From C’s to A’s—Exeter Community Examines Gradual Grade Inflation

The current average grade at Exeter is in the B range, but 40 years ago, 60 percent of Exeter students had a C average. Alumni frequently scoff at the number of A’s doled out at the Academy today, stating, “no one got A’s at Exeter when I was there.” So what’s changed?

“Grades have risen slowly over the last 15 years at least,” according to Dean of Academic Affairs Karen Geary. “There are probably many factors that have contributed, such as changes in students, content and teaching methods as well as expectations from parents and college admissions.”

Grades started to change in the 80s, according to history instructor Jack Herney, who began working at the Academy in 1968. Teachers began to realize that the grades they were giving their students were significantly lower than what they would be had those students gone to school back home.

“We all feel real empathy and concern for our students when getting into a good university is becoming such a difficult task even coming from a school like Exeter.”

Reverend Richard Thompson, who graduated Exeter in ‘72 and returned as a religion teacher in ‘86, said that in the time between his graduation and return to Exeter as a teacher, Ivy League schools stopped recognizing the “Exeter C” as equivalent to the countrywide A. According to Thompson, one of his former classmates got into Yale without ever making honors at Exeter.

College counseling played a role in shifting the teachers’ thinking. Herney said it was harder for students who began applying to non-Ivy League colleges, many of which weren’t aware of the Academy’s reputation; accordingly, such institutions included Exonians’ grades in a range similar with students in schools all over the country.

“The big argument in the 80s [was] that we were seriously disadvantaging our kids by giving them those silly grades, and I think we were absolutely right,” Herney said. “These kids deserve A’s and B’s most of the time.”

Math department chair Erik Bergofsky, who has taught at Exeter for 38 years, said grades given now also reflect the increasingly competitive nature of college admissions. According to Bergofsky, there “has been a desire from the faculty both collectively and individually to put our students in the best possible position for admissions.”

Bergofsky said teachers don’t want to be responsible for giving students a grade that will then “[blow] their chances of getting into a good college.”

“We all feel real empathy and concern for our students when getting into a good university is becoming such a difficult task even coming from a school like Exeter,” he said.

Today, about 75 percent of current students in every grade receive at least honors. Thompson believes that the new approach to teaching, which is more focused on the importance of learning and mastery, may have lead to higher grades.

For example, the modern teacher often allows students to receive extra credit through test corrections or paper rewrites. This may help to motivate students to redo material for the grade benefit, as opposed to Thompson’s time, where corrections were required and no points were given. “Today’s grades may better reflect what students know by the end of the term than they did before,” he said.

Geary said that she keeps this disparity in mind when she creates a test, but even so there are issues with helping students’ grades reflect their level of mastery. Geary said she knows most students will get a B or a B- on most of her tests, but “there is also a part of me that feels like, ‘why am I shooting for the average grade in my class to be a B, B-? Why don’t I want mastery to be the goal for everyone?’”

Geary said that pushing for mastery at that level is more complicated than it may seem, because it would involve almost completely changing an already established and functioning system.

“But then what it comes down to, if you’re going to do that, the differentiating factor between students is how long it takes them to get to mastery, which then would mean we’d have to turn the whole system of assessment [on its head],” she said. While that was something Geary was in favor of ideally, she said it would be unrealistic in the short term and would create other unanticipated problems.

An increase in grades may have to do with a larger shift in teaching mentality which aims to be more supportive of students’ mental health. History instructor Amy Schwartz said when she started teaching at Exeter 14 years ago, she didn’t think about how much time or effort a student put into his or her work, but graded it solely on its quality.

“I don’t really do that anymore,” Schwartz said. With the shift to teaching focused more on encouragement, “you might unconsciously inflate the grade, because you are thinking about kids’ reactions.”

Schwartz said this change in teaching is connected to the new reality of college admissions processes and colleges not knowing “what Exeter was.” Colleges don’t know how to read Exeter’s transcript anymore because they don’t “have the time” to be trained to do so, according to Schwartz. This leads to students with B’s at Exeter having a harder time getting into colleges than public school students who get straight A’s.

It would be hard for Exeter to go back to the “average C” system in these circumstances, Schwartz said, because a school like Exeter can’t survive if students aren’t getting into excellent colleges. Parents won’t spend $200,000 on a high school education if it jeopardizes their kid’s chance to attend a top university.

But Schwartz said that although focusing on students’ mental health is positive, it sometimes can be taken too far and become detrimental to a student’s education and quality of learning. Schwartz, who makes the effort to not coddle her students and to challenge them to the best of their abilities, said former students often come up to her during reunions and thank her for being tough because it helped them learn.

Religion instructor Russell Weatherspoon agreed that awarding students with higher grades can coddle them and encourage a focus on grades instead of learning. Weatherspoon said that the grades given should indicate the student’s understanding at the end of the term, and not as much the student’s effort.

“If you try really hard to not crash a plane, but you crash it anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Weatherspoon said.

Bergofsky said the current system of grades may even disadvantage students who exceed normal Exeter standards. ”Having the average grade as a B or a B+ makes it harder to distinguish the truly outstanding student from the very good student,” because there is less separation at the top, he said.