[ComputerGuy]

Let's keep lowering those standards. Okay ?

[Dawn531]

I’m totally against lowering grade standards to the point of eliminating failing grades.

However, over the years we’ve seen some weird grading differences in colleges my kid has attended. The school he received his BA from gave lowered grade point for an A- (anything below a 94), but not a higher grade point for a solid A (go figure)...the grad school he’s in has a weird A, A/B, B, B/C, etc. scale, but both schools have given F’s, in fact he has a friend who failed a course last term (I wasn’t sure they did that sort of thing at grad school because of the expensive tuition, I wondered if they made accommodations for extra work, etc. in order to bring up your grade. But no, they’ll still give you an F if you deserve it, and his friend had to repeat the course.)

That being said, the part about getting a grade point higher than a 4.0 is nothing new. I went to high school almost 40 years ago and I graduated with a grade point above 4.0. It had to do with what were then called “honors classes”...you received a 5.0 for an A in an honors class, thus the higher than 4.0 GPA.

[Canedawg]

Exactly. Raising the grades while lowering the standards gives people the false sense of security that they are actually doing better individually, when the truth is that the entire system is doing worse. It’s the same way with redistributing the wealth.

[ICE-FLYER]

I would invite ALL here to go to Teachers dot net
www.teachers.net/mentors/politics
and see just what kind of self important loons exist there. You will be shunned by the board moderator because he makes sure that conservatives are eventually kicked off. He will say its for teachers and that those of us who home school are “NOT INCLUDED.” There are people there who post flames and spew typical liberal hatred and deny truth because of their world view. THEY are the educational problem in this country. However they are SURE that Obama has already fixed it all.

[SECURE AMERICA]

I won't question changing the means by which our children are graded in school, just that it seems that in many cases they are NOT really graded.
Failure exists. We are all created equal ends about 5 seconds after birth. I DO NOT have the same sports skill set as Kobe Bryant. I DO NOT have the same musical talent level as Billy Joel. I surely do not have the same looks to become Brad Pitt.
None of this means that I can not succeed and succeed well at something.
But if I do not realize that I could fail at the other things listed I could waste years if not decades of my life not really succeeding because I did not realize it.
Life is full of failures. They are what allows us to grow, to expand, to evolve. To deny this is to deny 2000 years of recorded history.
This idea that every child in school has to believe that they are all at the same spot at the same time is dangerous and demeaning. It slows the achiever down and gives the slower student a false sense of where they are at. This will shows up later in life when they are committing suicide because they can not understand why things are not better for them or the same as it is for everyone else.
This PC crap is not good for our children and not good for the Nation.

[SECURE AMERICA]

Let’s keep lowering those standards. Okay ?

Yeah, look what that gets you. Obama got elected as President of America

[RochesterFan]

Mr. Haskvitz gets it. Grade inflation is just like tampering with your cholesterol score or blood pressure reading. You give the recipient/patient a false sense of euphoria while masking a problem with long term consequences.

I would suggest that the practice is cruel. The goal of bad grades, like bad medical test readings, is to alert the student and their parents to a problem that needs to be addressed. The American public has deluded themselves into thinking that they can drop their little cherubs off at school and a miracle will occur - an educated adult will come out the end of the pipeline without effort on the part of parent or student. The inconvenient truth is that parents, teachers, administrators, and students all need to be fully committed and engaged for the educational process to succeed.

The sad part is, given global competition, such a deceptive practice insures that the product of such an education will be ill-prepared to succeed in a competitive world. Can't you just see the unprepared, clueless dupes - spending a lifetime working in fast food or basic retail, struggling to make ends meet, wondering why life sucks, and looking for someone to blame - and a bailout? A really sad result, given record educational spending by taxpayers.

[TangoLimaSierra]

C is the new F.

[TexasRepublic]

Democrats imposing “grade justice”.