I haven't read Johnson's book, but one thing to look at is which schools the grade inflation data is coming from, since the demographics has shifted since WWII, with the elite colleges (Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, and so forth) actually having better students than previously. Case in point: The Harvard class of 1952 had an SAT-Verbal average of only 583 (about 80th percentile). By the fall of 1960, the freshman class had an SAT-Verbal of 678 (about 96th percentile, assuming SATs are distributed with mean 500 and standard deviation of 100). The elite schools are attracting a much brighter crowd these days, explaining (at least in part) the grade inflation at these schools. This shift occurred at the same time the elite schools relied more on standardized scores, and less on family connections. There is a certain irony to this democratic shift, because these schools made a deliberate effort to liberalize admissions, throwing open the doors to greater diversity. But in the process a "cognitive elite" was created. I suspect (but don't have the data) the variability in SAT scores at the elite schools is less than it was pre-1960s. The Harvard SAT data I cited are from _The Bell Curve_.
============================================ John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State College Plymouth NH 03264 ============================================ "Eat bread and salt and speak the truth" Russian saying. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of EAKIN MARK E Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 12:06 PM To: edstat Subject: grade inflation I just received a Springer-Verlag statistics catelog. In it was a book by Valen E. Johnson titled Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education. According to the summary in the catalog, the book argues that since students award faculty with higher teacher evaluations when the faculty give higher grades and students tend to take courses with faculty that give higher grades, grade inflation is the obvious result. Has anyone read the book? I would be interested in knowing whether it would be a good book to purchase. Mark Eakin Associate Professor Information Systems and Management Sciences Department University of Texas at Arlington [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . ================================================================= . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
