Saved by no zero

Hinterspace comments on this article. This is more about graduating students and keeping athletes eligible than maintaining the best possible honor roll. As an education director mentioned in the article, children will take advantage of the system. Many of us spend much of our childhood trying to take advantage of something, so why not an inflated grade system?

Grade inflation is deflating the value of public education. Grading on a curve is acceptable because it still encourages good performance, but creating a grade floor without adjusting the failure threshold means many will get several free passes for little work or too much poor work.

Such softballing within public education is to be expected. No school district wants to be marked with a low graduation rate, and challenging students is no longer the priority. Instead, public schools are becoming pure "graduate factories" when they aren't preoccupied with being "athlete factories." Add to this the fact that several textbooks used by these schools are subpar and have been known to offer erroneous information, and we're looking at future generations of undereducated adults making critical decisions. I hope the recent explosion of home schooling and its dissociation from the stereotype of "sheltering holy roller parents" will save the collective intellect of society.