Worrying About Inflation

No, not inflation of prices. Of high school GPAs.

Los Angeles Magazine has a lengthy article this month entitled:

Elite Prep Schools in L.A. and Across the U.S. Are Brazenly Inflating Grades.* 

It provides examples of high school grade inflation at high-priced schools resulting from parental pressure to have their kids' GPAs look good to admissions officers at top universities. Parents exert pressure directly on teachers and through school administrators. 

After examples of grade inflation, the article notes:

...Because of the pandemic, colleges have waived standardized testing requirements following a movement that has grown in recent years. It’s natural to think that some of these schools might abandon testing requirements for good. That’s what happened at the University of California, which in May became the largest university system in the country to phase them out.

This means that college-admissions officers will need to trust grades more than ever. “When you go test optional, you rely much more heavily on those grades,” says (Tom) Green, (associate executive director) of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “Lump on top of that a whole bunch of scattered information on grading, and it just became the Wild West for admissions offices for this fall.” With the new grading policies, he says, “just mathematically, it has to contribute to grade inflation.” ...

In short, we may have moved out of the SAT/ACT frying pan and into the GPA fire. You can argue about whether GPAs better predict college performance than the SAT/ACT. But when you take away the standardized tests, you inherently raise the importance of the GPA as the remaining statistical indicator. Students and parents react. And, unlike price inflation, grade inflation has a ceiling. If everyone gets an A, there is no predictive value in the GPA. Note also that the complaint about the SAT/ACT that (costly) test prep services give an advantage to higher income applicants now seems to be playing out with regard to the GPA. Another quote from the article:

Jon Reider, a former Stanford admissions officer and private-school college counselor, says, “I took shit from the parents and the kids who didn’t get into Yale.” Those parents have a “transactional mindset,” he says. The thinking goes, “I pay money to go to this school. I want high grades that will get my kid into Harvard.” So high schools responded by inflating grades.

Did the Regents really think through the likely responses to what they were doing when they dropped the standardized tests (counter to an Academic Senate recommendation)? Surely, the responses above should not be a surprise to anyone with a knowledge of incentive systems.

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*https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/prep-schools-grades/.