same way that kids elsewhere react to seeing an F.
Were they ever? Read on…
Prior to the 2025-2026 school year, this had become “A kid can’t get anything below a 50% at all ever,” but some sanity was restored where if a child turns in no work, they can actually get a zero. I actually do understand the basis for the 50% rule, but it just highlights the problem of using a numeric system for grading instead of mastery of standards as the objective.
I get it if a child forgets it now and again. That happens. But when a child consistently, conveniently “forgets” to bring necessary materials already provided by the district, why is it always up to the teacher to bail the student out? Isn’t there a natural consequence here?
There is definitely an argument for allowing retakes—even multiple retakes—if the goal is content mastery. However, it is assuredly not.
Davinak, A. (2026) “Assessment is ruining teaching” in Chronicle of Higher Education via https://www.chronicle.com/article/assessment-is-ruining-teaching