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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 7): Harvard’s Plan to Save (the Sorting Function of) Grades
Throughout this blog series on grade compression, I have argued that: 1. The work of supporting students operates in direct conflict with sorting them, and 2. Society and formal education prioritize sorting. The idea that grades can differentiate students while meaningfully contributing to their learning is a convenient illusion, but the existential crisis compression has… Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 6): Why Team Support Should Take Grade Compression Very Seriously
Lately, I have been reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 science fiction novel The Dispossessed, in which Shevek, a renowned physicist from an anarchist culture, comes to live in what is essentially a late capitalist society. Upon taking a university teaching position, Shevek finds his students stuck in a “pattern of cramming in information and… Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 5): Harvard Gets Real about the True Purpose of Grades
The recent report Re-Centering Academics at Harvard College revealed that in 2025, As accounted for 60% of grades at Harvard’s undergraduate college. Because Harvard has outsized influence on conversations about higher ed, this report inspired a flurry of op-eds about whether the university has “gone soft.” These concerns have, unsurprisingly, focused on alleged grade inflation… Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 4): Alternative Grading’s Role in Compression
In this series, I have been arguing that grade inflation, or the allegation that widescale grade increases have occurred absent corresponding learning and achievement gains, is a red herring. Whether grades are going up (and there is compelling evidence, if not definitive, that they are going up overall in higher education) because teaching techniques are… Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 3): The (Irrational?) Exuberance of Alternative Graders
In this current series, I am exploring the tensions between two functions or philosophies of education: 1. That we should prioritize supporting all students’ learning and growth, and 2. That we should prioritize sorting the highest achieving students from the rest. I argue that the education system operates from the flawed, if mostly implicit, premise… Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, Not the Disease (Part 2): The Specter of Grade Compression
In this subseries on the wicked problem of assessment, I am exploring the tensions between supporting the learning of every student and sorting students by levels of distinction and merit. I argued previously that: 1. Although the education system (and broader society) is more invested in sorting students, many teachers (like myself) are more invested… Continue reading
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Grade Inflation is a Symptom, not the Disease (Part 1): The Sorting and Supporting Functions of Education
Amid my ongoing series on the wicked problem of assessment, I am devoting several posts to the latest controversy (scandal? moral panic?) about “grade inflation” in higher ed.(Seriously, we are talking about podcast titles like “Has Harvard Gone Soft”?). This issue is obviously assessment-coded, but its sensitivity to current events merits its own subseries. Before… Continue reading
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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part Five): Performance Zones and Exploration Zones
As someone who has enjoyed psychologist Adam Grant’s writing on themes including epistemological humility and the benefits of generosity over selfishness, I was taken aback by his New York Times opinion piece “No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort.” In this essay, Grant resorts to tired kids these days complaints like, “In the past,… Continue reading
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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part Four): Course Mapping is Misleading
Several years ago, I attended a six-session training offered by the teaching and learning center at my then university. I wanted to get certified for hybrid courses, meeting students in person once a week and having them work asynchronously the other day. Here is the text of a slide presented early in the training: Course… Continue reading
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Assessment is a Wicked Problem (Part 3): Learning is a (Useful) Fiction
Off the bat, I concede some academic clickbait in this title. In calling learning a fiction, I obviously don’t mean that the experience of gaining knowledge or acquiring skills and abilities doesn’t happen. I mean fiction in the sense Adam Mastroianni (drawing on Yuval Noah Harari) uses to characterize psychology’s fundamental conundrum: studying inherently abstract… Continue reading
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Teaching Inquiry 