A parent emailed me last week asking why her son has a C in my class.
He doesn’t turn in work. He doesn’t study. He sits in class doing other things. I’ve told her this before. The C is not a mystery. It’s the natural result of months of choices.
But that isn’t really what she wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about the A he earned in another class. If he can get an A there, she asked, why can’t he get one here?
I didn’t send the reply I wanted to write. So I’m writing it here instead.
Thirty years ago, when I started teaching, an A meant something clear and solid. It meant a student had worked hard, retained the material, and could actually use what they’d learned. Today, that same letter is often given for far less. The floor has quietly dropped, but we kept using the same alphabet on the report card.
According to a major ACT study tracking more than 4.3 million high school students, average GPAs rose from 3.17 in 2010 to 3.36 in 2021 — while ACT scores actually fell. The letter stayed the same. What it measures has changed.