Louis Volante, Professor in Brock’s Faculty of Education, co-wrote a piece recently published in the National Post about the steps educators must take to combat grade inflation. He co-wrote the piece with Christopher DeLuca, Associate Professor of Classroom Assessment from Queen’s University.

Volante and DeLuca write:

Thousands of students received unsettling news this fall regarding the rigour of their high school grades. They learned that at least one university in Ontario — the University of Waterloo — assesses new engineering applicants partially on the basis of which high school they attended and not solely on their grades.

By tracking high school students’ graduating averages and comparing them against their first-year university GPA, the university was able to determine the average percentage drop of students from different schools when they moved to university.

Schools that exceeded the provincial average drop (in this case more than 16.3 per cent) were flagged — so that grade inflation was considered for their students during the admissions process.

In practical terms, this means that high school students with an identical graduating average from different schools are not considered to be the same in the eyes of this university. They use an “adjustment factor” as one mechanism to “level the field” in program admissions.

Continue reading the full article here.