Unintended Consequences, the "Dumbing Down of America", Grade Inflation, Student Evaluations, and Assessment

What do the following topics have to do with one another: Unintended consequences, the "dumbing down of America", grade inflation, student evaluations, and assessment? Lots! Let’s examine why.

One need not be in academia to be aware of the "dumbing down of America". There have been many television documentaries in recent years decrying how America’s high school graduates are scoring lower on standardized tests than was the case twenty or so years ago. You may be aware that some high schools pass horrible students through the system to get rid of them by graduation. Many of today’s college entrants could repair my computer if they could only read the manuals. Has the "dumbing down of America" caused the dumbing down of America’s colleges?

Oh no, of course not, in fact, college grades have been going up for many years. Check this out:

"… an education professor, felt strongly that easy A’s were making a mockery of college standards … Academics have fretted about grade inflation for years, but grades continue to climb … What’s more, the few professors who use all five grades with regularity face more heat than ever …."¹

Could it be that grade inflation has accompanied actual achievement deflation? I don’t know about that, but I am highly suspicious of anyone who claims that America’s college graduates are really as much better now (versus 20 years ago) as their comparative GPA’s would indicate. Does anyone really want to advance that argument? If I were a betting man, I’d put down ten to one odds against that one.

But what has this to do with student evaluations? If you were taking a college level course and you had studied and worked hard but didn’t really understand the course material very well, would you prefer a grade of A or C? A few idealists might choose the latter, but most students will take the A, thank you, even if it is undeserved. Does anyone want to argue against the point that students who make higher grades tend to give better faculty evaluations? Of course there are many exceptions, but would you seriously challenge the assertion? Get real! Is there grade inflation in college so that faculty can get better student evaluations? I can’t prove it, but would you bet against it? I didn’t think so.

Should student evaluations be eliminated? No. They sometimes provide useful feedback about certain problems and/or strong points of a course presentation. Student feedback is definitely needed, and the confidentiality of student evaluations provides a relatively non-threatening mechanism to accommodate this need. The question is whether student evaluations should be used as a part of the official and/or numeric evaluation of the faculty member for promotion/tenure purposes. Without arguing the point pro or con, suffice it to say that potential faculty reward for potentially good student evaluations is motivation enough for a tendency toward grade inflation, even if the tendency is sub-conscious in nature. I don’t have a miracle cure, but I’m saying that student evaluation of faculty can feed grade inflation, which in turn can feed the further "dumbing down of America".

Well, with all these problems, isn’t it a blessing that higher education has finally taken assessment seriously? Ah, that’s what we need, assessment! Since we have given all A’s and B’s in the classroom, we need to develop assessment tools so that we can find out what the one’s we gave A’s really made in that class. More importantly, since the students gave us great evaluations because they all made A’s, we also need to assess our own actual performance in various classes. Ah, assessment.

In the name of assessment, we develop course outcomes and evaluation tools to use in achieving the outcomes. This part of the assessment process can actually be helpful in course and curriculum planning. This is not the part of assessment that is the problem. The problem occurs when we attempt to numerically quantify the degree to which the course outcomes were met by examining student grades/performance by outcome. Let’s get real again.

What is the expected or desired result of the assessment plan at your school? We want the accrediting people to report that we have great faculty teaching great course material to great students, right? How is this desired result accomplished? By blatant honesty about every shortcoming in every course and every student who withdrew from that course because it was too hard? Is this what gets your college a good score when the accrediting people come? I didn’t think so. The motivation inherent in the college’s assessment program (regardless of how well intentioned) is the same motivation inherent in the college’s student evaluation program, namely to make the numbers come out as high as possible without blatantly lying. How is this done?

At a recent assessment meeting, our group discovered that one class’s numeric assessment scores for a particular course were significantly higher than another’s. I asked whether this meant that class had better students or whether the tests and assignments were easier. No answer was forthcoming. Obviously, it could be a combination of both and/or other factors. The point is that the motivation inherent in the system is to give easier tests and assignments relative to each desired outcome, thereby feeding grade inflation and the "dumbing down of America".

Idealists will probably object that professionals in education are above such manipulation of course requirements for personal gain. It is quite likely that a large portion of this manipulation is on the sub-conscious level. Professors, like other humans, are not immune from the social disease of lying to one’s self in order to ward off negativity, criticism, and/or insecurity. You need not dumb the test down with malice aforethought. You can dumb it down without even realizing it in an attempt to be positive and helpful to students.

I bet someone will promote IPSI as a cure-all for all the assessment ills mentioned above. IPSI is another sophisticated computerized number crunching system that can be used (consciously or sub-consciously) for whatever purpose. If I feed easy test questions and assignment algorithms to IPSI, I will simply get back more fully documented versions of the same crippy exams and easy assignments that I would get without it. IPSI does not solve the inherent assessment motivation problem.

Administrators with good intentions apparently do not understand the sub-conscious dynamics involved in attempting the keep students happy and also teach them what they need to know. When faculty reward is directly related to the former to the exclusion of the latter, the unintended consequences of grade inflation and the "dumbing down of America" follow suit. What is the solution?

If there is a solution, it could be that old bug-a-boo called standardized achievement testing upon graduation. Maybe we could try a different approach from the usual appointment of Moses God Bureaucrat as Test Kingpin of the world. Why not develop standardized tests by institution by subject area and then let the accrediting people assemble the many divergent tests and work toward development of standardized tests by state, then by region, then national. They don’t have time? OK, form a committee (oh, joys) to assemble the data and develop recommended tests for review and feedback. Would it work? I don’t know, but if not, at least we could waste our time doing something more meaningful than crunching numbers to make ourselves look good.

Maybe there is no answer to the assessment dilemma. Maybe we should just continue to do the best we can to balance the conflict of keeping our students happy and teaching them what they really need to know.

¹Efforts to Curb Grade Inflation Get an F From Many Critics by Ben Gose, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 25, 1997, page A41.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA, GRADE INFLATION, STUDENT EVALUATIONS, and ASSESSMENT *** UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA, GRADE INFLATION, STUDENT EVALUATIONS, and ASSESSMENT *** UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, THE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA, GRADE INFLATION, STUDENT EVALUATIONS, and ASSESSMENT