GRADE INFLATION IS SUCH A PROBLEM for the University of North Carolina that I
can’t even find a list of UNC’s recent valedictorians. Why not? Probably because
printing it out would cause a nationwide paper shortage. Earnestly, after decades of
grades lofting into the stratosphere, is there anything our university (and others) can do
to reverse grade inflation, or at least to compensate for the progressively more
meaningless and misleading GPA?
In 2007, when grade inflation last came up for discussion at UNC, some professors
and students opposed any system that rations grades, including quotas like those
implemented at Princeton University and mandatory departmental averages like at
Wellesley College.
“My old boss called these the power tools. It’s amputation for a small injury,” said
UNC professor Andrew Perrin, one of those who studied grade inflation for the faculty.
“But it does have the advantage that it is very transparent, and it’s easy to explain to
the outside community,” Perrin added.
Happily, there exists a better, if more complex, system for ranking students. A
proposal made to UNC several years ago is back: add the Achievement Index to
students’ grade reports, a measure that filters out variations in grading among different
academic departments and among individual professors. It is a great idea.
As the Daily Tar Heel describes it, the Achievement Index is a “strength of schedule”
analysis. The Achievement Index (AI) measures a student’s performance against their
classmates’ performance given those classmates’ grades in other courses.
The Achievement Index was developed by a biostatistician, Valen Johnson, as a
method for combining the information from grades earned across college courses;
where the overarching goal is to measure each student’s academic performance while
factoring out differences among individual instructors’ grading practices. (Further
information on grade inflation is available in the book “Grade Inflation: A Crisis in
College Education” by Valen E. Johnson, and a briefer synopsis of the technical
aspects of the AI can be found by Googling “Primer on the Achievement Index”.)
The basic concept is this: an A in a class where everyone got an A tells us nothing. An
A in a class filled with classmates whose grades in other courses were poor is less of
an accomplishment than a B in a course filled with classmates with A’s in other tougher
courses. Put differently, an A in a crip course is not as telling as a B in a killer — as
every college sophomore knows.
And research shows the AI works better than the GPA — even using the exact grades
now used to calculate the GPA. In 2007, UNC’s faculty Educational Policy Committee
studied the validity of the AI with two tests comparing pairs of UNC students enrolled
in the same class at the same time. GPA and AI were assessed by examining whether
GPA ranking or AI ranking better predicts these students’ performance in the very
same class. In 61% of 22,000 cases where students in such pairs earned different
grades in the same class, the higher grade was earned by the student who ranked
higher on AI but lower on GPA.
Likewise, based on 14,000 pairs of students in exactly the same class, where one
student would have received a degree with distinction using AI (but not GPA), the AI-
honor student earned a higher grade than the student with a GPA-honor almost twice
as often. So, clearly, for both assessments, the AI is a better, more valid measure of
academic performance.
In the spring of 2007, UNC’s Educational Policy Committee recommended that
Carolina list their AI on students’ transcripts along with their GPA, that UNC award
graduation honors based on AI and also use AI to determine class rank. After what
was described as “a spirited debate,” the faculty governing body voted 34-31 against
adopting the Achievement Index. We can hope, in the meantime, at least two faculty
members have gained some common sense.
Gary D. Gaddy’s nephew, Benjamin Gaddy, was one of 129 valedictorians at North
Carolina State University in 2007. He had a 4.0 in electrical engineering. Who do you
think should have been THE valedictorian?
A version of this column was published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Friday February 19,
2010.
Copyright 2010 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 