GPAs rising while SAT scores falling

Parents Forum
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<p>Economist Mark Perry posted about this:</p>

<p>Between 1998 and 2008, the percentage of college-bound high school seniors with a GPA equal to letter grades of A+, A or A- increased from 38% to 42%, while the average SAT scores for that group decreased by 15 points from 565 to 550 for the Reading section, and by 19 points from 578 to 569 for the Math section. CARPE</a> DIEM: Rising Grades, Falling Test Scores for HS Seniors</p>

<p>I’ve seen reports of this elsewhere, and Joanne Jacobs recently posted about how high school students may get high grades in honors classes but then fail to succeed in college:</p>

<p>* Students with “soft skills,” such as motivation and determination, may earn high grades despite low test scores, says Dave Johnson of the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.</p>

<p>Then they get to college without the academic skills they need to survive.* A</a> Robeson ‘A’ is a college ‘F’ at Joanne Jacobs</p>

<p>Colleges claim to know the level of rigor for a given high school’s curriculum and grading system when they evaluate a student’s application, but SAT scores also tell an important part of the story. Yet, there seems to be a tendency for more and more colleges to go “test optional”.</p>

<p>I see grade inflation at our local public schools, at least in the sense that they reward students for some things that may not have much bearing on whether a high SAT-scoring student will succeed in college. I’m talking about things like poster projects, neat note-taking, group discussions that degenerate into off-topic blather fests, busy-work assignments, etc. If a student is willing to do all these things that are necessary for high grades, he stands a better chance for college admission than a student who does not. However, are these high grades always a measure of academic excellence or do they sometimes simply measure a high tolerance level for bull sh**? Or both?</p>

<p>BTW, Perry’s blog has had some other intriguing SAT posts over the last few days.</p>

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<p>well, this would surely explain why our “grade deflated” HS, with high SAT scores have our college students with significantly higher GPA’s than they had in high school…
but it was pure hell going through the process watching the kids from grade inflated HS’s get acceptances all over the country while our kids were getting rejections/waitlists/etc…</p>

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<p>I think my kid’s school inflates too. I noticed when I was there recently that many kids at the top of the GPA list (it’s posted) are the really nice, hardworking kids who score terribly on the bigger tests. I don’t know, of course, what their SAT scores were, but I do know how a bunch of them did on other various tests over the years. In this school, it’s kids a little lower down in rankings who have the great test scores. These tend to be kids who have other things on their plates.</p>