Dear Log,
«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.»
It's been a long time since I was in an academic environment, but when I was taking Calculus in high school, we could see how the AP tests got progressively easier year-by-year. Each exam we had for about two years had an essay question from the AP tests, starting with recent ones and progressively getting older. By the end of senior year, we started taking old AP essay exams for practice.
We spent so much time preparing that the questions given within the previous few years were not that difficult. The questions from ten to fifteen years earlier were too difficult for us to even attempt. That was a very sobering realization.
Re:Grade inflation
Pismobird on 2003-12-19T04:08:03
Last spring I went to my daughters high school graduation. A number of the scholarly students in addition to the usual accolades; it was pointed out had also attained G.P.A's in the 4.4-4.6 range. This, of course, being based on the grading scale of 0.0 to 4.0
2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.
Pismobird
