Soaring grades
A recent study by Dr. Chris Clark, a GCSU economics professor, raised the question about grade inflation in schools across Georgia.
Clark’s study analyzed the relationship between high school students’ scores on End of Course Tests and the grade they received in the related courses during the 2006 to 2007 school year. His study found grade discrepancies in some schools and school systems in Georgia.
On a state level, almost 36 percent of students failed the EOCT in economics, but only 5.87 percent failed the course. This is a gap of 29.98 percent, the largest gap of the eight courses analyzed.
These grade discrepancies could be due to teachers not teaching the state curriculum thoroughly or being too lenient when grading. According to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, which commissioned Clark’s study, both the teacher-given grades, and the EOCT scores are based on the same standards and should align.
As Clark’s study predicted, the problem of grade inflation can have a lasting effect on the students’ college success. While many high school teachers say they do not want to hold their hard-working students back from a college education, it only ends up hurting the students.
The Transition
Shaina McGill, a senior academic advisor at GCSU’s Center for Student Success, has seen college freshman struggle.
“Many times students will come to me in December that are not doing well, and they are usually very good high school students with good GPAs and HOPE scholarships,” said McGill.
McGill attributes this to the students’ inability to make a smooth transition from high school to college.
Some students say one reason they struggle is because the way they studied in high school is not up to par with how they need to study in college.
“In high school, you don’t have to study for anything, but in college, if you don’t study, you don’t have a chance of getting a good grade,” said Catherine Cotter, a sophomore education major.
McGill says high school teachers often provide study guides that are verbatim to the test or quiz.
“Unfortunately, I think in high school, many times teachers may teach to the test,” said McGill. “Now did the students really learn that information? Probably not.”
It is this mindset of academic apathy that follows students to college.
According to a study by the University of California, Irvine, one-third of students said they expect a B for just attending class. Another 40 percent said they should receive a B for completing the required reading.
Grade inflation at GCSU
As Georgia’s liberal arts college, GCSU prides itself on not falling victim to grade inflation. Statistics from the Regents’ Testing Program give insight on grade inflation in Georgia colleges.
“There are schools where there are fairly high numbers of people that have A averages that don’t pass the Regents’ test on the first attempt,” said Dr. Ed Hale, the director of institutional research at GCSU. “For us, that percentage is minuscule.and can be most likely attributed to people not testing well.”
However, evidence from GCSU’s grade distribution data shows that over the years the number of As and Bs in many classes has grown.
For example, in Fall 2000, about 53 percent of the grades in all English 1101 classes were As and Bs. In the Fall 2008, that number jumped to almost 88 percent.
Yet both Hale and McGill say grade inflation is not an issue at GCSU.
While Hale does acknowledge there may be isolated cases, he does not see the problem as being “endemic.”
“I don’t think grade inflation is really a problem for us as an institution,” said Hale. “Professors grade differently and the content of the courses is different, so you’re going to find that there will be a range of the average grade in various courses by various professors.”
Campus environment sets high standards
One set of data Hale looks at is the National Survey of Student Engagement, a survey given to freshman and seniors every three years. Its purpose is to get feedback from the students about how they perceive and engage in the institution.
A few things NSSE looks at is whether the institution supports out-of-classroom experiences, provides a situation for students from different backgrounds to interact with one another and checks the level of academic challenge.
Hale says GCSU scored “significantly higher” than the other schools in the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.
Both referenced the campus’s environment of high standards as well as the number of services the campus provides to help students.
“The culture here supports high expectations,” said Hale.
Hale adds that students will receive a bad grade if they are not willing to put forth the expected effort, but that they have many resources to help get them back on track.
“There’s tremendous evidence that students who attend the Learning Center, by large, have higher GPAs,” said McGill. “It’s just getting students to not think of the resource as remediation.”
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 27 2009. Filed under News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
