November 8, 2002

The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation

By ALFIE KOHN

Grade inflation got started ... in the late '60s and early '70s.... The grades that faculty members now give ... deserve to be a scandal.

-- Professor Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University, 2001

Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily -- Grade A for work of no very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity. ... One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by

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