The Grading Podcast 138 - Too Many A’s Or Too Much Confusion?
In “Too Many A’s,” Sharona and Boz revisit a popular media narrative about “grade inflation,” starting with a Harvard-focused story that treats “too many A’s” as a crisis—while quietly mixing two incompatible purposes of grading: ranking/sorting and communicating learning. They argue that if grades are meant to report mastery, “more A’s” isn’t a scandal—it’s the goal (with the important caveat that the bar still matters). From there, they dissect a recent viral article claiming “easy A’s” harm students’ long-term outcomes, and they do what they teach: go to the original research, separate correlation from causation, and interrogate definitions—especially a math-heavy “lenient grader” metric that depends on standardized tests and other inputs that may be misaligned, inequitable, or just plain bad proxies. Along the way, they call out how quickly commentary slides into storytelling (“the mechanism is not difficult to imagine”) and how often alternative grading gets blamed without evidence—ending with a clear takeaway: we can’t evaluate “too many A’s” until we’re honest about what grades are for, what evidence they should represent, and what data we’re willing to treat as trustworthy.
Links
Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!
- One Solution for Too Many A’s? Harvard Considers Giving A+ Grades. (NY Times Gift Link)
- Easy A’s, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation, Denning Et Al (Not Yet Peer Reviewed)
- Easy A’s, lower pay: Grade inflation’s hidden damage, New Article referencing the above article
- The True Cost of Grade Inflation at Harvard, article in Harvard Magazine
- Episode 88 – Unearned Grades: Remaking the Conversation about Grade “Inflation”, The Grading Podcast
Resources
The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.
The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.
Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:
Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:
- Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
- Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
- Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel
Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.
If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com.
All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Music
Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.