One School District Steps Up to the Plate

At least one school district is stepping up to the plate to address grade inflation. At Mount Olive High School in New Jersey,"D" grades don't cut it any more...the school district is eliminating the grade entirely!

Under the old system, students could pass with a 65 — 389 of the 1,500 students at Mount Olive High had a “D” on their final report cards in June — but now anything lower than a 70 will be considered failure.

The kids don't like the idea:

“If you’re a little bit less than a C, but not quite an F, you’re still going to fail. Some kids aren’t at that level yet. They aren’t able to get that upper grade.”

Don't you just love that? A "C" is now considered an "upper" grade!

Gasp! No surprises there. But that's the expected response from a generation of kids that has been subjected to a long-term softening of required learning. Give a challenge on the X-box...and they rise to the task. But God forbid we give them a true educational challenge. That's cruel and unusual punishment.

While few high schools have banned D’s outright as Mount Olive has, some have sought to tamp down grade inflation by quietly tightening their standards over the years. Several New Jersey high schools, for instance, have raised the minimum for D’s to 70, which is traditionally the C-minus range, with anything below deemed an F.

Here's a school board and school district that's thinking outside the box. Any wagers on whether something like this would ever fly in Sun Prairie? Oh wait...we HAVE NO "D" students! Did anybody watch this year's high school graduation and notice that a huge percentage of kids graduated with at least "Honors". After tuning in midway though, we counted at least 8 students who graduated with a perfect 4.0! That's straight "A"s in EVERY course (even gym!) for EIGHT consecutive grading terms! Do you know what the statistical odds are of even 1 or 2 students meeting that?

Sheer brilliance in Sun Prairie kids...it's such a shame that we don't hold a candle to other districts in terms of National Merit Scholars.

We declare shenanigans! The whole organization must be against us. After all...it couldn't be grade inflation on our part...right?

Have we even DISCUSSED grade inflation at the board table? Other than Tim Culver suggesting the claim is invalid, that is.