In South Orange-Maplewood Public Schools, where Superintendent Ronald Taylor was abruptly fired two weeks ago, the school board said its decision was based in part on a non-confidence vote by the local teachers union. One reason for that lack of trust, seemingly shared by most of the community, was Taylor’s decision to bring about what the union calls a “decline of rigor” by reducing the final average a student needs to receive academic credit for a course to a 50%, even though a D- was a 67%. The union says this decision amounted to “lying to the public and our students about their college and career readiness.”

In the last couple of months, three new studies confirm the SOMA union is right: inflating student grades out of a misguided sense of equity hurts students by creating a gap between how much students are actually learning in school and how much their parents think they’re learning. 

The most expansive of the three studies is “False Signals: How Pandemic-Era Grades Mislead Families and Threaten Student Learning,” just published by TNTP in collaboration with Learning Heroes and EdNavigator.  Earlier this month the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) put out “Course Grades as a Signal of Student Achievement: Evidence on Grade Inflation Before and After COVID-19.”  In September the Annenberg Center at Brown University issued a working paper called “The Unintended Consequences of Academic Leniency”  All three underline the collateral damage inflicted on students by, no doubt, well-intentioned leaders trying to be sympathetic to learning disruptions from COVID-19 or other ills.

The result of that sympathy is families gain an inflated sense of their children’s academic progress. According to TNTP, the average American student is half a year behind where they should be yet “most families report only modest concern about missed learning,” believing the COVID damage is over and either  kids are already caught up or will catch up soon.

Why the rose-colored glasses? Learning Heroes has national surveys that show more than 8 in 10 families say their kids get grades on report cards of B or above: “most families equate letter grades with grade level and see Bs as a sign that their kids are on track” because grades are “families’ most trusted signal of student performance at school.” (See Learning Heroes’ campaign, Go Beyond Grades.)

It’s the perfect storm, at least for those who desire transparency from school districts about their children’s academic skills: the combustion of inflated grades and lowered standards creates the pretense that students are just fine—when, in fact, they’re not learning nearly as much as parents think they are. 

TNTP’s Chief Executive Tequila Brownie told the Washington Post “If any of us went to the doctor and had an MRI and it gave a false reading, we would be up in arms. Yet we’re kind of ambivalent about the fact as a nation that we’re giving false data to parents.”

Learning Heroes representative David Park said the organization created the national Go Beyond Grades campaign because of the increasing number of parents who are unaware of how their child is doing at school:

“There’s a significant amount of parents who believe their child is fine — and it’s not their fault,” Park said. “Eighty percent of students nationally come home with a B or above on their report card.”

The other two studies come to with the same conclusion. CALDER analysts say, “grading standards have changed over the course of the pandemic, making higher grades relatively easier to achieve and less reflective of objective measures of learning…[This makes it likely] that shifting grading standards give parents, guardians, and students a confusing or inaccurate picture of what students know and can do, especially considering pandemic-related learning losses.” The Annenberg working paper says, “local and federal governments across the US have enacted policies that have boosted high school graduation rates without an equivalent rise in student achievement, suggesting a decline in academic standards.”

In other words, it’s not just local school districts or the whims of one superintendent in South Orange-Maplewood. It’s coming from the top (as these recent results on the ACT test show, especially in math).

It’s true in Oregon, which has eliminated high school math and literacy requirements:

And in Washington State:

And it’s true in New Jersey too: Remember Gov. Murphy’s first commissioner of education, Lamont Repollet who engineered a scheme in Asbury Park called the “64 Floor” that essentially barred teachers from giving students failing grades, a charade he brought to the State Education Department?  As he explained to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee in May 2019, there are “certain communities”–he was apparently referring to Black students—where teachers “weaponize grades” out of racism and the 64 Floor is necessary as a ticket to equity. 

Acting Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan has carried on this false equity crusade by redefining a NJ high school diploma as “graduation-ready” instead of “college and career-ready” and by lowering the bar for students to reach proficiency on standardized tests. 

We throw around the word “equity” so much in education that it’s become meaningless, a virtue-signaling performative act of grand-standing. We see it on buttons, in rallies, on social media. That’s fine: you go with your bad self.

What the SOMA community and experts are telling us is we need to keep this self-indulgence out of our education departments and off our children’s report cards.