Educators on the right and left condemn grade inflation in K-12 and universities. Inflated grades mark the transformation of education from actual learning to credentialing. Grade inflation at America’s universities is a national scandal. GPAs were already inflated in the 1980s. According to a 1991 study, GPAs increased from 2.38 to 2.91 between 1962 and 1985 in select departments at eight prominent schools. Only 13 percent of course grades were above a B+ in 1962, a number that doubled by 1985. In 2012, 42 percent of grades were A’s. More than 50 percent of students routinely exceeded B+ in their...