Do you think Advanced Placement and Honors classes in high school have serious grade inflation problems, why?

Question

Yup

What neniaf highlighted is part of the problem with accelerated classes in high school. In addition, some students take these classes as a mean of saving their GPAs. They take the value of the weighted grades and play point games that discourage them from doing their best in all classes.

If the quality of work by students goes down, so does the class itself, leading to grade inflations.

Answer 1

What's obvious is that there are huge grade inflation problems overall in high schools today. I also think that there is often an assumption that if a person is in an AP or Honors class, they MUST deserve an A. The problem, then, is that it becomes really hard to distinguish among students in those courses. It isn't really fair to the truly outstanding student when everyone else gets the same grade.

Answer 2

Depends on the school. At my high school, AP classes were usually pretty easy to do well in, possibly because so few people actually took them that the teachers didn't want to discourage anybody. In my class of around 500, only 20 people took AP Calculus and Physics, and maybe only 40-50 took AP English Lit and Biology. Honors classes were not the same, and lots of people got Cs and Ds in them.

On the other hand, my roommate in college went to a high school where it was very hard to get into honors and AP classes. They had to submit an application, and only 30 people could take each class despite a growing student body. Even then, in each class there was a strict curve, like say, 5 people got an A, 10 got a B, and 15 got a C, no matter how good or poorly the students did. So even of the top 30 students in the school, half would get Cs no matter what.

Two extremes, both poor systems.

Answer 3

There is grade inflation across all levels of education. Money has always been a driving factor in the education world, but now schools are faced with cutthroat competition for scarce funds (public) or alumni donations (private). One way to increase funding is to increase the school's prestige, so they inflate student's grades, which allows them entrance into good universities. Then the cycle repeats.

Answer 4

I took each and every honors elegance that my prime college had, commencing with prime college algebra within the seventh grade. All my math publications then have been honors as much as my senior yr in which we took a institution degree Calculus publications for institution credit score. Also, I took four years of honors English categories. These have been the one ones to be had. I relatively loved all my reviews, and incidentally, they didn't gradual down my pursuits in any respect. I nonetheless performed sporting activities, performed within the band and orchestra, sang within the choir, and was once in Honor Society.

Answer 5

I am intrigued by your question, but can you be more specific by what you mean? Are you suggesting that there is a discrepancy between the supposedly higher level of work and the extra points given?