Childhood and Education #21: Grades and Standards

A newsletter edition collects arguments and reported data on grades, admissions and standardized testing. It cites average GPA at Harvard around 3.8 with 79% of grades in the A range before recent efforts to fight inflation, and reports that 60% of grades are now A's, up from 26% twenty years ago, with median GPA at graduation rising from 3.29 in 1985 to 3.83 last year. A Harvard report is quoted as saying it is "failing to perform the key functions of grading" and that its practices are "damaging the academic culture of the College." Students told the newsletter that academics feel "fake."

On admissions, it cites a paper by Raj Chetty, David Deming and John Friedman finding the high-income advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by legacy preferences, weight on non-academic credentials and athletic recruitment, while SAT/ACT scores are described as highly predictive of post-college success. Commentator Gerry Tan is quoted saying using only the SAT would cut admits from top-1% families from 15.8% to 9.9% and raise representation from under $200k by 8.8% with no reduction in post-college outcomes.

Separately, the newsletter discusses reported NAEP declines concentrated among the weakest students, a PISA-based claim about Zambia, and Richard Hanania's argument about LSAT disability accommodations, which it reports rose from under 1% to 11% of test takers in a decade. The Atlantic is cited on diagnoses and easier accommodation processes, with over 20% of undergraduates at Brown and Harvard, and 34% at Amherst, registered as disabled.

Other items include Hannah Cairo, reported to have proved false the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture while taking graduate math classes at Berkeley, and to have been rejected by 6 of 10 graduate schools for lacking a degree, with two admissions overridden by administrators. Later-alphabet surnames are said to cost 0.6 points on a 100-point scale in alphabetically graded work, and college tours with good weather are reported to raise attendance odds.