No matter if a student is the hardest-working in their class or if they put in the bare minimum, their Infinite Campus is likely filled with notifications of perfect 100% grades on filler assignments. In recent years, participation and completion have become more valued than actual quality of the work itself, inflating grades to a point where the difference between 92% and 95% feels far more immense than it should.
Some teachers reason that as long as a student is doing the assigned work, they should be rewarded for completion. However, as an alarmingly increasing number of students are using AI, this mindset won’t do anything but raise the grades of students who might not even be completing the work themselves. These students, as well as those who do the work but only with minimal effort, would only benefit on paper. Even if they are getting high grades, they won’t be retaining the information and therefore wouldn’t be learning. When the time for tests comes, especially standardized tests, the grade students will receive won’t match up with their grades from the school year. As Regents exams often factor into a large percentage of a student’s final average, they should be prepared for these tests rather than being conditioned to expect them to be “free.”
In 2025, economist Jeffrey Denning of the University of Texas at Austin presented a study using data from a Los Angeles school district and from a Maryland school district. The locations are very different, but the results were the same: students who had inflated grades were found to be less likely to go to college or earn higher salaries. One of the main points of school is to prepare students for work. If grade inflation leads to lower pay, it defeats a core purpose of school itself.
Although teachers might seem like the culprit in this problem, administrators throughout the country are also involved. A report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that many teachers feel pressured to comply with “equitable” grading standards. Overall, teachers agreed that these “equitable” grading standards harmed academic engagement by giving credit for poorly completed assignments or even assignments that were never turned in.
Since classes increase in difficulty as a student moves up in grades, lacking knowledge from a foundational class could impair academic success later on. Once the student encounters courses that require real understanding, the gap in their knowledge becomes obvious. Instead of feeling prepared, students feel overwhelmed. This, as well as not having faced real academic challenges beforehand, damages confidence and motivation.
As the gap decreases between the grades of those who work hard and those who don’t, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish between students who truly understand the material and those who simply complete assignments. When nearly everyone receives high marks, grades stop serving their purpose as a measurement of learning.
Instead of assigning filler assignments and grading completely based on completion, schools should focus on systems that measure how well students understand the content. Grades are meant to prepare students for the real world, so they must reflect real learning. Otherwise, high numbers on a screen may provide comfort for the moment, but cause major disadvantages down the road.
