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Some colleges and universities in the United States have been struggling with student performance, particularly since they began spending more time protesting Israel or the police than on the classes they signed up for. And the DEI push concerning who does or doesn't get admitted isn't helping either. But no school wants to go public and say that they are graduating a bunch of sub-par students, right? Western Oregon University has joined the ranks of those who are finding creative solutions to these challenges. They will simply no longer issue failing grades to anyone such as "D-" or "F." They...

DECEMBER 1, 2023 SHARE THIS ARTICLE: The College Fix on Facebook The College Fix on Twitter The College Fix on Reddit Share on Email About eight percentage points higher than five years prior A supermajority of undergraduate grades given out at Yale University were an A or A- according to a new report from the student newspaper. The Yale Daily News obtained a copy of the 2022-23 grades report from an economics professor at the Ivy League university in Connecticut. The dean of Yale College, the undergraduate branch of the university, acknowledged that professors are not properly grading students. The...

We recently discussed the runaway grade inflation at Harvard where roughly 80 percent of grades were As. Now the Yale Daily News is reporting the same percentage of As. Indeed, the percentage is virtually identical. Harvard is handing out 79 percent agrees where Yale is apparently more rigorous at 78.9.The report is apparently an embarrassment to the university since the dean of Yale College said that professors are not adhering to guidelines for grading.Yet, this could hardly be a surprise to the dean since these grades are reported and issued by the records office.Indeed, this average is reportedly down from...

The Harvard Crimson on Thursday reported that 79 percent of grades given to Harvard students in 2020-21 were in the A range.That is an increase of 20 percent over the last decade. It leaves the question of not how difficult it is to flunk out of Harvard but how difficult it is not to excel. Faculty have apparently solved any equity issues by making everyone a top student.The problem was raised in the movie “The Incredibles,” when the villainous character “Syndrome” reveals a plan to make everyone a superhero. Syndrome’s motive is hardly altruistic: He hated superheroes and “with everyone...

A new paper in PNAS Nexus, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that minority students who earn low grades in introductory science, technology, engineering, and math classes are less likely to earn degrees in these subjects than similar white students. There is a persistent disparity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education outcomes in the United States. In 2018, women earned 58% of bachelor's degrees, but only 36% of STEM bachelor's degrees. In 2017, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people comprised 30% of the U.S. population, and 34% of STEM-intending incoming college students, yet they earned only 18% of actual...

Republicans blame Democrats, union bosses and ignoring 'actual science' for the fastest drop in nine-year-olds' learning in 50 years - as more kids REPEAT grades as DC schools ban unvaccinated students Math scores among third grade students dropped five points from 2020 to 2022 and reading scores dropped seven Reading scores saw their largest drop in three decades and math scores fell for the first time since records began 'Actual science didn't support school closures. Democrats were too busy following political science to care,' said Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa.

Teachers at San Francisco’s Lowell High School gave freshman students significantly more D and F grades this past fall, the first semester after the school board eliminated the merit-based admissions it had relied on for decades. The lower grades, while expected by many, are likely to become part of a fervid debate over Lowell that touches on race, equity and achievement. The grades raise questions about how students — and the school’s teachers and administrators — are adapting to the changes. However, it’s unclear exactly how much the change in admissions policy factored into the rise in D’s and F’s...

A judge recently ruled that a UCLA professor who had been suspended after refusing to grade black students more leniently may continue with his lawsuit against the school. According to Inside Higher Ed, a group of students initially emailed UCLA accounting professor Gordon Klein, shortly after George Floyd's death, and requested that Klein institute a "no-harm" final exam that would include extending the timeline for other final assignments and projects. The students sought these accommodations, according to a Daily Wire report, due to recent "traumas ... we have been placed in a position where we [must] choose between actively supporting...

A new grading policy, put forth by the Baltimore City School Board, Tuesday, will allow students who are struggling and failing classes to move up to the next grade level due to the virus pandemic, according to local news Fox 45. Instead of holding back students, Baltimore City Public School System’s (BCPSS) new grading policy will push up struggling students who failed classes during the pandemic and have their educational status tested during the fall semester to determine what skills they missed during virtual learning classes. Chief Academic Officer Joan Dabrowski said the new policy is intended to “avoid the...

District officials in San Diego evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on average scores is racist.K-12 students in large public school districts across the country spent much of the fall semester at home, a less-than-ideal result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Zoom learning was hardly the only significant change to the education system. Some school districts are embracing trendy but dubious ideas about how to fight racism in the classroom. The San Diego Unified School District, for instance, moved this fall to abolish its traditional grading system. Students will still receive letter grades, but they won't reflect...

RALEIGH -- A software error caused public school students around North Carolina to receive incorrect end-of-term grades this school year, state education officials said. The Department of Public Instruction said it has been advising districts about the problem with PowerSchool software since December, after many schools sent home first-quarter report cards. The error could have affected as many as 109 school districts and 59 charter schools in the state, but it's not clear exactly how many students were impacted. **SNIP** The department initially thought the rounding problem was limited to grades ending in certain decimal points, but Elliot said state...

At a measly 17 cents a gallon, Missouri’s fuel tax is woefully inadequate to fund the state’s growing need for transportation-infrastructure improvements. The more the system deteriorates, the worse our state’s business climate will become. Gov. Eric Greitens could put some muscle into his determination to attract business and generate more jobs by embracing a long-overdue fuel tax increase. The Missouri 21st Century Transportation Task Force, created by the Legislature and approved by the governor last year, proposes to boost the tax by a dime, and by 12 cents for diesel, which is only about half of what’s needed to...

“We have bridges that are falling down,” then-candidate Donald Trump told Fox last August, pledging to double the amount Hillary Clinton wanted to spend on infrastructure as president of the United States. “We’ll get a fund, we’ll make a phenomenal deal with the low interest rates and rebuild our infrastructure.” One year later and eight months into his presidency, Trump has continued to double down on his lofty promises — during “Infrastructure Week” in June, he told his supporters in Cincinnati that the U.S. “deserves the best infrastructure in the world.” But the administration has been slow to move its...

This afternoon I logged on to my daughter's college account and found out grades had come out. I was very excited to see that she had received a 3.75 and was very happy for her. I showed her and the entire family and we went out to celebrate (dinner). I shared my happiness via Facebook. Tonight I went back on to pay a fee that I had noticed earlier was yet unpaid and her grades are completely different! She has one A, a B, two C's and a D! I don't have any clue how this is possible. One of...

Think grade inflation has made grades less meaningful? A consortium of 100 elite prep schools agrees. But rather than impose stricter grading curves, these schools plan to eliminate grades altogether. “People are nonstandard,” says D. Scott Looney, head of Cleveland’s Hawken School and founder and board chair of the new Mastery Transcript Consortium. “They grow and evolve in the world in nonstandard ways. Distilling that down to a simple common number like a GPA shaves off a lot of humanity in that journey.” These are not artsy-fartsy alternative schools; the consortium includes some of the most famous pressure-cooker private institutions...

Political correctness has now reached an entirely new stratosphere: The University of Wisconsin-Madison believes grades should be apportioned based on race: Campus Reform reports: The policy, named the “Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence,” calls for “proportional participation of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups at all levels of an institution, including high-status special programs, high-demand majors, and in the distribution of grades.” Huh? UWM professor W. Lee Hansen wrote about his concerns with the ridiculous politically correct policy late last week: “Professors, instead of just awarding the grade that each student earns, would apparently have to adjust them so that academically...

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice recently published an analysis entitled, “More Than Scores: An Analysis of Why and How Parents Choose Private Schools.” The study took a look at the Georgia GOAL scholarship system, in which parents would get money from the state (i.e., a school voucher) in order to send their children to private schools. The GOAL’s oversight entity, the Georgia Education Expense Credit Program, is structured in a way to give tax credits for contributing to a “qualified Student Scholarship Organization (SSO).” An individual can receive a tax credit for contributing up to $1,000, a married couple...

A Dallas-based company that writes research papers, essays and other classroom assignments -- so students don't have to -- says it is doing so well that it has expanded its staff from just a few writers to more than 100 in the past year. The company bills itself as the one "students trust to write professional, in-depth and plagiarism-free essays that receive the highest grades for all levels of coursework...so they no longer have to face the burden of academic coursework." It says the writing is done for an "affordable" fee; and it has foreign writers on staff for non-American...

Studies of Children With Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Find Little Change It's no longer shocking to hear of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—and others simply facing a big test—taking ADHD medicine to boost their performance in school. But new studies point to a problem: There's little evidence that the drugs actually improve academic outcomes. Stimulants used to treat ADHD like Ritalin and Adderall are sometimes called "cognitive enhancers" because they have been shown in a number of studies to improve attention, concentration and even certain types of memory in the short-term. Similar drugs were given to World War II soldiers to...

School administrators at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) are systematically raising the final grades of African-American students, three ex-faculty members told Campus Reform last month. Former Director of Academic Technology Shira Hedgepeth, along with two former professors who spoke to Campus Reform on the condition of anonymity, alleged administrators at the historically black college routinely increase the final grades of African-American students in order to raise the school’s standing. “Some students had their final grades changed based on their race,” Hedgepeth told Campus Reform on June 6. “That was a common complaint of many of the faculty that I worked with.”...